>>Well, I shared how important the clean broodnest is.

I received a call last summer to remove a colony from a church building.  A parishoner had treated the colony with a wasp spray the year before killing off all the bees.  The next spring a swarm moved in to set up housekeeping.  I received the call in July.  When I arrived the nest contained less than a 1/2 lb of bees.  No queen, zero brood, several combs of sealed honey.

It was really strange.  I saw white powdery wasp spray residue on the bottom of the nest.  I assumed the residues made the queen sterile or killed it.  Probably the same thing happened to any queens the bees tried to raise afterwards...

It does not take much chemical residue to impair or kill a queen.

Waldemar

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