Hello Mike & All,

>  I tried this for four
years and the bees destroyed the cell before it hatched.

The advice you received was in my opinion was misinformation which was
common 30-50 years ago.
So Bad in the fifties and sixties we used to ask the old timers and then do
the opposite of their advice. The exception was of course your mentor.

Old timers and those we were in compition with would always feed newbees
information which they knew would cause failure. I see several problems with
placing the cell above a queen excluder.

I was told in Texas years ago that the secret to stopping a hive from
swarming was to turn the hive upside down. I caught a glint in the old
timers eyes so discarded the idea.


>  I went in and made three
to four nucs out of each one
moved them,
put a queen cell in each one including the
nucs, and all the queen cells hatched in nucs and hives.

Mike the above is exactly the way we do it. A few pointers would be to mix
brood from the various hives
and if using nuc boxes line all the nucs in a single file swerving line.

despite what many of the "experts" say moving nucs to a new location before
introducing a cell or queen in my opinion helps.


The success (my opinion) comes from "trashing the hive" which completely
makes the bees forget the old hive and once they realize they are queenless
readily accept a new queen.

I ALWAYS make nucs using frames from different colonies.

 Feeding while introducing the cell (or new queen) also helps in my opinion.

bob

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