This is a great idea and makes total sense. I did already place the new queen back into the now-hopelessly queenless and VERY cranky hive, but I’ll use this idea for the remaining hive I haven’t tried to requeen yet at all. That is, I have one new queen left and am going to place her in the ‘next worst’ cranky hive.
There’s still a colony that I put one of the new queens into over the weekend, that I haven’t checked yet. I wanted to today but thought better of it, as it’s only one box away from the very cranky one I just opened. Am concerned that alarm pheromones and guards buzzing me from the other one could disrupt a potentially peaceful situation in there. Maybe I should go in to release this queen at night, using a red light? Either way I should probably wait until tomorrow I suppose.
Hi Eva, I would advise against going in at night, unless you are completely sealed off, because bees crawl everywhere at night, up sleeves etc.
Do you have somewhere that you can take nucs to to get mated with friendly drones? Also do you have access to frames of brood from quiet colonies? Out of my five sites, including my backyard, there is 2 that I wouldn’t take nucs to to get mated.
If you can take them to near a commercial beekeeper, especially one that doesn’t get suited up that would be ideal.
Just reading my own post, you can see that I’m more in favor of producing my own queens. I haven’t bought new queens for well over 20 years.
That would be ideal. Logistics would be challenging however. Hopefully someday more friendly drones will be about and I can have another decade of letting my bees choose their own leaders
Update: I went to release the new queen in the hive that I moved to a new location just now and was instantly mobbed by angry bees when I opened it. I took a deep breath and thought I’d at least try to remove the queen cage for now, assuming she hadn’t been accepted and most likely this colony had made their own QCs as had the other two I’m trying to requeen. I honestly was thinking I’d salvage this queen today and perhaps euthanize this colony! And use the queen for a split or something.
But I couldn’t deal with the rapidly escalating aggro long enough to lift the frame the queen cage was on
So I closed it back up and went away away….and was followed into the house!
I still have one other queen to release, right next door to this hive, so not today!
I can’t believe how lengthy and challenging this process has been. I feel pretty frustrated and tired of angry bees right now. I don’t want to sacrifice this new $50 queen but wonder if I may have to, because there are lots of kids who play in the adjacent yards and my husband was stung just sitting in our garden yesterday, nowhere near the hives.
Update #2 - right after posting I called the beek who sold me the queens and he came right over.
Nobody told me that bee colonies are just like old cars - they make a horrible racket and then when you take them to the mechanic, they purr like kittens
We found a very average level of guarding, no alarm pheromone, and the queen still in her cage but clearly accepted
We released the queen and supered this hive
Next one with a new queen was doing similarly well, lots of eggs & new brood, ready to be supered as well!
Last one with a new queen in cage that I had removed the cork from, thought would be released by now - sadly, she was dead
We gave this colony a frame of eggs & young brood from another hive.
Well done Eva, I thought of you the other day. Someone gave us a queen bee in a cage that he bought, then realized he didn’t need her, and didn’t want to make a split.
What I did to make sure there was no aggression was to shake a lot of bees from brood frames out of various resource hives (hives without honey supers) onto the ground to allow the older bees to fly back home. Then after a while I put a brood box containing 2 brood frames with other drawn comb frames, with the cage in between the 2 brood frames onto the ground to allow the nurse bees to march into the entrance. Then I closed it up to bring home so as to make sure that none of the bees go back to their original hives.
Sorry I didn’t get to this sooner, @Eva. For very difficult hives, I have tried a few different methods.
If the hive is really hot, I split it down into to nuclei, if necessary, or 1 box if it is a 2 or 3 box hive. I then kill the old queen and wait for a week before introducing the new queen. The split makes the number of bees easier to handle while you search for, and destroy, every last queen cell. The bees seem to become much more docile when you reduce the colony size. The week of waiting means that the bees will have run out of eggs and larvae young enough to make a new queen, and have no other options for requeening when you introduce your new queen. This method is pretty successful for me.
Another method that I love, but really is only for advanced beekeepers, like yourself, is the Snelgrove one hour method. I have used this 3 or 4 times and it worked every time. It seems like it shouldn’t, but it does. This guy has written quite a nice description of it here:
I am glad that your local guy was able to help you. Sorry this is too late for you, but maybe next time, you can add it to your menu of options
Thank you so much my friend! It all adds to my understanding for next time
I’ll give that Snelgrove article a read. I consider my nerves fairly steely on the whole, which is why I came away so discouraged yesterday morning. So if there is a next time, I’ll be better-armed
that would be ideal.
