> > Two different scenarios, producing, in one case acceptable queens but the
> > other only producing a temporay solution.

Baloney.

Emergency queens raised by a good beekeeper from good stock are perfectly
good queens and *can* last as long, and do as well, as as any other queen.
 I defy anyone to prove otherwise with scientific literature.

That is not to say all -- or even most -- emergency queens are excellent,
but then how good are the cells and queens that we buy from the breeders?
I  can assure you that you can and do often get less than ideal queens
from breeders.

As an illustration, I requested ripe cells from a breeder recommended to
me by a friend, and when they arrived, the breeder indictated that there
was a small percentage included that he felt might not be good enough to
use, but he had sent them along as a bonus.

When I looked at them, I rejected a full 1/3 of *all* the cells --
including many of the the supposedly OK ones -- due to size and an obvious
lack of excess feed in the cup (they were grafted into JayZee BeeZee cups
and I could easily see without having to open them).

The rest of them, I thought -- by our minimum standards -- were marginal.
If I had bought mated queens raised from these cells , I would have never
realized that they were a bit underfed until the hives did not perform
well.

Back to emergency cells:  The bad press for emergency queens -- as far as
I can tell by reading the literature and from personal experience and as I
related here recently -- is mostly from writers repeating misconceptions
based on incomplete understanding of previous writings.

It is not inconceivable to me that the same people who have trouble
understanding the writings may have trouble raising emergency queens.  The
timing, the management, and the understanding of bees required to do a
good job may be beyond their ability.  In the hands of an expert, or even
attentive amateur, this is as good a method as any.  Under some
circumstances, it may be the best choice.

> ...I see no reason for leaving to the bees to make a new queen in a
> split when it will take the beekeeper only a couple of minutes to
> produce a cell from a selected breeder queen.

Well, everyone has different priorities and different scheduling and I'm
not going to tell people what to do with their time.  I'll admit that
raising cells, as you recommend, is preferable in that there is an element
of control there that is lacking in the simple split-and-leave-them-to-
themselves approach.  However, not everyone has those 'couple of minutes'
or the expertise that some take for granted.

Most people who can understand simple instructions can divide a double
hive onto two stands in the spring when the hive is busting with bees and
feed, the weather is good, and everything in the county is blooming in
profusion.  That is all there is to splitting using emergency queens.
Done.  No selecting, no grafting, no searching through hives, no thinking.
 Nada.  A few moments and the deed is done.In 21 days if no eggs are in
evidence in one half, the hive can be re-combined, or given a queen.

Selecting queens for breeding by grafting and raising cells, on the other
hand,  is a subtle task, sometimes requiring a year or more.  If the wrong
mother(s) is chosen, the results can be *far, far*  worse than those
obtained by using the genes of every surviving hive in the yard, as one
does by letting each hive raise a queen.  And the cell raising is not
something everyone is up to, either.

FWIW, I know a fellow who raised 1,000+ queens for his outfit and for
neighbours from ONE QUEEN MOTHER!  I shudder to think of it.  Think if she
lacked good wintering genes in her offspring, for example...  IMO, this is
a far worse thing to do than to let the hives raise their own queens.

> To produce your own cells is little work and well spent time.

Granted, but who can speak for everyone?  To each his/her own.

>  I have done this for some time and I'm very pleased with the result.
> There are also ways to put cells into queen right hives for requeening
> this way with little work involved.

I agree, and was impressed by how quickly we were able to improve our
stock and production, as well as wintering success the last time we raised
our own queens from our own selected stock.

Nonetheless, my wife will be managing the raising of 2,000+ queens this
spring, she has decided, and she is already cranky looking forward to
having to work almost every day straight through, or be thinking about her
cells, for the next six weeks or more.  It is more than a 'little work'.

Anyhow, there are three ways that bees raise queens in nature, and they
all work and have worked for eons.  *All* can fail under some conditions,
even in nature.

What method of the three we choose is up to us -- and our circumstances.
If we understand it and understand the demands and limitations of the
mechanism we choose, we will succeeed most of the time.

What more can we ask?

allen

http://www.internode.net/HoneyBee/