About 20 years ago my father in law and me were bussy with colonies during quite a heavy honey flow from Robinia pseudoacacia. Colonies were of maximum strenght having all available frames of propper quality didtributed in hives. Than my father took even the rest of the combs which were dark, old and intended for melting, and put supers with them on tops of some colonies to allow them to store more honey. The combs were at least one season out of hives. When checking colonies after a week or so he found four queen cells on one of those combs. There was a gueen excluder on the brood nest and no other brood cells in about three honey supers bellow the top super. We guessed then, bees had to move eggs from the brood nest to raise queens in this part of hive far from the source of the queen substance ... And the other edification from the story: My father had an average of 13 kg per hive more in comparison to me just as a result of giving bees more space to store nectar. Best regards, Vladimir Ptacek ---------------------------------------------------------------- Fac. Sci., Dept. Anim. Physiol. E.mail: [log in to unmask] Masaryk University phone: .42/5/41129 562 611 37 Brno, Czech Republic fax: .42/5/41211 214