What a strange name for a wide-ranging thread!

1. I keep a queen excluder UNDER my hive to cause
swarms to be self-retrieving.  Within 2 hours the
swarm is back in the hive.  I find it hard to think
that the queen is leading the swarm.  Does she put
herself on a diet?  Does she direct nurse bees to
start new queen cells?  I don't think so.

2. Bees in my observation hive move honey out of the
queen raising area in the spring but spread honey
throughout in the fall.  Is the queen controlling her
rate of egg laying?:

3.  I overpopulated an observation hive one year with
a swarm so moved the frame of capped brood into a full
hive to emerge there. I did this four times before I
permitted their brood to emerge in the OH.  The bees,
now quite old, continued to nurse the new brood.
Didn't this require rejuvination of brood food glands
in the forager age bees?

4. When I have removed a queen from a newly-hived
swarm prepatory to combining it with another hive, the
bees obviously respond to her absence almost
immediately, running around disconsonately on the
bottom board.  But I have returned from winter to find
a hive hoplessly queenless but bringing in pollen and
acting entirely normal.  I am not tuned to queenless
buzzing but I doubt I would have heard such then.  Dan

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