BBKA Forum

British Beekeepers Association Official Forum 

  • Introducing Queens

  • Queen breeding specialism discussion forum.
Queen breeding specialism discussion forum.
 #6801  by Patrick
 01 May 2020, 16:06
Its shortly going to be the time of year when people start asking if you have any spare queens.

Lots of bits and bobs dotted about the Forum but no dedicated thread on introducing queens yet to date.

Interesting BBKA article by Rudy Repka in May BBKA mag who advises a quick water dip of the new queen and then direct introduction into the recently 93-24hrs) made queenless hive. Also seen a video on similar method but dunking the queen entirely in honey before direct introduction, never tried either but should do. Anybody else do / done it? What is your preferred method and have you tried other novel ways?

My starter:

The various introduction cages, including Ye Olde Faithful Butler or hair roller cage with newspaper /candy over the end. The one I generally do. Two layers of newspaper carried on about a third up the cage to give the queen somewhere to shelter if needed.

The tried and tested introduction to a made up nucleus and then transfer to queenless part (bit laborious but safe option) or indeed the same with a mini-nuc using the newspaper unite method within a spare brood chamber.

Push in cages or cloches that hold the queen in against sealed and emerging brood before candy or beekeeper release.

The LASI direct introduction with lots and lots of smoke via the entrance. Like the honey / water dip, an attractively unfussy idea.

What is your experience of doing any of these and or other methods? There must be somebody who used a matchbox or paper bag surely? :)

I tried a Zippo but it didn't work out well.
 #6803  by NigelP
 01 May 2020, 19:19
A few years ago I had a long conversation with Pete Little of exmoor bees about this. [If anyone knows Pete you know it's never going to be a short conversation :)] One gem I gleaned from him was that in early spring direct introduction works well, but that is the only time of year it does.
 #6805  by MickBBKA
 01 May 2020, 22:03
I honestly cannot believe the stuff talked about introducing queens. I quite often think that beekeepers, book writers, local and national associations just come up with stuff to try and be different and make a name for themselves.
I have NEVER, done anything more than put her in a cage, lay it on top of the frames, see how the bees react to her and then walk her in. I have 100% take so far in 9 years. Make of that whatever you like. I did on one occasion have the bees seem very happy with a queen then ball her once released, I thought she was a gonner. I now understand they cam do that to protect her. When I went back a week later she was fine with 3 frames of eggs and larvae.

I think IMHO that lots of queens are killed because its the wrong circumstances to introduce a new queen.

Just sayin…….
 #6814  by NigelP
 02 May 2020, 10:05
That might be the case with the local bees in your area Mick...it aint with mine. The locals here are very reluctant to accept a new queen....whereas my Buckfast slack Alice's will accept anything.
My old go to method was leave queen in cage + attendants for a minimum of three days in the hive/nuc, check the bees were okay with her and release her onto a frame. I say my old go to method because a few years ago as I was releasing a queen she flew off never to be seen again....so I have now changed my approach to still leave for a minimum of 3 days and then break the tab on the candy seal and let the bees free her, no danger of her flying off.
 #6848  by Japey Edge
 04 May 2020, 16:01
Latest BBKA mag, Page 154-155.

It's pretty interesting reading and I am trying to absorb whatever queen introduction knowledge I can in preparation for replacing swarmy queens with children of GM queen.

Two really quick ways that appeal to me in this article are:

1. The version where you stick a cage with 10 workers and stick in your pocket for 10-15 minutes then add queen, then place between frames of queenless colony.

and

2. Give the queen an 8 second tepid bath and then walk her into the queenless colony.

Second version really appeals to me. How quick and easy - take out old queen, give new one a bath and run her in. Is it too good to be true? I'll probably try it anyway, just keen to hear from the more experienced.
 #6857  by NigelP
 04 May 2020, 16:47
You know what they say about 2 good to be true.....I'd never heard of it before. Although I know some who will dunk their virgin queens in honey before letting them loose into small mating nucs..

The first thing I would think about is what are the bees you are re-queening going to be like in accepting "foreign" genetics. My locals can be quite difficult to requeen whereas Buckfast colonies are pretty tolerant. And in terms of tolerance nurse bees are more generally forgiving that older worker bees. Rudi missed a major trick on his Nuc introduction method.....you make up the nuc (although God knows where you find a frame with a palm sized amount of sealed brood....) don't do as he suggests by moving it to an out apiary, you leave it in your own ap[airy. This way after a couple of days the fliers (older bees) will have gone back home and you are essentially left with a nuc of nurse bees ready to introduce your new queen to. Don't do this later on in the year when the nectar flows have stopped, or the nuc will get robbed out.
I find that requeening hives is much more difficult and it is my least prefered way of requeening. I much prefer to unite a hive (Q-) to a hive with a good laying queen.
 #6859  by Steve 1972
 04 May 2020, 17:16
My favourite and most successful method of introducing Queens is into Nucs..one or two frames of brood a good frame of stores and the rest of the space filled with drawn foundation...I shake a load of bees into each nuc but not before I know where the Queen is from the donar hive too make sure she does not accidentally get shook into the nuc..I then move the nucs 25yards away and close them up and go make a cuppa..when I get back to the nucs most of the older flying bees will have left the nucs..this is when I add the Queen in the commercial Queen cage with the candy plug tab removed..

After two weeks and hopefully the Queen is laying you can put them into a national brood box..remove or kill the Queen you don't want and unite the nice Queen side over news paper to the now Queen (-) colony..after a week or two you can then juggle the frames about to get rid of one of the brood boxes..I have done this a couple of times with great success..
 #6869  by Patrick
 04 May 2020, 23:31
A point often missed in the nucleus introduction method is it makes sense to build the temporary introduction nuc from the hive you wish to requeen and, as Nigel points out, in this instance to keep it in the same apiary thus biasing it’s retained population to younger bees.

By entire coincidence I picked up from a box tonight a copy of Hamilton’s The Art of Beekeeping first published in 1945. He was a big cheese in beekeeping training at various colleges over many decades. To my increasing disbelief, in the Queen introduction section after the matchbook method he credits to Simmins, he describes dipping queens in tepid water before running them in, dropping in a virgin direct after being dunked in honey, direct introduction with heavy smoking, using a square of wire mesh over emerging brood a la Micheal Palmer and several others to boot. Oh, and there is a section on using mininucs or baby nucleus as he calls them.

Interestingly he even suggests requeening laying worker colonies by shaking all the bees off the combs onto a ramp outside the hive, spraying them and then dropping a wet queen into the mass, which then troop back inside and resume normal service. Got to be worth a go one day.

Do we just keep rediscoverIng what the old guys already knew a century ago??! :lol: :lol:
 #6887  by NigelP
 05 May 2020, 15:00
Very interesting Patrick.
I think we keep forgetting what we already know....like insulation of hives pre war was the normal for overwintering. Most early hives with removable frames where double walled including one of the first designed in UK by Cowan in 1880, but this was a heavy hive, so Carr designed the WBC (1890) as a lighter cheaper version with the space between th lifts and boxes meant to filled with cork chippings (or the like) overwinter.
Who does that these days.
 #6983  by Japey Edge
 11 May 2020, 10:15
With two queens arriving in the post this week and only one colony that I am certain is queenless (a 6 frame nuc), I am thinking of splitting that nuc into two smaller dummied down nucs and introducing queens via push-in cages. The second queen is for the big hive that has tried to swarm and probably has 20 virgin queens running around laughing at me (exaggeration deliberate).

So I'm thinking:
1. Split nuc into two nuc boxes, dummy to 4 frames each, sharing frames with capped brood evenly between the two
2. Shake some bees from supers of big colony into both nucs (2a - spray air freshener or essential oil sugar mist to confuse pheromone scent?)
3. place queen in each nuc, in push-in cage over emerging brood, honey, pollen and empty cells
4. Leave for four days
5. Return, see if bees are balling her or if happy enough, removing cage if all is well


That ideally will leave me with two nucs that can build up. The weaker one will be united with my big swarmy hive once I have let them settle (two weeks?) and then find their new queen and move her on to be someone else's problem.

That should also leave me with a lovely apiary with a GM queen and two BS buckfasts. They'll never swarm again, they'll be so calm I can dance around them in just a T-shirt and shorts, and they'll make, extract and jar their own honey for me :-D :-D

(Read the last sentence with caution) :lol: