My conversation with Fred gave me a lot to think about. I actually had some hope that I could save this lost hive. So Dad, Kelly, and I went out and took a queen excluder, set it on the new hive (south) with a good queen, added a sheet of newspaper and placed the lost (north) hive on top of that and then put on the lid. This is how to merge the hive without a queen into another hive so the bees are not lost. The scent (pheromones) from the queen would seep through the newspaper and the bees in the upper box would start to respond and become a part of the hive as they ate their way through the newspaper in about 2 days. This worked like a charm!
The next suggestion was to remove a couple of frames with eggs and brood from the strongest (middle) hive, place them in an empty box at the top of the strongest (middle) hive, wait till the next day and then move the box on to its own base. This would make sure the bees that were on the frames were 'nurse' bees and ensure the eggs and brood would be taken care of after we split it. Then, because the brood and nurse bees were taken out of the hive, away from the queen, they would assume the queen was dead and create queen cells and raise several new queens in hopes that one would return and rule the hive.
One problem..... when we went to get the brood frames from the strong (middle) hive, we couldn't find any. The queen from the (middle) hive that survived the winter was gone. I don't know if she died, was killed, or just decided to leave, but there was no queen. There was about 20 queen cells though, so we left it alone and hoped they would correct it themselves.
So, with no brood to gather from the strong (middle) hive we went to the new (south) hive that we had just merged. We found a couple of frames of brood and separated it. Waited for two weeks and checked the brood. There was a couple of queen cells! cool. Waited another ten days and the queens had hatched, but we could not find one. Waited another ten days, by then it was mid July 2010, and checked it again. We found a queen and she had begun laying eggs!
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