Greetings:

“It is a PROVEN fact that an older queen can fail at any time due to many
factors AND pheromone levels tend to drop as the queen ages. I agree there
are exceptions but most commercial beekeepers are not willing to take the
chance on queen failure so regularly replace old queens. Three year queens
are picked on the most but there are beekeepers which replace queens every
year,” says Bob.

Bob is quite right about the above scientific fact, especially given his
commercial paradigm based on his diligent reading of modern bee
literature.

But, here, Dave seems to be referring to the aggressive requeening
practice, which almost all beekeeping books baptize nowadays—-that every
fall or spring, the beekeeper must requeen no matter what to, at least,
avoid a name calling.  True, the ultimate benefit of replacing a queen is
to maximize the honey production although my experience tells me there are
duds among new queens, too.

Let us revisit this issue of automatic, annual requeening practice, which
seems, in the long run, to accelerate the weakening of the bees, a point
that has been raised on and off here on Bee-L.  For example, such annual
requeening robs the colony the necessary time to acclimatize to local
conditions, in general, and worse, the invaluable time necessary to build
up a possible resistance to the local pathogens, in particular.  Along
with chemical usage and misusage, I believe this annual requeening is yet
another culprit that has *helped* us create weak bees that don’t know what
to do with mites.


Yoon

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