I think the confusion is with your positioning BN. We have heard at length approach to let and let die beekeeping to promote inherent varroa resistance, together with the local pool of feral bees. Then you bring up supersedure as a primary trait, but with the cavate that 'as long as the colonies go on year on year and are top producers I don't really care how they do it, and I'll continue selecting them'.
It does sound as if you are just looking for a better line of bee that fulfils all of these requirements equally ??
I'll try to lay it out for you.
First, I want my bees and local bees to be able to thrive without help. I call that self-sufficiency. So: able to manage local pests and diseases unaided.
That I don't undercut the process by which thet attain and maintain self-sufficiency underlies everything.
Second, I want to earn a living, without compromising that primary goal. Indeed, I want maximise my efficiency as a honey farmer, without compromising the primary goal.
So I undertake to do what I call 'traditional husbandry', which means no more and no less than making each generation from the best of the last generation. As nature does, and as husbandrymen have done every since the gradual discovery of improvement by selective breeding/sowing tens of thousands of years ago.
That entails identifying the best, and that involves having criteria. Self-sufficiency is a given, and it is tested by endurance and productivity. Simple isn't it? I take genes from my strongest and longest-lasting hives. Hives, recall, that have never been helped in any way whatsoever by me in health terms (except by having black comb taken out).
That.... means... to bring us to topic... that they have managed to requeen, and managed too to maintain their qualities as they have done so. (Of course there will be uncertainties about that - the latest queen may not have great qualities, which is why I spead my bets.)
My hope here was that I would be selecting for the quality of successful supercedure. The weakness is: I don't track queens, and I can't tell most of the time if they have swarmed and successfully requeened or superceded. BUT: I don't really care that much. If they can swarm and still be outstanding that's fine by me. What I'm selecting for is simply self-sufficient strong performers. The details of how they do it don't bother me that much.
A note (which may reveal something) about the reason for posting as I did: I've long thought that the practices of requeening and especially importing queens would be removing from 'the bees' (the local breeding group) the ability to superceed effectively; and that this would tend to undermine local wild/feral bee populations and indeed my 'live and let die' population. So it has long been my policy to try to avoid acting in ways that would reinforce that tendency. I'm not sure its a simple thing to do.... but I think my process (which I have not detailed in full) does indeed satisfy that goal.
Rolande, I suspect that also responds to most of your questions; but tell me if not.
