Thanks for this article. I had to wait for a rainy afternoon to read it.
I'm not sure what I'm getting from this.
If there are " Royal families" which bees select from for queen rearing would this mean that in the case of grafting for queen rearing the best larvae may not choosen?
I read Jay Smith's " Better Queens " book some time ago and what i got out of this was that rather then rearing queens in queen cells from grafteed larvae it would be better to let the bees produce their own cells and introduce these cells into ( for example) nuc's rather then mated queens.
What are others getting out of this?
This year I did let my bees produce their own queens ( by making up nuc's with a mix of brood from eggs to sealed brood) and with few exceptions the bees produced queens which produced lovely patterns of brood. Too early to know in most cases if the nuc's are better then those with introduced , mated queens.
You never stop learning...