>No offense Herve, but when you drop in virgins to hives
>marked to change over, you see a defininte color change in
>the queens.

Hello,

Like I said, if you requeen with cells or virgins, and the old queen is not
marked, you have no way of knowing what happened there. Most experienced
beekeepers can tell the difference between an old queen and a new one, but I
can think of several scenarios where a new queen would be present and it
wouldn't be the one you plunked in a few weeks previously. The most obvious
is if the colony had just superseded, so they already have a brand new
queen. Another is one of those african swarms has just come in and wiped out
the your queens. Tom Seeley was asked what he thought of requeening by
releasing virgins into the hive, and he said he thought that would be a
waste of time since it seldom works. In my opinion, beekeeping should
involve proven techniques that work. Stock maintenance and improvement as
described by the beekeeping greats such as Amos Root, Brother Adam, Sue
Cobey, Marla SPivak, and all, requires introducing good queens and making
sure they get accepted. Marking is about the only way to be sure the queen
you wanted is the queen you have. 

Herve Abeille

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