Huguet - Sumner wrote:
>
> Question to anyone. I found one of my hives queen and with no brood, not =
> even any drone cells (from laying workers). So I introduced three frames =
> of 1-3 day old brood. Now two weeks later I can only find one queen =
> cell. I always thought they would produce at least a few queen cells? Is =
> this unique?

I think part of what you are seeing is genetic. We have been breeding bees
to reduce the tendency to swarm and I think that may be a part of the
picture. Other issues are going to be how long the hive was queenless as
that will determine the age and population of house bees, the resources
comming in from the field force, and what the bees thought of the brood you
introduced.

A method that was explained to me (I belive it is a modification of the
Miller technique of queen rearing) is to put a short piece of foundation
into a frame and insert it into the center of a strong hives brood chamber.
Feed the colony. In four or five days the bees will have started to draw the
foundation and the queen shold have egges in some of the partialy drawn
comb. Pull the frame and trim away any wax below the cells with eggs and
larvae. Introduce this frame to your queenless colony. Feed the colony. If
the colony has been queenless for more than a couple of weeks (no capped
brood to be found) then you may want to add a frame of capped brood with
clinging nurse bees. The queenless colony should start a number of cells.

Your results are going to be determined by the drone population in your
area. In the end it is often better to just purchase a new queen and
introduce her using a slow release method.