> For some years I have tested a system of requeening with ripe cells. A short
> description; We normally have a short and intense main honeyflow in july where
> I live, so the management is developed to fit that. I have a large number of
> ripe cells ready at the time of honeyflow. By then all the bees that are
> going to
> give me my crop have been produced in the hives. My hives have no excluders,
> so I simply put one cell in each top box. I belive somewhere around 60% of
> the cells
> end up in a laying queen. For those few hives where I really need to get rid
> of the
> old queen I have to remove her first. In maybe 20% of the hives the old queen
> is killed by the virgin, then the bees for some reason choose to make their own
 
        I wish I could trust this system. Others have told me about it
but it didn't work well for us. Two years ago I marked 20 queens in three
yards and gave each a ripe cell. Several days later I checked each hive
and found that each cell appeared to hatch OK. However when I checked t
see what was laying(abt 3-4wks later) only 2 new queens were found, all
others were still the origanal marked queen. Not to encouraging, but when
so many others seem to be able to do this it makes me wonder if there are
factors, like time of year, honeyflow, relatedness, that affect its
success. Does anyone have data or comments?