Subject: Queenless again?

From: [email-masked] (Ahlmon1961)
Date: 23 Sep 1996 14:03:37 -0400

Hi;

About a month ago I introduced a buckfast queen.  I got worried whe I
could not locate her after about 10 days had elapsed.  I found her upon a
further inspection.  She had started laying in a honey super (deep) at the
top of the stack.  At this point she was in uppermost brood chamber (3rd)
and so I figured that she would go on down .  I installed an excluder just
so she wouldn't go back up and I'd leave that top super on for the bees to
continue honey storage.  This was about 3 weeks ago.  Today I went in to
feed terra brood and discovered that bottom two boxes were full of bees
but no new brood.  the same was true for the uppermost brood chamber
(although there was plenty of honey there.) It appeared that only a small
number of capped cells remained.  My queen was big and marked and clipped.
 Am I not seeing her?  Is it possible that in 3 weeks a majority of brood
emerged and now the queen has not resumed laying?  There are no drones
eitheror very few.  About a week ago I reduced entrance which meant I took
hives down to bottom board but I did not actually get into the frames.  I
wonder what to do now?  How long should I wait to check again?  What is my
best course of action since we are fast approaching cold weather up here
in Minnesota?

Al.