Introducing A New Queen

Discussion in 'Hobbies and Crafts' started by Sjoerd, Apr 2, 2016.

  1. Sjoerd

    Sjoerd Mighty Oak

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    Today was sunny and warmish---time for the Spring Inspection. I am inspecting the bees today for the first time since the fall-winter of last year.

    One colony filled both of its hive boxes, another one was smallish and had a questionable queen. That is to say, the bees were a bit unfriendly and the queen was not laying.The third hive presented two queens in the one hive. One, or perhaps both were laying...I suspect just one, though.What to do?! This is an untenable situation, for there can only be one queen.

    If I do nothing one of the two will either die of fly off with half the colony. I could split the hive and make a new colony, but then there would be two weak colonies. Weak, because of their low censuses. This would leave them open to robbery from stronger colonies or even attacks from yellow jackets or wasps.

    What I decided to do was to replace the defect queen and place the "new" F2 queen in her place in that third box and see if she will begin laying there in her new home. If not, i have another couple of tricks up my sleeve.

    Now then, introducing a foreign queen into a new colony is always a tricky business and there are procedures for this. In my favour is that it is early in the season and at this time of year, there is rarely rejection of queens or rejection of a second colony if one is combining two small colonies. I do not know what that is, but it is consistently proven to be a valid and true rule-of-thumb.

    ----The first thing to do was to capture the second queen in the hive with two queens. Next, I made a sort of plug in the end of the little queen cage with toilet paper saturated with honey and invert sugar.

    ----Then I took my hive tool and pressed the comb flat on the sides of the frames where I planned to introduce Her Majesty.
    boon4.jpg

    I only had to flatten a very small area just where I would insert the cage. Here I am giving a couple of light puffs of smoke made from dried Lavender and sawdust into the hive where she would go in. This sort of masks her smell for a short time.
    boon3.jpg

    I had to wear gloves because this small colony were irritable. Perhaps because of the quality of the old queen or because of it is in their DNA passed on from the old queen.

    ----At any rate, once the hive was smoked, I lowered queen and cage down into the slot inbetween the frames that I had made.
    boon2.jpg

    You can see the gap that I made with my hive tool.

    ----It is now time for a couple of Hail Mary's and a crossing, with eyes rolled heavenwards....We shall see in a couple of days how it goes. I don't know if this will work at all because I do not know for sure if this queen had mated last fall before the winter sleep. If not then hmmmmmm....there are no drones now and will not be for a few weeks yet, so she will not be fertilized in time before the workers will all die out. I will want to see her out of that cage and see eggs in the cells within a week or a week-and-a-half (technically I ought to give her 10 days- 2 weeks). If I do not see any evidence of her fertility, then I will assume that she is not pregnant and therefore will have to destroy her and combine the remainder of the colony with a stronger one.

    I will be a bit anxious for a few days now.
     
    Last edited: Apr 2, 2016
    Frank, 2ofus, Droopy and 3 others like this.
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  3. carolyn

    carolyn Strong Ash

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    I hpe this works well for you, S. It is always a joy to find a new and successful split turn into a new hive.
     
  4. Droopy

    Droopy Slug Slaughterer Plants Contributor

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    I do hope this will work after all your efforts. You really take care of your hives. Fingers crossed and may St. Gobnait and St Ambrose be with you.
     
  5. Sjoerd

    Sjoerd Mighty Oak

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    Thanks CAROLYN--I have a dark brown feeling about this splitting., but we shall see. I looked yesterday and saw that she had been released...the quezzy now is--did they then kill her. Over ~8 days I shall have a looksy and see if there are eggs, larvae or if the sisters have blown a queen cell or not. All these signs will tell me what I want to know.

    Thanks for the appropriate blessings DROOPY--I hope that it will work out...if not, I will simply combine the miscreants with one of the other hives and move on. My colleagues have all said to just destroy the meanies and forget it...but I have a hard head in this. It is not the first time that I have gone against such advice...after all, I keep bees to protect them, not to destroy them at the first sign of adversity. I feel like I ought to just use my brain and gut to solve this.
     
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