As a minor note supersedure can be more prevalent at some times than others.  I cannot really recall the exact date (seems like it would have beenback in the late 60's or 70's and perhaps Jerry B. can recall a more accurate date) there was an episode of severe superscedure in queens.  This led to what was known as 'the Nebraska test' where by half a dozen well know queen supplier provide packages and the test involved how many packages superseded the queen.  It was something of a blind test in the packages providers did not know about the test.  The name is in reference to this experiment was paid for by the state of Nebraska.

The results were all over the place with supersedure caring from 100 to 0 percent. I am sure some well know queen supplier were embraced by the results.  The test kind of put Roy Weaver (Danny's grandfather) on the map since his was the one operation with the 0% rate. After the fact management practices were examined and it was suggested (not really fully known) that the problem was related to nosema a., since Roy was the one operation that put fumidil in the queen mating boxes feed, the shipping syrup and the queen cage candy.

since we now know nosema c. is here one might wonder if to some degree the same thing might be happing once again?

Gene in Central Texas...  

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