> Thom Bradley suggests what appears to be an elegant method of finding the
> queen by using a new queen in a protected cage to lure the old queen on to
> the cage. It is so simple and appears so logical that I must ask - where is
> the snag?

Bees aren't logic...... ;-)

It has never worked for me when I tried it.

This is what I often do;  take the cage with the new queen and leave it
for a minute on a frame with bees. Watch the workers, if they show
aggressiveness to the new queen and bend the abdomen down looking like
they want to ball her or run away when they feel the scent like they don't want
to know her, then you should be careful and sieve all bees through an excluder.
If the bees start fanning around the cage to spread the new queens
pheromones to other bees, lifting the abdomen and showing the Nasanov
gland then you are pretty sure she will be accepted.

 Picture on   http://www.algonet.se/~beeman/biodling/req.htm

--
Regards

P-O Gustafsson, Sweden
[log in to unmask]  http://www.algonet.se/~beeman/