On the subject of Queens from Texas..
I'm always hesitant to share negative experiances- I only have a few hives, so my experience is hardly reprasentative....
A couple of years ago, I purchased several (About five, iI think) Buckfast queens.  All were readily accepted, and were good, productive hives, tho not the most productive hives I had that year.
The problems came the following spring, when I went to requeen these hives;  None of these hives was willing to accept the introduced queen!   I used every trick I could think of to try and get them to accept the queens, with very little sucess- they just kept balling the cages!
I finally removed the poor queens, set up nucs, and introduced the queens to nucs full of very young bees.  After the queens were laying, I was able to unite them with larger hives.
It was a really troublesome spring- I had two of the meanest hives I have ever had to deal with, and two that were just troublesome.  I dont think one of them ever did actually get requeened with my introduced queen, despite my best efforts to assure that they were queenless and queen cell-less.  They stayed mean the whole summer, and tho they foraged like mad, you couln't get within 50 feet of them without being dive bombed.
That said, I am trying another buckfast queen this year.  (only one)  and I am trying to keep an open mind.  The hive is isolated from other bees, and I am going to watch the queen closely to be sure she is not superseded.  I hate to clip and mark queens, but I may do so in this case.
Ellen  in Michigan.



  Bob & Liz <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
.
If you have good luck with a queen breeders queens then by all means send in
your comments. Because of the varables with open mated queens I don't
believe its fair to queen breeders to have each problem posted on the net.
Almost all U.S.queen breeders have been in business many many years. Post
the positive and let the Bee-L people choose. Example would be the last
weeks comments on Weavers. All was positive about bees and service with one
complaint about a SMR queen being a dud. I thought we were going to get a
explanation why the queen was a *dud

<snippage>

> Let's hear some feedback.