>If you cage a queen and leave her in the hive, in most instances the bees
will start queen cells, despite the queen's presence.

Hi Trevor:

Here in Alaska most people who have bees don’t overwinter. (Alaska Bee-l
members Tom Elliott, Keith Malone, and I do, of course!)  For those who
don’t, the standard practice is to cage the queen a few weeks prior to
extraction. After all the brood has emerged every frame is extracted and
the bees are generally killed off. I extract the honey for a few people
around here. This year two separate people brought frames to me with capped
brood after the queen had been caged for over a month, and they just could
not understand how that happened. One of the caged queens had died in her
cage.

Regards,
Dick Allen

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