Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
H
IVING THE
Q
UEEN AND
H
ER
C
OLONY
The queen cage is a small box, not much larger than a pack of chewing gum, with a
screen on one side and a sugar cork sealing it closed. Inside the box, the queen travels
safely along with five or six female attendants who groom and feed her. This cage
needed to be removed from the main package and placed in the hive before the rest of
the colony. Now here was where those two bent nails come into play. Mr. B instruc-
ted me to stick them into the top of the queen cage so that it could hang between two
framesinsidethehive.WithanothernailIpokedaholeintothesugarcork.Overaperi-
od of about a week, the worker and attendant bees would eat away the sugar cork until
the queen was released from her cage. Then she would be free to meet her family and
spread her pheromones throughout the hive. I hung the queen cage with care, with the
sugar cork facing up, in the space where normally the fifth hive frame would fit.
The easy part was over. Now it was the time to open the bee package and pour the
bees into the hive. I gave the bees one more squirt of sugar water for good luck, and
then I grabbed the bee box with both hands and once again pounded it on the ground. I
took a deep breath and moved aside the wooden plate for the last time, exposing a cir-
cular hole the size of the sugar can that was removed earlier. Immediately, bees began
tocrawlupandoutofthehole.Ihadtoworkfast.Istood,feetplantedtothesideofthe
open hive, turned the box upside down, and begin shaking and pouring the bees in as
quickly as possible. That box was heavy and boiling over with thousands of live, seem-
ingly unhappy honeybees.
QUEEN CAGE
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