??> How does one tell the difference between a failing queen and brood that
has been removed due to hygienic behavior. There are five or six frames full
of capped brood but it does have this shotgun pattern of empty cells.

If you really wanted to know you could freeze kill some brood and see how
long it took the hive to remove (hygienic test).

*if* very hygienic and still pulling lots of brood (and not a brood
viability issue) then I would check my mite load.

Many times using "soft" varroa controls and very hygienic bees leads to
consistent shotgun brood patterns. Why wouldn't it?

On another note about a third of commercial bought queens today end up
either quickly superceded,  drone layers, queens with shotgun brood patterns
or queens which tend to lay less than what I consider the amount of eggs
they should in a days time. The trend today (not me!) is to leave sub
standard queens in commercial operations rather than replace due to the
current cost of replacement queens but hard culling makes for strong hives.

bob

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