[lostlogin]

My queens pick their mates and so do most - open mating is standard as artificial insemination is hard with bees. Bees are bred for certain traits but it’s a long way from the levels seen in diary for many reasons. A beekeeper can interfere, and often does if a colony is defensive or has poor brood. Productivity is harder to measure as the situation in a given hive can be markedly different across an apiary. Queen age, disease burden, hive site, equipment differences etc.

Most the control comes from killing the bad and reproducing from the good (and then hoping the queen finds good drones, avoids birds and finds her way home).