Bob
 
Do you really believe some of what you just wrote?   
 
If those powers that be in the almond industry are so strong, and the need for bees so great, why do I have to do so much prep work to ship, practically insect (of any kind) free bees to the cali border and us from florida in general go thru so much hell getting bees into the alleged beetle and fire ant free left coast state?
Are you telling me there just going to open the south border to half cocked, tex-mex , hive beetle breeder hives with none of the concerns from our bees?
 
The other statement I had to re read, was you said we don't need Martin's queens in the USA. Why not ? really ?  Tell me if the aussie queens dry up ,where I can get large numbers  in short notice? You used to be able to do that with Kona , but now there booked, sold out and getting on a waiting list means very little to being able to call up and have queens in less than a week if you need them to make up unexpected loss.
 
In my experience, there seems to be a shortage for sure of queens ,and the prices seem to reflect it's a sellers market.
 
Not only is the queen market short in the spring, I for one would welcome some new gene's to the basically closed gene pool we have had here for decades,with the exception of some Yugo's , russians, and aussie stock. Even though there are those that are educated beyond there intelligence and say it's not the case, I have to wonder if we have lost vigor in our bees by having a closed gene pool for the most part, and the effort of queen breeders to look for and breed out the vigor of hives that produce a lot of bees and  have that tendency to swarm more than others.
 
 		 	   		  
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