Hello All,
A long time ago an elderly gentleman walked up to a beekeeping friend.  He
asked if my friend was a beekeeper.  Upon hearing the positive reply the
gentleman said "I will say one thing and shut-up.  Requeen every year!"  He
then walked away.

Great advice.  I just wish the bees would listen.  I have never had much
success with direct requeening.  I do much better making  a split and then
reuniting it with the parent colony.  Last fall I helped my beekeeping
friend requeen 20 colonies.  These were young northern raised queens.  The
acceptance was about 75% and 30% of those were superseded within a month.
 The last two years I have been buying marked queens and marking existing.
 This has confirmed that queens are replaced more often than I had once
believed.  Although I have one marked yellow from two years ago that was
recovered with a swarm last year, that built up wintered, and is an
extremely good producer this year.

I made a split this year and the queen was accepted and laying beautiful for
about five weeks.  Then I found supercedure cells on one of the frames.
 There was still plenty of eggs and young larvae.  By my standards this
queen would get an A.  I decided to remove the frame with the cells and let
them think this over a bit longer.  A week later, sure enough, more
supercedure cells.  I guess they know what they want and its not the queen I
gave them.  I have another split that accepted a horrible drone layer.  I
gave them a replacement.  I placed the drone layer in her discarded queen
cage.  I was going to preserve her to show folks what a queen looks like.  I
set the cage and some other equipment on the ground about 20 ft. from the
nearest hive and when on about my work.  I actually forgot about her.  Late
the next day I found her alive and well with five workers attending to her
from the outside of the cage.  They were very reluctant to leave.

I spent a good amount of time this spring making and working with nucs and
splits, and raising some queens.  You can learn a  lot about bee behavior
doing this.  As usual, the more I learn the more I find out how little I
know.

Ron Bogansky
Kutztown, (eastern) PA