Quote Originally Posted by The Drone Ranger View Post
Hi Jon
Didn't make it to the end sorry
Did clip this though

We learned at the BIBBA conference from Jacob Kahn that bees seem to be making a deliberate selection when choosing a larva to develop into a queen.......

Kahn's observations made me wonder if we should develop queen rearing systems that afforded the bees some degree of choice rather than foisting our chosen grafts onto them. It would not surprise me if they were capable of making better choices than us. I just choose the larvae that seem to be about the right size so it would not be difficult for the bees to make a better fist of it than me.
Echos of the Moritz 'Royal Families' paper:

Rare royal families in honeybees, Apis mellifera 2005; Moritz et al
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rc...33178914,d.bGs

The idea of allowing some degree of self selection is quite alluring and I have given it a fair bit of thought over the last couple of years but I've yet to work out a fair compromise between allowing them to choose for themselves and having easily managable cells to use -I reckon that the Miller method probably comes the closest and we have revisited the method a couple of times this year but for anyone working on a large scale I can't see it ever being a practical option.