  There has been a recent flurry of interest in the possibility of condensates
of $\alpha$-particles in nuclei. In this letter we discuss occurrence
conditions for such states. Using the quantality condition of Mottelson we show
that condensates are only marginally expected in $\alpha$-particle states. We
proceed to demonstrate that few-body nuclear condensates are ill-defined, and
emphasize the conflict between $\alpha$-localization and $\alpha$-condensate
formation. We also explore the connection between Ikeda diagrams, linear
chains, and Tonks-Girardeau gases. Our findings show that no new information is
contained in the approximations of nuclear states as $\alpha$-cluster
condensates. Furthermore, condensates of more than three $\alpha$-particles are
very unlikely to exist due to couplings to other degrees of freedom.
