Introduction of Virgin Queen into mini nuc

[chrisjhodges]

There are lots of different methods of introducing a virgin to an apidea.
I normally wet the bees and drop her in the bottom but it's a bit stressful.
Smoking/ running in the front door are options.
What's the general consensus on the most reliable method when not introducing a cell.


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[Jon]

I normally wet the bees and drop her in the bottom but it's a bit stressful.

This is the one works best for me. I got the tip from Mervyn E who has been doing this for years.

My experiences of 'running in' a virgin are that it has a poor success rate.
The virgin seems to be accepted and then disappears after a few days.

For introducing a queen to a full colony, the radical approach is to use smoke and forget about the cage.
I have only done this once so don't know what the success rate is.



Direct introduction of mated and virgin queens using smoke: a method that gives almost 100% acceptance when hives have been queenless for 2 days or more.

J Antonio Perez-Sato, Martin H. Kärcher,
William O H Hughes, Francis L W Ratnieks.

abstract

We compared the acceptance of virgin and mated queens introduced into queenless hives using either artificial queen cells or direct introduction accompanied by smoke. In Experiment 1, virgin queens aged 3-4 days were introduced into 5-frame hives than had been dequeened 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 days previously. Acceptance increased significantly with the length of time a colony had been queenless, and direct introduction gave significantly greater success than artificial queen cells (between 31% and 100% acceptance vs. 8% to 92% for cell or direct introduction respectively, depending on the period of queenlessness). In Experiment 2, virgin and mated queens were introduced into 2-frame observation hives that had been dequeened 1, 2, 3 and 4 days previously. The probability of acceptance was significantly higher for mated queens than virgins, for direct introduction versus artificial queen cells, and for longer queenless periods. Accordingly, the probability of a queen being balled by the workers declined significantly with the duration of the queenless period, and was significantly less for mated versus virgin queens. Finally, in Experiment 3, we introduced mated queens into medium-sized hives (10 medium Langstroth frames) that had been queenless for 2 days using both the direct introduction and artificial cells. All queens were accepted.

[chrisjhodges]

Thanks Jon
I think Willie B uses the run in with success though!


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[Jon]

Willy B and David D as well mostly introduce virgins in the apideas via cages although I do remember Willy B saying he runs them in sometimes.
I am pretty sure he is also an advocate of dumping in a wet scoop of bees.
Both of them use incubators and let the virgin emerge in a roller cage whereas I mostly introduce cells about 24 hours from emergence.

[Rosie]

I always introduce cells but there is a good argument for using virgins because you can cull any bad-uns before they are introduced.

[Jon]

Willy B marks his before introduction as well. I am tempted to go down that route as you do get the odd one with dodgy wings or which is far too small.

[Rosie]

You also get the odd queen cell that fails to emerge.

[Jon]

Those get replaced if the queens are not out within 48 hours but it does mean the bees are a bit too long in the apidea before it gets opened.
I don't do that 3 days queenless lark in a dark shed. They accept the cells fine a couple of hours after they are filled.

[Pete L]

My experiences of 'running in' a virgin are that it has a poor success rate.
The virgin seems to be accepted and then disappears after a few days.

That is all i do when making up fresh mini nucs with shook bees from different hives, leave them about two hours, then run in a freshly emerged virgin straight from the incubator, cannot say i have come across any of the disappearing problems that you have, Jon, i often just release newly emerged virgins direct into recently de queened mating nucs as well, no smoke or dipping them into anything, just let them walk out of the cage straight onto the comb with the bees and replace comb.

[Adam]

My trying the introduction of mated queens with no cage and smoke only worked 100% of the time last year - as a guess a dozen or so attempts. This was in mini-nucs as well as full-sized colonies.

Running the odd virgin into a mini-nuc has not gone well for me - they tend to disappear a few days after introduction.