queen advice

[rober]

i've not had much luck with queens this spring. i'm trying to expand my apiary. i tried starting 3 new hives by putting 5 frames of brood, 2 frames of honey, & 2 drawn out frames in each hive. i then put caged queens into each hive. i also put a caged queen into a recently queenless hive. after a week i had 2 queens dead in rhe cage & 2 were m.i.a. i'm at a loss as to what happened to these queens. now most or all of that brood has hatched & the hives are still queenless. should i add some more brood with eggs or get some new queens?

[Michael Bush]

>i've not had much luck with queens this spring. i'm trying to expand my apiary. i tried starting 3 new hives by putting 5 frames of brood, 2 frames of honey, & 2 drawn out frames in each hive. i then put caged queens into each hive. i also put a caged queen into a recently queenless hive. after a week i had 2 queens dead in rhe cage & 2 were m.i.a. i'm at a loss as to what happened to these queens.

How long were they queenless before adding the cages?  I would go a minimum of overnight.  Are you sure there wasn't a queen in the split?

> now most or all of that brood has hatched & the hives are still queenless. should i add some more brood with eggs or get some new queens?

I would. 
http://www.bushfarms.com/beespanacea.htm
Although the odds are they have a virgin queen in there already.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesmath.htm

[rober]

michael-
1 hive was queenless for a week. the other splits were from brood from other apiaries. we found the queens in those 3 hives after removing the brood. as of this morning 1 of the hives has a sealed queen cell. the queenless swarm has 2 sealed wueen cells. that leaves 3 queenless & broodless hives. thanks for the links. i'll add some open brood.