On Sun, 21 Apr 1996, Frank Humphrey wrote: > You will have to find the old queen and kill her or else the > workers will kill the new queen. Vitaly important fact. Never forget it. I would change that first 'kill' to 'remove' though. You should get used to finding queens, it's a very useful skill for a beekeeper. If you can't find her but she's there somewhere, you could split the colony into two hives and check for a queen later. Generally, the queenless hive will be very excited within the hour. Of course, you probably _still_ have to find that old queen sometime, but at least you have a smaller box to search through and you could keep the old queen for a while in case the new one gets rejected. Unite the colonies later (one queen, of course). Regards, -- Gordon Scott [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] (work) The Basingstoke Beekeeper (newsletter) [log in to unmask] <A HREF="http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/apis">Embryo Home Page</A> Beekeeper; Kendo 3rd Dan; Sometime sailor. Hampshire, England.