Quote Originally Posted by prakel View Post
yes!

Will help immensely to feed the receiving colony too. Also, it does no harm to leave the cage locked for a few days once in the hive before allowing the bees to release the queen -as I've said before, if they don't want to look after her in the cage they'll soon supercede her once she's released (if she gets that far).

There's a nice trick buried in the following video, and yes it is practical and does work although in your present circumstances it would be better used to determine whether to allow release by the bees rather than doing so manually:

https://youtu.be/Yg92q9hPIv8
Matchstick trick - love it, thanks.
Love the hives, too - Langstroth framed longhives? (I would so be filling the upper section with blankets.)
Glad the licking is a good sign! Hoped it was. I'm getting reasonably good at reading bee body language, but not seen many of them in this particular situation yet, & it's kind of critical. As the video caption puts it: "shall we kill her or accept her?" (Ooo, choices, choices!)
Very nervous of feeding them - they're tiny, and the apiary is thick with wasps (and other bees!). Looks like most of the stores comb I gifted to them was robbed out before they got big enough to defend themselves. Once she's out I thought maybe a bit of syrup to encourage her to lay. Can't wait to reunite them with parent colony.