Hi!

I'm afraid that I don't see any selective force in a colony that is swarming
to make queens that are more likely to swarm.  If we said that "swarminess"
was genetic, then the real question you are looking at is whether, at the
fertilization process, you get the "swarminess" gene(s).  So to say there was
a selective force, one would have to say that the old queen could choose
which sperm to use with which egg, which doesn't make to much sense to me.
If it is not genes, but simply how the queen "feels," then saying that queens
that went with swarms were more likely to swarm is possible, but then there
would be little difference between a queen that swarmed out of a supercedure
situation than out of one which swarmed because of crowding or whatever other
cause.  This is but my second year in beekeeping, so most of my thinking
comes out of books, and not practical experience.  What I have written seems
logical to me, but I realize that I could easily have forgotten something.
So - if this is just crazy, then please tell me where I'm wrong. . . . .

Dar

>Possibly, but not necessarily.  Most colonies will make swarm cells if the
>queens are old and they are doing well, even "unswarmy" ones.  And this is
>going to be especially noticeable if they are crowded for space.  So if you
>took swarm cells from a young queen in an uncrowded colony I would agree.
>But if you took cells from older queens in crowded conditions I doubt if the
>selection pressure for swarminess would be very noticeable.