Peter said that he never heard of queen supercedure following supering for honey. Neither had we, but we've documented it. Why??? Haven't done formal tests, so don't know the cause. I speculate (and that means, its just my guess), adding empty supers significantly and rapidly increases the internal space or volume of the hive. That may DILUTE queen pheromone. In fact, on one occassion, we observed the bees "balling" the original queen. So, maybe the bees think the queen is failing?? If you've got a better hypothesis, let's hear it. Dee has her theories about cell size and orientation with respect to mites. My own personal convictions == and this is just a judgement based on years of working in commercial and research apiaries --- we've got a problem with queens. Too many are just not putting out much pheromone. Loose clusters; queens sitting on the back of a truck in a stockpile yard with hundreds of hives, and no bees on about 1/2 of the queen cages; queens and bees that roll out of the hive and onto the side of the box after just a puff or two of smoke; jack rabbit queens that run from the light and jump from frame to frame and into the box; and laying queens that "FLY" out of the box and over the horizon, never to be seen again. Obviously, some of these traits have been with us all along -- but I've seen some very odd responses, starting in the 80s. Overall, I agree with the observations of Jim Bach from Washington, and add a couple of undesirable traits to his list. My guess, and again, it MY GUESS, I don't think selecting queens based on color, size, and laying pattern gets at fundamental traits that are important to bees. Unless your nose is better than mine, how do we know that the selected queen is producing adequate amounts of pheromone to hold a colony together? Are there queens that produce bees that work better in inclement weather? If bees vary in their ability to detect odors (which we have documented), then how do we select for lines that have a more acute sense of smell? Or, is there an advantage to selecting for odor sensitivity? Finally, all of the above is speculation. Just because I've observed some things and have put some thought into these issues, that simply allows me to start to generate testable hypotheses. If lucky, I'll find a way to fund the tests. Jerry