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Thread: Re-queening

  1. #11
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    One of mine went queenless last summer then very hard to manage - it had always been tetchy. Uniting with a nuc via the flour method wasn't successful (I should have known) so the other spare nuc went above newspaper on a QX over the supers over a queenless brood box of very wound-up bees. Super bees are known to be more welcoming. They united peaceably after the QX was removed a week later, and another week later the nuc was moved down to the centre of the old brood box.

    Excited bees in early summer can be hard to requeen. There is something to be said for doing the requeening in late summer if possible.

  2. #12
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    To be more specific then

    I have a colony that if last year is anything to go by probably needs a super now, has a lot of chalk brood and were less than pleasant (first gen Carnie crosses I think) to deal with. Their comb is two years old so off the back of that I'm intending to shook swarm them soon(tm) to get them on new comb and give them another dose of OA but I want to replace the queen (2011 vintage) with a, hopefully, better vintage from the allotment bees.

    This is hence going to be a busy 14x12 that I want to requeen from an apidea mated queen. I've taken on board the advice to give newly mated queens at least a couple of weeks to get "up to speed", so if we assume that I have a hair roller cage, an up to speed, apidea resident, mated queen and a grumpy colony that I want to put that queen into, how would people go about it?

    My thinking thus far was:


    1) get a newly mated queen for a couple of weeks in an apidea
    2) Remove the existing queen from "grumpy colony"
    3) Leave it a week, re-inspect, remove all queen cells
    3a) Leave it another week?
    4) Put queen (and a few attending bees?) in hair roller, plugged with nice new Ambrosia fondant.
    5) Put roller in queenless hive
    6) come back in a week? and see if they've accepted her

    This list superseded by one below (sorry for the pun)

    The timings on 1) depend on 2 & 3 in some respects. if you have an egg laying queen in an apidea is that the "go" to make the hive you want to re-queen queenless?
    Last edited by Neils; 18-02-2012 at 02:22 PM.

  3. #13
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Maybe leave the Apidea new queen for three weeks so that she's completed a full cycle of brood.

    A Butler cage or similar would allow you to lay the cage on the top bars which gives her extra protection from foot biting. You could cover the end with plastic until the bees look comfortable with the new queen, then take it off to expose the fondant (bakers, queen fondant a la Dave Cushman, whatever).

    But I'm no expert, just the guy who made lots of mistakes last year.

  4. #14
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    That's where point one comes into play. if you see a decent number of eggs in the apidea(s), is that the time to make your target colony queen less? They'll want to make emergency queen cells and you obvious don't want them to make anymore so you have to leave them a week, remove the cells they've already made and now you should have a queenless colony that can't do anything about it.

    Two factors now come into play (in my head)
    1) You don't want a queen coming into full lay in an apidea, surely (yes, the number of bees in there and the size of the box will box constrain her laying and prevent them swarming). Frame swapping etc etc will obviously help here, but if you've got a queen bursting at the seams, is there any negative impact to keeping her in an apidea?

    2) Once a colony is hopelessly queenless you've got 17 days + x time before they go drone laying workers, you took the queen out a week ago so all the brood is at least one week old, the youngest larvae has to be 4 days old give or take a few hours, so in 17 days time you have no more brood in your target colony and at that point presumably the lack of pheremone off the brood and queen will start to allow Drone Laying Workers.
    Last edited by Neils; 16-02-2012 at 12:58 AM.

  5. #15
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Nellie, that list looks good to me but you don't have to wait a week after removing the queen cells. A few hours should do.
    When you put the cage in, leave it closed for at least 24 hours before letting them start to eat through the fondant plug.
    If they are still acting very aggressively towards the cage after 24 hours, wait another 24.

    With a queen in an apidea, you need to see that brood is normal, ie no drone brood in worker cells and not too many gaps, no chalk brood.
    That means you have to wait at least 9-10 days until brood is sealed. And it is better to wait another 10 days. I think I posted a link to a paper confirming this somewhere on the site.

    An apidea can turn laying worker in 3 weeks but a full colony is more likely to take 5 or 6 weeks.

    Paper here. Scroll down to the Rhodes and Denney para.
    Last edited by Jon; 16-02-2012 at 01:04 AM.

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    Thanks guys, so let's try it again.

    1) get a newly mated queen for a couple of weeks in an apidea, Check the brood pattern, wait for sealed brood and see if you'd consider it normal.
    2) Remove the existing queen from "grumpy colony"
    3) Leave it a week, re-inspect, remove all queen cells
    4) Wait a few hours then put queen in hair roller/queen cage, plugged with fondant covered in foil to prevent access to the plug.
    5) Put roller in queenless hive
    6) Leave it 24-48 hours, remove the foil from the plug to allow the colony to reach the queen.

    I guess obvious question is, how do you know they're acting agressively to the new queen? balling the cage?
    Last edited by Neils; 18-02-2012 at 02:19 PM. Reason: updated list.

  7. #17
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    That looks good, and if you want to be even more sure, do an artificial swarm on the hive you want to requeen and introduce the queen to the queenless part which has the brood and non flying bees. It is always easier to requeen young bees.

    The best strategy is to have spare queens all the time. I used to get really annoyed when a queen got killed on introduction but with spare ones you just try again.

    >I guess obvious question is, how do you know they're acting aggressively to the new queen? balling the cage?

    balling or stinging the cage. It is a good sign when there are only a few bees around the cage rather than hundreds.
    Last edited by Jon; 16-02-2012 at 01:18 AM.

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    Ok, so we could do a
    3a) get rid of the flying bees if possible

    perhaps?

  9. #19
    Senior Member Mellifera Crofter's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by gavin View Post
    ... A Butler cage or similar would allow you to lay the cage on the top bars which gives her extra protection from foot biting. ...
    Quote Originally Posted by Jon View Post
    ...When you put the cage in, leave it closed for at least 24 hours before letting them start to eat through the fondant plug. If they are still acting very aggressively towards the cage after 24 hours, wait another 24. ...
    Quote Originally Posted by Nellie View Post
    ...4) Wait a few hours then put queen (and a few attending bees?) in hair roller/queen cage, plugged with fondant covered in foil to prevent access to the plug. ...
    ... and a few attending bees - that's what I also don't understand. Do we, or don't we, add attending bees? I'm particularly curious about that cage I've mentioned earlier because the queen can remain caged up for so long - but what is the general advice in any queen introduction?

    Sorry to be harping on about this.

    Kitta

  10. #20
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Keep harping, please!

    There is a whole book written on this and I've borrowed it from our local association's library but not had time to read it yet. Snelgrove's The Introduction of Queen Bees. However, at this moment in time I'm a queen introduction numpty.

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