This is all well and good, but beekeepers have experienced no difference in
queen "longevity" between shipped packages, shipped queens in battery boxes,
shipped queens in 3-hole cages with attendants, queens transported on the
passenger seats of the air-conditioned cabs of 1982 Peterbuilt 359s, and
queens raised locally, and transported less than one mile.
So shipment did not produce the effect seen by beekeepers, where it seems
that few hives can keep a queen an entire season, and by researchers, where
it seems that few queens can keep laying long enough to complete a study.


I may be missing it here,  but that seems like Sarcasm  Jim....

Feel free to add your research on the subject and market your line of Mr.
Wonderful's genetically superior queens.  With around 6 million queens
produced annually,  the vast majority of customers are pretty darn happy.
Those that are not are free to improve the situation.

Its interesting to me that so many beekeepers blame the queen and the queen
producers for poor products, when the issues are generally not queen
related.

We also want to talk about how long a queen should live,  when in truth we
know very little about how long a wild queen last without being replaced,
and how much production we get from them.

Todays queens do a good job of laying like crazy,  and many of them last
just fine.  In side by side test with swarm queens,  and "local bred"
queens,  and production queens.  I see no differences......  Odd isn't it??

Charles

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