Extracted from Allen Dick's diary on May 21st, 2003:

>... After a full four or five days, check for eggs in the top box. If there
>are none, then the queen is below the excluder, otherwise, she is in the
>top box. Add a new queen to whichever half -- top or bottom -- has no queen
>and move the the top boxes somewhere several miles away and put them on
>floors, and add lids. Feed them, reduce the entrances and leave them a
>week.<...

p.s.: (Let us keep in mind that AD was given advices to a new beekeeper.)

I imagine there will be a major subsequent difference in the development of
the two split-parts if, let' s say :
1.A) Queen + young brood  + nurse bees are left on original site and B)
older brood + queenless bees are moved away.
    ...(BTW, in this case, I would strongly recommend to wait and  install
the new caged-queen or cell only after the   move took place and not
before....obvious reason).

2. Opposite...queen + young brood + nurse bees taken away and older brood +
bees remaining home.

The point is that with option #1  the old queen will continue to lay eggs
and benefit from the foragers (original site) supplying fresh pollen, water,
etc...and the split-part taken away will have almost no uncapped brood to
take care of, therefore *less need* for fresh pollen for a while (no
foragers) during the time the new queen will be released or
immerged....i.e., there will be a no-brood period and the major duty for the
remaining bees will be just to keep the capped brood warm. Furthermore, the
new queen has better chances to be accepted by emerging young bees than the
opposite...

I simply imagine the possible damage and loss of young brood that could
happen if being the part moved away due to the lack of mature bees...not to
mention that the queen would most certainly stop or reduce laying eggs and
be faced with possible supercedure.

Open to comments and suggestions from anyone having experimented and
monitered the two options.
Thank you.

Vital Gaudreau
Sainte-Therese, Quebec

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