Dud queen

[BeeMaster2]

Yesterday I checked on a hive that never seemed to build up. On 6-4-14, I marked the queen in this hive. I had already tried twice to combine other hives to this hive that had lost their queens while they were at the farm. There was very little brood or eggs at that time. 2 weeks later I inspected it and she was still there but no brood. I added 2 frames of eggs and brood and I marked the hive for re queening. Yesterday, I inspected it and it was weaker yet, it did not have a single egg or brood cell yet the marked queen was still in there. All this during a flow.
How can a queen control a hive and still not lay any eggs. Why wouldn't they have replaced her.
Is it possible she is laying eggs and the bees are the ones removing the eggs.
Yesterday I pulled the queen out and added her to my swarm trap queen collection. Today I plan on adding this hive to a hive that has a new queen that I marked this past Sunday.
With this hives past of not developing I am wondering if that is the right thing to do.
Jim

[BeeMaster2]

Michael and any one else with a lot of experience with bees,
Is it possible the bees are the problem and not the queens?
I really do not want to mess up a new queen/hive if the bees are the problem.
I would have expected them to have died off if that was the case.
Jim

[Michael Bush]

You have to look at the whole situation.  A queen cannot raise brood, she can only lay eggs.  It takes workers to raise brood, so a weak hive can't raise very much brood, no matter how good the queen is.  On the other hand if you have a strong hive and they are not raising brood then something else is at work.  If there is a dearth they often quit rearing brood.  If a queen is a drone layer they will often remove all the eggs for as long as they can keep up with her.  Once she's in full swing they tend to fall behind...

If she was laying well and now she's not laying at all in a flow, she may need to be replaced, but they may have now run out of the means to do so.  Some bees have lost this ability due to the constant requeening by beekeepers bypassing the selective pressure for bees that can sense a failing queen and replace her.  I'd give them another frame of open brood and eggs and give them a reprieve and see how they do.

Queens don't control the hive, the workers do...

[BeeMaster2]

Thanks Michael,
I just came in from taking a swarm out of a swarm trap and adding it to that hive. It was a very small but good working hive. They had built 2-6" diameter sections of comb both covered with eggs, wet and capped brood and they were filling, the one drawn frame in the trap, with honey. I put the 2 sections together on a frame and put it and the drawn frame in the hive that I removed the queen from yesterday.
We will see how they do.
Jim