Serious-all-the-time folks are going to hate this
post.

The setting:  The queen in the University of Guam
observation hive (which I maintain when I'm here
during the winter) had quit laying.  The queen in
their companion full-sized hive had reduced her rate
of egg laying after her second year.  The obvious
solution to both problems was the move the two year
old queen into th OH, where slow laying is an asset,
and buy a new queen from Kona for the big hive.

In preparation, we inspected the big hive and
discovered an empty queen cell with its end open.  The
bees had beaten us to the requeening.  But on the next
frame was the marked two year old queen!  This was my
first encounter with a situation often cited in the
literature where a new queen will tolerate the old
dowager queen.  So I moved a couple of frames of brood
with stores and bees into the OH and put BOTH queens
in with them, after marking the new queen, of course.
I can just imagine explaining this to the kids after
having just taught them that a hive has only one
queen!  Providing that they both coexist in the two
frame hive as they did in the ten frame one.   Dan

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Photos - Share your holiday photos online!
http://photos.yahoo.com/