Hello Don and All,
Most on the BEE-L list are hobby beekeepers. I do not know the amount of
beekeepers which are not but would guess less than 5% or less than 50 BEE-L
members from a list of around a thousand. Allen or Aaron any guesses?

Those of us which work bees everyday look at beekeeping different than hobby
beekeepers, researchers and scientists. We simply can not spend extra time
with a single hive except in the case of mites or disease. If a hive does
not want to take a new queen we combine with a queenright.

Don wrote:
> You mentioned in your post that you do not mark your queens because you
replace them on a regular basis.

All hives are requeened at least every two years and every year if I have
got the time. When I was involved with larger numbers I only requeened
problem hives. Young  queens has many advantages.

> Marking them would make them easy to find,

I have no trouble finding queens most of the time. a couple minutes in the
spring of year but the time of year is important. In other words after the
spring laying has began.


 so you could send her to royal
> heaven and let the bees accept the new queen(s).

A sad job after all her work but a practice done  by those beekeepers which
have got access to many queens.

> I was always told you had to find and dispose of the old queen to have the
hive accept the one your putting in.

It is also best to leave the dequeended hive until the hive realizes it is
queenless. Introduction comes with experience.

 If this is not the case, if you know
> of some way to replace a queen without killing off the old one, I'd really
like to know about it!!

I do not know of a way but others have used several methods which have been
discussed on BEE-L before. Dee Lusby has talked about requeening without
dequeening.

 >This could save hours of looking for the old girl..

If you are spending hours you need a marked queen and practice in finding
the queen.

Try spliting the hive  in two parts with a queen excluder a few days before
looking. Find the eggs and only look in the part with the eggs.

I only look for a queen when I have got a purpose in mind. Never when the
population is at peak strength. Eggs or very young larva is all I need to
see to be sure the hive is queenright. I simply do not have the extra time
to spend on a single hive. I do have to find the queen when requeening in
spring or late fall.

Others like myself and myself have all got a system for our bee work which
dates back to grandfathers time. At certain times of the year we do certain
things. Never changes except for additional work brought on by mites etc. I
have kept bees in several different states and the methods and times are
different in each area.

Most older beekeepers have gained their bee knowledge from the trial and
error method and not from bee books. The best bee books for the  U.S
sideline and commercial beekeeper have been from the old  master commercial
beekeepers. C.P. Dadant , A.I Root and C.C. Miller to name a few.

Sincerely,
Bob