Queen required

[AdamD]

I had a call today from a beekeeper asking whether I had a spare queen. It appears that he was a member of a beekeeping club who had told him to remove queencells if he found any. From a very vague conversation, it appears that he removed 3 queencells 2- 1/2 months ago and then found the dead marked queen outside around that time and has done nothing since apart from regularly checking to see if there was a queen in there...
Not sure whether to laugh or cry.

[Alfred]

Was the club an affiliate of a large organisation by any chance?

[AdamD]

I am not sure - a satellite group perhaps. Although we might cut our queencells to buy a few days, the general rule is don't do it, and certainly removing queencells should not be taught as standard practice.
There are so many ways to keep and not keep bees and in most cases they survive our meddling!

[Spike]

I saw a video (cant remember from where) of an association meeting where the 'instructor' was crashing about in the hive like a complete idiot. At the time I wondered if he really knew what he was doing. But it was posted for all to see anyway.