Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
First method
I especially don't advise re-queening with a push-in cage. This cage is large in area with
legs at each corner. These legs can be pushed into the wax comb, thus stabilizing the
cage and confining the queen to that area of comb. The cage also prevents the workers
from getting to the queen and killing her. The queen lays eggs in the cells in the cage,
and the bees that emerge from those cells regard her as the queen. When the cage is
eventually removed, the colony should accept her.
I don't like this method for two main reasons. First, it takes a long time: the queen has
to lay eggs and then you have to wait three weeks for the first new adult bees to emerge.
By this time the original colony outside the cage will be in a very poor state and will
probably be infested with wax moth because of the insufficient number of bees to look
after the household. Secondly, if the bees don't accept the new queen on release, you've
wasted both time and money. Don't bother with this method.
Second method
The second method I advise against is to unite the laying-worker colony with a
good, queen-right colony. It could work, and I have done it once successfully and
once unsuccessfully, but the danger is that the laying workers may just kill your
queen - and then what? You have given them a larger colony to wreck. Murphy's law
states categorically that, in cases like this, you will end up with another queenless
colony.
One problem you will come across in your beekeeping career will be that of very
aggressive colonies. These make beekeeping unpleasant, and even the hardiest of
beekeepers doesn't like being continuously pasted by their bees. Compared with, say,
Italian or Cecropian bees, my Iberian bees were, generally, extremely aggressive. I did,
however, have one colony of gentle Iberians, and I kept the queen in it for as long as
possible to breed from her. She wasn't my queen to start with (I picked her up in a
swarm), but she had a faded red dot painted on her back and so I called her Rose.
