A little backround to help with some advice I need. I overwintered 2 hives in
Mass and planned to split each this Spring. In March both hives seemed to be
doing fine but in April one hive showed diminishing brood area just when I
expected the opposite. By early May when the two queens arrived, there was no
brood at all in the problem hive so I thought I'd make one split from the
healthy hive and requeen the other. I looked through the hive twice and found
no queen but with only 4 years experience I often cannot find the queen when
I want to. I'm getting better though. I released the queen onto an empty
brood frame and confined her with a push in cage about 31/2 x 5 inches. Four
days later I went to release both queens from their push in cages and the
queen in the split slowly went down between the frames followed by an
entorage. The queen in the queenless hive flew away as soon as the cage was
removed. A humbling experience to say the least but I imediately ordered a
new queen and 3 days later had her in the push in cage. Still not a sign of
brood any where.  This time I  waited 5 days and released the queen. She was
imediately balled. I had only read of this behavior but once seeing it, the
aggressiveness of the act makes it pretty unmistakeable. I went through the
hive, found the balled queen and carefully removed her aggressors, and then
isolated her in the push in cage again.
       Is this hive hopeless? I thought if there were laying workers I would
see drone developing in worker cells. If this hive truly is queenless
wouldn't they be eager to accept a new queen. Just when I feel some
confidence something like this will happen to remind me that this craft is a
lifetime's persuit. Don't get me wrong though, I'm not discouaged by the
craft, just this hive.
                                                                   Thanks for
any help
                                                                   TimSul