So while my wife and I was putting in our package bees. She accidentally pulled the cork and dropped it and didn’t get a marshmallow put in. The workers were right in there real quick. And my wife just opened it up the rest of the way and dumped them out. How bad is this gonna be and am I gonna need to get a new Queen real quick? The package bees shipped from California 2 days ago and I received them today in Alaska.
Hard to say but possibly the 2-3 day confinement during their trip was enough time to circulate the queen’s pheromone and bond her to them. That will be hard to tell until there’s comb and you can look for eggs. And you don’t want to look in too early, because disruptions at this vulnerable time for the colony can cause them to ball the queen anyway, or abscond (leave).
A safe bet would be to get a frame of mostly open brood and eggs from a local beek if there is one in your parts, and put it in place of one of your frames in the center of the box. Your package bees will start taking care of it and will use young larvae to make a new queen if they did kill the one you had. If she’s still there, your colony gets a jump-start.
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Hi Shane, did you see the queen fly away? We have done several immediate release of the Queen without incident. I would hold tight as Eva suggests and keep a look out for eggs.
She didn’t fly away she went right into the hive from what I was able to see when it all happened. The workers were going crazy over the pollen patty and sugar syrup I put in to help get them jump started on making comb
I’m hoping they didn’t kill her. I wasn’t planning on opening the hive till Wednesday when I’m off work to really check and see. Right now most of the people who have hives going are still working on our spring time warm ups. It’s still staying in the low 50s during the day and dropping down to 30s at night.
From Beesource: Michael Bush said he would do just what you did-on purpose
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