It must be frustrating for the queen suppliers. And yet its generally 
conceded that we have real problems with queens - higher supercedure 
rates, and often no supercedure - just queenlessness. And so many old 
beekeepers say "It didn't used to be like this..."


A cpl other things you have to factor into this.  The main one is all the
new beekeepers and their expectations.
Like it or not we have a lot of newbies,  who really are not skilled,  doing
things that are not good on queens.  Add in shipping by UPS/Mail   (not
common in 1970)  and the advent of the internet complainfest, and you have a
story.   Many of us are not seeing the same problem.   Then we also add the
newer goals of huge colonies' for pollination and honey (you could say the
commercialization) and you have raised expectaions.

Not to say we don't have have miticide and other problems (shipping was
discussed at length in the CSBA)  but not everyone is unhappy with the
queens.

Personaly myself,  and many beekeeper friends don't see any more problems
than we did before.  Overall I am pretty happy with the queens.   I am
unhappy with the queens that are supposed to be "treatment free"  but not
the queens as much as the claim that goes with them.

If you have constant supercedure in the same hive,  do you really think it's
the queen?  Or something in the hive or your introduction method?   I had
one yard where it was a problem.   turns out that yard was heavily sprayed
with herbicides weekly.  They were feeding on the dew and pollen and killing
off queens.  Not a poor queen fault at all but an exterior environment issue
(I should say beekeeper cause I missed it)

Charles

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