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
that would be ideal.