I agree!  Local queens are not available here until late May early  
June.  My local queen producer has 1500 mating nucs that he uses from  
mid-May till mid-July.  This means he has to have 15000 mature drones  
continuously available for that 2 month window if you believe 10  
drones mate with a queen.  Ernesto Guzman stated up to 40 per queen  
meaning 60000 mature drones.  I buy 10-15 queen cells, for my late May  
early June nucs, from him each year and believe that my 10 or so  
overwintered hives, with the help of a few other local hives, produce  
enough mature drones.  While these nucs won't give the honey  
production of  a good mated queen in the first year( 7 - 2016 nucs  
averaged 43#), they come into their own next year( 4 - 2015 nucs  
averaged 296#).  With our mild winter I had no losses in 2015-16, the  
low number of 2015 nucs resulted from most being sold.

Bob Darrell
Caledon Ontario
Canada
44N80W


On 10-Oct-16, at 11:40 AM, [log in to unmask] wrote:

>  is the lack of longevity really much more than queens not being  
> mated well.  Commercial produces have how many queens out for mating  
> at any given time.

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