Hello everybody.
My wife and I are new beekeepers living in Bequia in the West Indies.  
We are new to this list and are ever so impressed.  I have spent hours going through the archives and have gleaned a wealth of information.  It is amazing the knowledge that the list subscribers generate.
We have a hive and a half, both started from swarms.  One hive is doing very well, thank you; the second hive was dwindling away.  The dwindling took place over several months.
We couldn't understand this - the only explanation we could come up with was that the queen was not doing her job very well, for whatever reason.  We believe that this assumption has been proven true by subsequent events...
In desperation, we decided to add bees from the healthy hive.  We had a small super with some honey in the frames.  We put three layers of newspaper under the super and added the contained bees and honey-filled supers to the ailing box.  Within two days the bees had eaten through the paper and had added themselves to the ailing hive.
We decided that this worked so well, we would do it again.  This time we added two full frames - with undrawn comb - but covered with bees to the ailing hive.  We included a super with honey to sustain them while they chewed through the paper.
After four days they had not even started their chewing - we punched a hole in the paper to give them the idea and they subsequently went through and have now added themselves to the ailing hive.
We now notice that this poor hive has two queen cells built so we feel that our assessment of the ineffective queen was correct.  Our bees are requeening themselves and should now recover.
My question is, why did the first lot of bees chew through so quickly and the second lot not even try?  Does anybody have any ideas?
Thanks for your thoughts...
Bob and Carol Farrington
Bequia, West Indies
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