> Shaking brood probably can cause damage without question.

I question it. Shaking bees off brood combs is standard practice. Trucking bees over dirt roads is too. An old timer told me that every time you truck bees, some queens are lost. He didn't say the brood was usually killed (because it isn't). 

Nobody I know would shake frames of queen cells; however, the value of a frame of queen cells is much higher than the value of a frame of worker brood. That's why we brush queen cells, but shake brood frames.

I wouldn't want to lose even one or two queens, whereas if I lost a few dozen worker bees every time I shook a frame, I wouldn't worry over it. Anyone who's worried about that can brush the brood instead of shaking it.

Further, I submit that shaking queen cells is only risky at certain ages. Once they are mature, they are hard to damage. People are *shipping* them all over the place these days.

PLB  

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