Newbee here. Had new package early April on pierco frames. took 4 weeks before queen started laying. Got some brood finally . then this week the queen stopped laying again. few larvae,no eggs! We had this awful period of rain for 7 days stright before last inspection. Colony is also slow- only have about 3 frames full of comb... and yes i treated the Pierco.
have good bee activity out front- pollen etc. but colony numbers just are stagnant. Queen is supposed to be Russian. No supercedure cells are formed.
question:
1) replace queen?
2) what method.- have had a devil of a time finding her.(never have)
the method below seems the most practical
(From link to be inserted)
"If all visual search fails, you may elect this more aggressive labor intensive practice: (a) Remove all supers from bottom board, (b) place an empty super on bottom (c) shake and brush all bees from brood combs into empty box, (d) put queen excluder on then the beeless brood supers, with any others on top of that. The workers will go up to serve the brood, leaving the queen trapped. After a couple hours remove all supers again to reveal the queen below the excluder, probably covered in a small cluster of workers.
(2) Once the old queen has been dispatched, the new queen may be introduced. "
Getting a new package in about a week- also Russians- from different source.
pics from about 10 days ago
(http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/3763/mayjune09066.th.jpg) (http://img188.imageshack.us/i/mayjune09066.jpg/)
(http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/2544/mayjune09071.th.jpg) (http://img188.imageshack.us/i/mayjune09071.jpg/)
emergin brood with eggs
(http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/6623/mayjune09075.th.jpg) (http://img188.imageshack.us/i/mayjune09075.jpg/)
That's one reason it's nice to raise your own queens. Then you just put a queen cell in and force a supersedure...