I have seen older bees take on nurse bee duties quite successfully while doing trap-outs. I always give them a frame of brood as a lure to divert the trapped out bees into the lure hive. The trapped out bees are generally foragers, they quickly start attending to the brood & building queen cells.
I’m not sure, but I think bees that come out to do orientation flights are post nurse bees.
Therefore, as far as I see it, all age honeybees will go back to nurse duties.
I recall that I looked into this some time ago and it is true that older bees can resume nurse duties and reactivate (to some extent) parts of their bodies not used for a while. I recall that perhaps they are not as good/efficient at is as the younger bees, that is all. I discovered this when a hive was queenless for ages (a really long time), but the older bees made queen cells on an introduced frame. I’m not sure how good the queen was as she only laid for a short while before dying.
edit…I meant that I discovered older bees can raise brood rather than discovered that perhaps they do not do it so well.
I agree Dan, they revert back to nurse duties, but don’t do it as well. At least it gives a dying hive a chance to continue.
In the case of your queen that died early, at least the colony had the ability to continue while she was laying. A supersedure queen from her egg would no doubt be far superior.
That is something I have never heard of or tried. I assumed the nurse bees would be attacked. Nice to learn something every day. Thanks ladies
Regards
Yes I agree Peter, something I’ll keep in mind next time the occasion arises.
The only time I saw the recipient colony killing the nurse bees was when no smoke was used. I learned from that and figured smoke would have covered up the pheromones. Took me a while to dare to introduce a brood frame with nurse bees on again, but from the on, with a fair bit of smoke, I never saw any killings any more.
Guess it’s better to bring over the nurse bees into a queenless hive so you know the brood is taken care of, especially if you hope they feed up a queen.
Considering the same principle, I use smoke to introduce a new queen too. Less chance of her getting rejected.
I love getting into the hives without smoke, the bees seem calmer. But there are definitely more reasons for smoke than against.
Bees are strange things. You can unite colonies with a quick squirt of air freshener top bars and bottom bars. No newspaper
Interesting Dee. I’m not too surprised. I united two good colonies a few days ago. I saw no trouble at all but did use one sheet of newspaper. I did however smoke each hive quite well first, lifting the lid about the thickness of the hive tool to allow the smoke to infiltrate the entire hive. No dead bees outside the hive days later.
Most US air fresheners would constitute “cruel and unusual punishment” for bees. If I was a bee in such a hive, I would abscond. 
Works though.
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Today I’m doing another inspection to see what happened with the beautiful frame of eggs in the queenless hive. If there is not queen cell I’ll take another frame and see about smoking the frame to get the nurse bees over into the hive with no queen. Fingers crossed!
Yesterday’s inspection went well but new drama with bees has incurred. The original swarming hive still has no queen nor cells on the frame of eggs I placed in it so I ordered a queen because my new nuke has no queen but 3 queen cells! So 3 hives 1 queen in a nuke started from the original hive (she is a big fat good looking queen and laying greatly), the nuke I purchased early this year (which was unimpressive as compared to the nuke purchased last year) has swarmed I think but no queen was spotted and queen cells are being developed and the original hive is producing drones. With that said my new queen is being shipped May 22. I have to have some honey slung so that I can make some brood space since the bees did not store honey in the flow super but have worked the cells. If all else fails I’ll marry the hive I have off site after the honey flow is over so that the hive baby sitter reaps some benefit for his kindness in seeing me through getting my hives under way. I was unable to find day old eggs was part of the decision making process as well. Fingers crossed that I don’t have to buy another queen as it was more expensive than I thought!
Sorry I’ve lost track of this thread a little. Is this the hive you manipulated on April 10th? That’s five weeks. If it is and your test frame has no queen cells on it then it’s more than probable you have a queen in there. I wouldn’t abandon her for another two weeks yet then if you introduce another you HAVE to find her first. Sorry if I have this all wrong.
This is useful too. It explains what happens in a hive re-queening itself. It has some useful time scales http://www.wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/How-To-Deal-With-A-Colony-That-Is-Requeening-Itself-by-Wally-Shaw.pdf
WOW! All I can say is that I keep looking for a queen and nada and have added several frames of brood to the hive so with that said and my new queen on the way I hope I can have a successful outcome to the seemingly queenless hive. I’m wondering if our winter/spring was the cause of all the queen bee drama. Thanks for sharing the article as it was great and if all else fails can I marry my queenless hive to another hive?
Well, I was totally wrong! My original hive which I thought was queen less did have a success story from adding frames of eggs. WHOOT! Right after I ordered a queen! I did an inspection and there was a frame of capped brood in my upper brood box. WOW! Then in my new nuke for my new flow hive I had 13 queen cells and it swarmed and took off. I’m amazed at how fast the bees can develop queen cells as I do Monday inspections unless weather does not permit. However, I split the nuke hive removing the 2 frames with all the queen cells and placed them at a different location and now have a place for my new queen arriving today or tomorrow. If the hive rejects her then I can get a homegrown queen for the hive again. I wish swarm season was over though the learning curve is on like donkey kong! Thanks for all the fun and suggestions peeps. It’s like gold! in my second year of beekeeping all you wonderful peeps have helped me develop more confidence in dealing with my bees. Though this year I hope I can get some HONEY in my flow supers instead of doing splits til I’m crazy! SIGH 
That’s the holy queen cells madness update.
I knew I liked you for a reason @Martha
Fast queen cells?
Yep.
On three day old larvae and sealed two days later.
Well my queen is installed and now I’m fretting as to how long to wait before I check to see if it was successful. In my area, the experienced beekeepers are all discussing the same thing. “I’ve inspected and saw no signs of swarming and yet they’ve swarmed”.
Did she not either come with instructions or were there instructions on the breeder’s website?
If she is in an introduction cage then you go back in three days to take out the tab holding the bees back from the candy. Then leave for a week. Take the cage out and look a few days later. Messing around with the colony just after the queen is out can cause the bees to ball her