Dear Allen,
 
this is quite usual in Germany and maybe in other parts of the world.
Especially when you expect honey from the forest in summer you can keep your
hives strong after reunifiing both hives. For this reason the hives are put
above each other (queen with young bees above, then you brake out the queen
cells in the bottom brood chamber and reunify).
 
> Interesting.  This runs counter to the usual advice, since you wind up
> introducing a queen among old bees and also trying to get old bees to make
> wax.
 
You use a frame with brood to keep the elder bees in the hive at the old
place. They will produce queen cells which you could use (Unfortunately the
bees also use elder larvas for queen production and these wouldn't bring the
best queens). Better it will be to break them out before hatching of the
queens and requeen at that time when the queens would normally hatch.
 
It is quite usual that foraging elder bees produce wax as they usually do this
after swarming. And this situation of the method of swarm-prevention is
similar.
 
> Neither of these are normally recommended practice.  In fact they are
> diametrically opposed.
>
> Allen
 
You can be sure, it works.
 
Reimund
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Beekeeper in Germany (Bavaria)
Queen Rearing of Carniolan Bees
Insemination Station
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