Jean-Marie said:
Seems this phenomenon is recent because the authors of the previous century
doesn't speak about that. On the contrary, they say two queens fight and one
kills the other. Obviously, here it's not the case.

I can not speak for bees in Belgium but in the U.S. today the bees I run are
very different than the bees I kept in the 50's and 60's.

James Bach (Washington State ret. bee inspector) has been one of the few
people to report the change at a national meeting (ABF convention Portland ,
Oregon).

James read for about five minutes  differences in the bees of today and of
yesterday. At the end James gave no explanation as to why the difference.
Dave Hackenburg was sitting next to me and leaned over and said he was
seeing the same thing  and had hoped James would have given his opinion as
to why the difference in our bees.

I later asked Dr. Shiminuki (then head of Beltsville Bee Lab) his opinion of
James comments. "Shim" said he believed the genetics from years of breeding
for certain traits had produced those traits but had also produced certain
undesirable or at least not the normal traits in our bees.

I am not saying that a hive with two queens is undesirable but only not the
norm as compared to beekeeping history.

40 years ago when a hive swarmed the hive requeened most of the time.
Recently only about 50% have been requeening. This year every pure Russian
hive which swarmed requeened. Perhaps the genetics are not as screwed up on
the Russian bees?

Bob

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