Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
are needed, and can be used in conjunction with your annual queen replacement.
However, the time between finding and removing the queen and a new queen laying
can be as much as three weeks. During this time, the colony may do little work, even
during a honey flow.
Carry out the following procedure:
Find and remove the queen. If you are going to re-queen your hive with a new
queen or a queen cell, the old queen must be killed. If you intend to keep her on,
place her on a frame of brood and bees into a nucleus box, add some frames of
comb and set aside.
Destroy all queen cells except one.
Or
destroy the queen cells and replace with one
of your own.
Or
destroy all queen cells; repeat a week later and, a week after this,
introduce a new queen in a cage or reintroduce the original queen.
Seven days after each step, inspect the colony and remove any new queen cells.
If, after removing the queen at the first step above you see a virgin queen on the comb
- and this does happen - she can be left on the comb. The colony with the new virgin
will
probably
not swarm.
One sight some beekeepers see during their inspections is two queens on the frame.
Everyone knows there should be one queen only, so what is going on? This situation is
probably the result of a natural phenomenon called supersedure.
Supersedure occurs when a colony replaces its queen without swarming. Colonies that
re-queen themselves without swarming are rare, however, and it is not yet known why
some bees supersede and stay put rather than swarm. Supersedure can therefore lead
to increased honey crops with less of an effort in swarm control on the beekeeper's
behalf.
