Mark,
TEST FOR THE PRESENCE OF A QUEEN BEFORE YOU BUY A NEW QUEEN!

I wrote a PINK PAGE about this in June of this year.  YOU BETTER READ IT. It
is on
www.beekeeper.org/george_imirie/index.html

I will summarize here for you, but the PINK PAGE gives a lot more detail.  If
you find no eggs, larva, or even capped brood, that does NOT mean there is no
queen in the colony.  From the time an old queen swarms, or is superseded, or
dies, it might be as long as 25-30 days before a new queen begins laying.  If
you spend $10-$15 for a new queen, she is going to be killed as soon as you
install her, because your bees are happy that they already have a queen.

It is so easy to test to find if your colony is truly queenLESS.  You have
another colony, so go in it and pull out a frame with EGGS on it, or larvae
BUT NOT OVER
ONE DAY OLD LARVA, eggs are definitely the best but some beekeepers have
trouble seeing them.  Put that frame in the colony you think is queenLESS,
and do not disturb
it for 3 days.  Inspect that frame, and if you find the beginnings of a small
queen cell right on the face of the comb, the bees are trying to raise a new
queen from one
of the eggs in the frame, and this tells you that the colony is queenLESS.
If, on the
other hand, the bees have NOT started to build any queen cell on the frame of
eggs, this is positive proof that there is some critter in the colony that
the bees consider
is a new queen, and, again, any new queen you try to introduce will be killed.

If your head is hot, you take your temperature with a thermometer.  You use a
dipstick in your car testing to see if your crankcase needs any oil or not.
You look for ice in a bucket of water to see if the temperature went below
32°.  Your car gas gauge is a tester telling you how much gas is in the tank.
 We TEST for everything,
so TEST to see if a colony is queenLESS before ordering a new queen and then
having her killed.

Read my PINK PAGES for more information.

By the way, if you have to get a new queen, at this time of year and in a
drought of nectar, queens are very difficult to introduce.  There is a PINK
PAGE about how to do this too called the "The Imirie Almost Foolproof
Requeening Method".

I hope I have helped.

George Imirie
Certified EAS Master Beekeeper
Past President of Maryland State Beekeepers Assn.
Beginning my 70th year of beekeeping in Maryland and Virginia
Author of George's PINK PAGES