Musashi wrote:

> Garry writes "the advise of brood from a good hive with young eggs has its
> appeal however I dont want to loose the month and a half to raise a new
> queen..."
>
> I found last week that one of what I considered my best colonies this year that
> I had started from a swarm was queenless without a sign of eggs or brood ever

> I combined this hive with a 3 frame nucleus that has a laying queen on
> Saturday for the same reasons you gave.  Although my experienced beekeeper
> friend suggested I just add a frame containing eggs and young larvae and let
> them raise their own queen,

Hmmm, are you sure the bees weren't in the process of superseding? And
had a virgin running around somewhere. I believe that's the reason you were
suggested to use the brood frame trick to find out if there was a queen or
not. Far too often people panic when they don't find a queen in the hive.
Just because they don't see her or any eggs, it doesn't mean the hive got to
be queenless! Sometimes both the old and the new queens are present in
the hive during supersedure until the new queen is properly mated and starts
laying. But often the virgin kills the old queen, or the bees dispose of her, so
there only is one queen in the hive. When this happens there can be 2-3 weeks
without eggs in the hive.

That old trick to take a frame of eggs or larvae for a first test isn't all
that bad and can save a lot of confusion to beekeepers......


--
Regards

P-O Gustafsson, Sweden
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