I had a visit from the guy you told to contact me. seems he is keen on beekeeping and think he would enjoy bee keeping and understands what is involved. He will spend a day with me in a month or so. He sees the benefit of two hives and happy to get any advise and help. Quoted him $350 for a hive, brood + 1 super with a QX, entrance gate, a strong and healthy colony + a couple of visits on his site to make sure he was pumping along well.
Thanks for sending him.
Regards
Youāre most welcome Peter, sounds like heāll be getting a great deal. You look weary in that photo. Must be the 3am finish this morning. Not for me, I need my beauty sleep. Itās 9pm now, thatāll see me out. Good night 
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Iām burning the midnight oil too often. Wife complains about me using the air compressor and air staple gun in the lounge room at midnight. 
Cheers mate,
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Thanks Peter. I am torn on what I will do. This is a big hive and fills all 4 boxes with bees. The formic acid seems to be whacking the drone population and but there seems to be plenty of worker bees. I did notice something last night that I think is a good thing. I watched some workers break out of some comb that I thought was all drone cells. The cells are all different lengths but these were definitely workers. This was not the box the queen seems to hang out in so maybe she has been getting around more than I though.
Also, this hive has been queen right for about 3 weeks now so i am thinking that the laying workers have to be near end of life. Since there has been open worker brood continuously since 3 weeks ago, no new laying workers should develop and the old should either be dying or turning off there ovaries. Very hard to tell if there is currently active layers or not.
I like your thinking into forcing the hive into close quarters with the queen but I hesitate for 2 reasons. First is the population size of this hive. It mostly fills all 4 boxes with bees. The second (selfish reasons) this hive is my most productive for bringing in honey at the moment. We finally have dry weather and there is a ton of clover blooming on the farm. Honey is coming in at a good rate at the moment.
For now my plan is to swap a few honey flow frames with drones in them for clean ones, might leave one or 2 and see if they clean them up for me. I may pack them down to 2 brood boxes depending on what I find this weekend. If i find worker brood in all 3 boxes despite the drone brood I may leave it alone. If I see enough frames with no worker brood and frames of just drone brood I will pack it into 2 brood boxes plus the flow hive super.
As far as the 2 small package hives, those bees are dwindling due to age. I am thinking the queens canāt lay much because of too few of nurse bees. I am going to steal some nurse bees from my other hives and see what happens. If I had some nuc boxes I would pack them down but I donāt. I did give them both a partial frame of worker brood from other hives. I have 2 other hives that should be getting to a full population state that will help contribute a frame of brood weekly.
So that is my plan at the moment, subject to change hourly 
Thank you for the continued idea generation.
Joe
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Thinking further and I am sure we have found the problem, my other thoughts fall over in thinking it through.
Cheers
Update: the 2 hives that were started with packages that had laying workers and immediately killed their queens are dwindling. After the shake method they accepted new queens but continued laying drones for a while and neither queen have laid any workers. I suspect that either there are not enough nurse bees or workers are eating their eggs. I have been giving the hives small frames of worker brood from other hives but the one is still struggling and still no new brood. The other may be laying I am not sure.
I have another strong hive that just went queenless with lots of emergency queen cells in it. I see young larva but no new eggs so it must have happened in the last 3 days. I think I am going to merge the weak small hive with the queen into the strong big hive that is queenless. I will let the bees decide to either keep the introduced queen or stick with their plan to raise their own. I will use the newspaper method to introduce them. There are tons of frames of worker brood at all stages except eggs in the strong hive so plenty of time to get queen right.
The other small hive I will give more time and continue supporting with brood from other hives.
My biggest hive that we discussed a lot (hive #1) I think is turning the corner. I cheated and cleaned drone cells from the flow frames with a garden hose even though the bees were starting to clean them out. I think the laying workers have stopped. I will know better tomorrow when I do a full inspection of them.
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Sounds like a real project Joe 
Iām impressed with your diligence though & have my fingers crossedā¦
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Hi Joe, why do you think the hives are going queenless, it seems you have that happen regularly, can you post a picture of them?
Regards
I believe I had 2 bad packages in April that was full of laying workers and they killed the queens once released. The big hive (#1) I did a split in the Spring because of queen cells in April and I believe the new queen did not mate due to abnormal cold terrible weather so she laid drones until I realized the issue. I think do to the 3 weeks or so of now worker brood, laying workers developed in that hive as well. They accepted the old queen back but only recently did the laying workers stop (I will confirm tonight).
The most recent is really the first established hive that has gone queen-less this year. The hive is reacting correctly in building a bunch of emergency queen cells (Mid frame not the bottom).
Hive #1 is now a 2 brood box plus flow frame hive instead of 3 brood boxes. I removed empty frames and drone frames and one frame with brood on and put it in hive #4 which is one of the struggling single hives. There were tons of nurse bees which I distributed to the other 3 hives.
Hive #2 which just went queenless now has hive #3 being merged into it. I debated whether to remove the queen cells or let the bees decide whether to accept the new queen or make there own. I am still debating. Will the hive accept the new queen and remove the queen cells or accept the queen until the queens hatch and then kill her?
Hive #4 just got another frame of brood plus a bunch of nurse bees. It should start to go now.
Hive #5 has been text book. It was a split from April from which I removed the queen to put back into Hive #1 and then given a brand new queen. She is laying wall to wall brood frames. They also got a few more nurse bees from hive #1.
I āthinkā my laying worker issues are behind me, time will tell. I am going away for 10 days. Hopefully nobody swarms while I am gone.
It was interesting watching the nurse bees march into new hives.
Hive 1 and 2
Hive #4
Hive #5
Hive #1
All Hives
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In relation to your question. If the bees accept the queen, they might view the queen cells as a trigger to swarm. On the other hand, they may tear them all down. I have seen colonies start swarm preparations, only to abort the idea half way through. That could be because of a change in the weather.
I would probably not leave a colony with queen cells, as well as a queen, if I was going away for 10 days.
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I agree with @JeffH, there is too much that can happen while you are away for 10 days, I would sort out the issue then go away not worrying. I am sure the issue with hive #1 is sorted.
Regards
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Queen cells destroyed. Kind of a shame but with going away I donāt have time to use them for a split. They had already gotten through the 2 layers of newspaper so I put one more layer down to give just one more day of smell exchange.
For the time being, I think my hives are back on track. Iāve missed much of this years flow between queen issues and constant rain but I should get honey from clover over the next month if we keep getting some rain.
Thanks all!
Joe
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Hi Joe, well done. I try to think of one liners or easy ways to say things. The one liner Iād say is āyou look after the brood, the bees will look after the honeyā.
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