>>>  Lets discuss commercial queen survival. I would like to know how the 
rest of you have faired with your commercially produced queens. I have 
been told that what I experienced is not too far off normal, but I have 
also talked to beekeepers that have had nearly 100% survival.

You have to look at your supplier for commercially produced queens and how they verify that the queens are good production queens.  You can generally count on queens that come from commercial bee supply houses.  If you get queens from advertisers in the bee magazines, until you establish the reliability of these queen producers, you are really just taking a chance at the quality of queens they produce.  And, usually, not always, the more expensive the queens are, the more rigorous the breeding requirements which are instituted by the queen breeders, and the more rigorous the testing before shipping the queens to customers.  Some breeders ship out their queens as soon as they determine that they are starting to lay eggs.  Others have a two week or more testing time to determine the quality of each queen before sending them to customers.  The longer the testing period the more equipment and resources are required and the more expensive it is to raise
 the queens.  Keep that in mind when you see a "bargain"  queen for sale.

Mike in LA




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