Actually Bakersdozen, it's the other way around. Queens like to lay in old dark comb. One of the things that folks who sell bees often do is cycle out their oldest comb with the bees they sell. After a few years though, virtually all of their comb should be no more than a few years old.
Don't forget that when you buy a nuc for instance, it comes with a certain number (4 or 5) frames of drawn comb about which you know very little. If it is smuggly looking stuff I would advise to cycle it out at your earliest convenience.
Perry,
It some time for me to find where I read about old comb vs new comb preferences with bees. This is what I based my statement on regarding the bees preference to storing honey in old comb and the queen laying eggs in the new comb.
Beekeeping Tips and Topics by Elbert R Jaycox, pg. 77. The chapter is entitled
Preference of Honey Bees For New And Old Comb.Jaycox refers to a previously published article he wrote for
Bees and Honey magazine. " As noted in the article, Dr. John Free found that colonies did not prefer old combs for brood rearing and sometimes reared less brood in old comb... However, bees prefer to store honey in used comb..." Jaycox goes on to cite another researcher, Annie Betts. He concludes, "... bees like to put honey in old combs. They may also begin to rear brood in old combs early in the season simply because that is where the honey is available from the previous year. Miss Betts noted that bees in the wild build new comb each year and establish their nest in it. They then store their honey in the old, used comb."
Jaycox does state that old black comb, so dark that you can't see daylight through it, should be replaced. He concludes that the cell diameter is greatly reduced from all the cocoons attached to the cell walls.
This book was published in 1982 and I will agree, some of the information is outdated. Is this theory outdated? This book was also recommended by Randy Oliver, so that should give it street cred, right?
