Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
This method is easy and it works very well. It allows the main hive to continue as
normal, with their queen until you are sure the new queen is viable, and it hardly
disturbs the colony's life at all. The bees that are accustomed to going in and out of the
nuc in the opposite direction will soon learn to adapt, and all will carry on as normal
with a new, low-swarming, heavy-laying, young queen. Easy!
Method 2
This method also works well and is for those who want a quick-fix, low-tech
application. The theory is the same as the first method but, in this case, you install the
queen straight into the main hive without using a nuc:
Remove and kill the queen of the colony to be re-queened. Destroy any and all
queen cells.
Leave the colony queenless until the next day.
Remove a frame of capped and emerging brood from the colony.
Press into this frame the queen cage.
Wrap the entire frame in newspaper, stapling the newspaper ends along the top
bar (see Photograph 6 in the colour photograph section of this topic).
Make a few slits in the paper with your hive tool.
Lower the entire frame into the colony.
Check for queen release in three days.
Check for eggs a week later.
Even easier!
If you keep it simple and try to understand what the bees are doing, you
should have no trouble with queen introduction. You must, however,
remember the following points:
