Bees killing virgin queens

[Tuttle]

I was told that checking a hive that has a queen who has just hatched can cause the bees to think something is wrong with her and kill it. Is this true? I've never experienced this before although I usually just leave them alone after I check that they have capped the queen cells and wait till the queen starts laying when making my splits. Anyways I was just curious if this was true or not.

[BeeAware]

It appears to be true. Sometimes the bees seem to blame the queen, whether virgin or mated, with the disturbance. I sometimes give a virgin queen to a nuc when she is less than 24 hours old with good results. I always leave the nuc alone for several days after such an introduction. Older virgin queens can be more difficult to introduce into a colony.

[bkeypurr]

If the colony/growing queen were disturbed during the crucial wing development stage (around day 14, I think), you may damage the wings and not have a viable queen. Have not heard of a problem with the colony not accepting a new queen it has raised, although I am sure it would be possible.

Here's a theory: New queen emerges and the colony is opened by beek before the new queen's scent has made it through the population of the colony. Now the colony may have set off the alarm and would be looking for would be intruders. Now guard bees are out looking for trouble and find a bee whose scent the do not recognize and kill it.:eek:

If introducing a new/old queen to a queen-less colony, I always do so with a frame of brood/eggs. The brood scent puts the worker back to work rearing brood and gives them the idea that the newly introduced queen was responsible for the brood. Before I started doing this, my success rate at introducing queens was lower.

[JBJ]

I have found that if they are attacking a virgin that there is usually another one present that they are more loyal to. If you find a queen being balled, keep looking, there will usually be another queen present.