>>producing queens from larvae and leaving the choices of which age 
larvae to the bees who inherently know better than I what they prefer 
to do on their own.

I enjoyed reading Jay Smith's book.  I have also noticed that swarm 
bees typically build up a a base of wax underneath to have a queen 
cup bottom at the top of the cells.

Keith, once your bees have raised the first batch of queens, do you 
reuse the queen cups by *making* the queen lay in them or do you 
always start out with a new comb strip with eggs?

Waldemar

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