AdamD wrote: ↑16 Apr 2020, 17:57
She should be OK in a nuc for a little while - what seems to happen with old girls is that you can harvest a few supercedure cells over a few weeks and then she claps out altogether. Or that's what happens to my old queens - however it's usually at 3 years and not 4.
Yup, my notes for this year...check if original queen or supersedure last autumn....Pleasantly surprised to find the old girl there. One of the best queens I've ever had in many ways. She still has a reasonable brood pattern, but i reckon is now running out of sperm as higher proportion of drone cells in her brood then one would expect....Hopefully if she can just lay one more frame of eggs in the nuc....
But it's damn early for queen rearing these parts....but no choice....just have to go with the flow and see with what happens.
Sod the books.