Introduction of queen failed, now what?

[Lori McAllister]

Made 2 splits last week. The first off my more mellow hive is doing great. The nuc I made off my more agressive hive I believe killed the new queen as soon as they released her. Found her on the bottom board yesterday. She had not started laying yet so there are no fresh eggs for them to make a new one. This nuc has 3 full frames of larvae and capped brood and lots of pollen and honey. It will be a week before I would get a new queen in the mail.

Is this too long for them to wait?
I have heard that it is hard to get bees to accept a new queen sometimes.
Is there a good chance they will just kill another queen I introduce since they killed the other one?
Would it just be better for me to take another frame of new eggs and brood from the old hive, brush all the bees off and add it to the nuc and see if they will make a new queen on there own?

Thanks for any thoughts!

[Michael Bush]

They will go a week and be ok. In a couple of weeks or more there's more of a possiblilty of a laying worker.

Letting them raise their own depends on your goals. If you have genetics you want to keep or you want your queens mated with local drones, then I'd let them raise their own. If not, it will still be a quicker build up for the bees if you buy a laying queen. It will take them 25 days from now (if you gave them some 3 day old larve right now) to have a queen laying. If you buy a laying queen and it takes a week for it to get here and it takes several days for her to start laying you'll still be two weeks ahead.

[Hook]

I would let them raise their own queen, or I would put a frame of eggs from the mellow hive, into the aggressive one, and let them raise one of those. You might get another queen that produces mellow. Anyway, you know where the eggs came from anyway.

Like Michael said, its going to be 25 days, until it starts to lay, and another 3 weeks before they hatch.


I think you will be alright. Your colony will not be super strong, but plenty strong to winter.

[Joel]

Unless you are just enjoying watching your hive depopulate for 25 or so days order a qualtiy queen right away and give your bees the best chance you can to have a successful season. I'm assuming since you mentioned the hive is aggressive you would not be interested in that hive for it's genetics.

[Lori McAllister]

Thanks everybody!
Yes, because the hive is more agressive I decided to order a new queen and hope that the new queen is more mellow. The queen in the hive I made the split from lays soooo well (complete full frames of eggs) that I will put up with them being more agressive. I just don't want to deal with 2 agressive hives. The new queen should be here on Tue. so I will just see how it goes!
Lori

[briancady413]

Couldn't Lori just combine the two nuc hives with a sheet of newspaper and get one strong new hive this season?

Brian Cady

[HarryVanderpool]

Lori, the question is: why did they kill her?
In my opinion, the answer is in your question:

"Made 2 splits last week........ Found her on the bottom board yesterday."

I believe that you disturbed the hive too soon after introduction, and they "balled" the queen.
O.S.B.A. President, Kenny Williams advises beekeepers not to disturb the hive for 10 days after introduction of a new queen.
I give it two weeks if possible.
I made 77 splits and 13 nucs so far this year with 100% acceptance heeding Kenny's advice.
I have lost some in the past and now believe that disturbance before full acceptance and a balance of brood pherimone to be the answer.
:cool:

[Michael Bush]

A daughter queen of a hot queen is often quite mellow.

But a hot hive is hard to requeen sometimes. You can always setup a nuc with the new queen and then combine.

[Lori McAllister]

I made the split and put the new queen and cage right in after doing the split.
>Should I have waited 24 hours before putting her in the new split and let them be queenless for a little bit?
I was thinking that you could just put the queen right in.

I am hoping that the new queen will be a little more mellow, but I hope her laying is as good as her mothers!
Thanks for the replies!

[Michael Bush]

"If, after removing the natural queen, a stranger is immediately substituted, the usurper is ill received. I never could succeed in making them adopt her, but by allowing an interval of twenty or twenty-four hours to elapse."

François Huber, 30. August 1791.
New Observations on the Natural History of Bees

I always shoot for overnight if possible before a direct release. 24 hours is probably best.

[Joel]

Michael, I would be interested in hearing more about 24 hour direct release circumstances. I know you don't often destroy queens for replacement but have you had success in making nucs doing this, is it your standard practice and what kind of percentages have you seen. We do quite a few nucs/splits over the period of a week every year. We install new queens in everything but the cage removal is always a time consuming and of course you know what happens if you don't get the frame space right with a cage in. Direct release would be ideal for us if it has a reasonable success . We do make sure every nuc has eggs just in case as a management practice.

[Michael Bush]

Everything is just a matter of odds. If you have a lot at stake (like an expensive breeder queen) I'd do a push in cage in a nuc and then a newspaper combine with a hive that's been queenless for 24 hours.

If you don't want to take too many chances you can do a candy cage release in a hive that's bee queenless a minimum of 2 hours and a maximum of 24 hours. I find overnight seems to be ideal, even if it's from 5:00 pm to 9:00 am.

And, of course, there is a direct release. I've done them with as little as two hours and succeded. But sometimes it fails. Again, it depends on what is at stake. Sometimes what is at stake is another two hours of driving plus gasoline as opposed to a queen I reared myself.

[Lori McAllister]

If you make the split and then put the queen (in her cage w/candy plug) directly into the new nuc, will they accept her fairly well then?

This is what I did with the above nuc.
I am trying to learn what seems to work the best.

[Michael Bush]

I would wait at least two hours and preferably overnight before putting the queen in the new split. They need to know they are queenless so they don't have a defensive reaction to the queen. I try not to go over 24 so they don't start emergency queen cells.

[Ricko]

Michael,your thoughts please on immediate replacement.
Fill a spray bottle with a small bottle of double strength vanilla. To this add some water.
Spray the top bars and down in between wetting a good amount of the bees. Spray the queen in the queen cage and let her go onto one of the outside frames. The thinking being the vanilla masks all smells and through the cleaning process the queen is accepted. Oh, I might add that this is all done just after the old queen has been removed.

[Michael Bush]

I'd still remove the old queen and wait at least an hour. One could remove all the queens, take a break and come back and introduce them. Even an hour would make a huge difference in the bees' awareness of their queenless state.

[roger eagles]

Take and shake the hive and get the shakings off,put the queen in the shakings,2 days later,join them.

[Lori McAllister]

What a mess!!
This split has my head spinning. They have hatched out at least 20 queens. Have kept track each day by picking up the ones I find at the base of hive.
Last night takes the cake. I get home and check the front of the hive and find 2 very nice plump looking queens wandering around in front on the ground. One had a few workers huddling around her. They were both very active. I marked them both and caged them both. Then I opened the hive and did a real good search for another queen. Could not find one. So I put the one queen back in the hive that had all the attendence around her. (probably bad idea) My thinking was that one of them was the established queen and was fighting the other and somehow ended up outside.
Found her dead on the ground this morning along with 4 others. I am hanging on to this other queen I have caged with some workers until I could check the hive this afternoon.
When I got to the hive and had just set my smoker down I heard a swarm in an apple tree 25 feet away start to take off. Saw it right away at least 2-3 pounds of them hanging on the branch. They were all flying and within a minute they were headed down toward the river.
On Checking my split There were still a ton of bees in it so I am not sure that this was from my hive!!?? Still can not find a queen and no eggs. The queen cells are all empty now and I counted 26! So I plan to wait 24 hours check again for a queen and then introduce this last one I have that I found last night.

Any ideas or warnings?
Like I said my head is spinning!! :confused:

Lori

[Michael Bush]

It must have been a very strong split to raise that many queens. Apparently they had already decided to swarm and your split didn't convince them not to.