Local Honey Bee Queen Production and Quality

AbstractAs the number of small-scale local queen operations increase, questions regarding queen quality and how beekeepers can measure queen quality also arise. By shifting the focus from simply rearing queens to instead rearing “high quality” queens through the establishment of local breeding programs, local honey bee queen producers and honey bee queen buyers are better able to communicate and raise the quality of honey bee queens on a national scale, thus offsetting some of the queen failure issues the United States beekeeping industry has seen in the recent decade.