Superceding Situation

[joebrown]

I split a hive around the 7th of July with a queen cell. The queen finally started laying during the last week of July. She has only been laying a couple of weeks. I checked the nuc today and they have a capped queen cell in there. The nuc is not strong enough to swarm. The queen cell is on the bottom of the frame. There was a little drone brood in the brood chamber, but I chalk that up to misfires when she first started laying. She is laying a good pattern. Wonder why they are going to replace her. My remedy. They know more than I so I left the queen cell in the nuc. I then placed the queen in a queenless section of a queen castle. They have been queenless for a few days with no eggs. Hopefully they do not kill her. It will be interesting to see what happens. I am going to watch the queen in the queen castle for a week or so, and hopefully the nuc will be happier with their knew boss lady!

[BlueBee]

Sounds like a good move Joe.  I hate to get rid of a good queen.  You never know if a virgin queen will make it back from a mating flight, so keeping the old queen around can be an insurance policy against the birds or a queen with a bad sense of direction. 

[joebrown]

That was my thinking as well. I checked the queen in the mating nuc today and she is crawling around in there. I think she is going to be fine for now.