> As I wrote earlier that there was no sign that there was ever a queen in the
> hive, I forgot to mention one detail I noticed.  There were cup cells all over
> the place as if the bees had "hope" that somehow an egg would magically
> appear from somewhere.

You just said the "magic words", cell cups all over........ ;-)
That's a pretty reliable (if there is anything reliable with bees...) sign
of queenless hive. Often combined with a nervous behaviour among the
bees, sometimes roaring.

Just want to mention what I often do if I suspect there is a virgin running
around (virgins often hides on the bottom board and generally try to
make it as hard as possible for the beekeeper) and I want to introduce
a queen of known origin instead.

I use the excluder as a sieve. Just put a box, with or without frames, on
the bottom board. An excluder on the box, and another empty box on
that. Then shake bees from the frames into the empty box and smoke
them down through the excluder. All drones and queens will bee found
in the empty box. Doesn't take more than a few minutes, a lot quicker
than looking all over the frames......

Disadvantage; bees will get "slightly" upset over that procedure and
not work much more that day. So not so good during a flow, but if
you want to find that queen......

And, as it has been found necessary to point out again, virgins DO NOT
get through excluders easier than mated queens. The limit is the
thorax (middle part of body) that prevent queens, and drones, from
getting trough. Of course there will be some tiny queen that makes it,
but she will go trough even when mated.

--
Regards

P-O Gustafsson, Sweden
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