Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
done this, the queen will normally have been accepted by the colony - as long as they
are queenless.
If you are unable to put the queen in straightaway, she can be kept in the cage but she
must be protected from fly spray or other insecticides and from drying out in the heat.
Two or three times a day, therefore, drop some water onto the cage. I don't think there is
any need to remove the attendant bees from the cage before putting it into the hive.
The bees in the hive need time to accept the new queen, and this is where the cage and
the candy come in. The bees will immediately sense a new set of pheromonal signals and
odours from this new queen and would probably kill her if you just put her in the hive.
Young bees are also more receptive to a new queen than older bees. The re-queening
method shown below recognizes this fact: its aim is to make the whole business easy
and painless.
Opening cages is always a problem because, if the queen escapes, you will lose her. If you
really must open the cage for some reason (for example, to remove a dead attendant),
open it near a closed window. If the queen then escapes she will fly to the window and
you will be able to catch her again. (Remember, queen bees won't sting even though they
have a sting.)
The most successful ways of introducing a new queen into a hive are described below.
How to re-queen
Method 1
Collect together the same number of spare boxes, floors and lids as the number of hives
you want to re-queen - what you are going to do is make some mini-hives or nucleus
hives. Using a piece of wood, make the entrances to these small hives just one or two bee
spaces wide. Place the nucleus hives on the lids of the hives you are going to re-queen,
but facing in the opposite direction. Block the entrances with grass.
In the hives you want to re-queen, first make a split by removing from them two frames
of emerging brood, one frame of stores and a frame of empty comb. The emerging
