Caging a queen to break brood cycle for requeening?
I was thinking about trapping my current queen in a plastic queen clip and keeping her in the middle of the hive to break the brood cycle to prevent any queen cells from being drawn in the hive. I want to requeen this hot hive in to something less aggressive. I was thinking it might fool the bees in thinking the queen is still in the hive but allowing the resident brood to mature beyond the point of making a queen. Then i could add a queen cell from one of my gentle nucs to place the old queen. Thought it might be easier than tearing two deeps down looking for supersedure cells. Do you think this might work?
Re: Caging a queen to break brood cycle for requeening?
Are you confident that there will be drones around to mate with the new queen after she emerges? It looks to me as though you have forecast lows of 39 degrees this weekend.
http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/...ry=marietta+ok
Re: Caging a queen to break brood cycle for requeening?
Some will still make emergency cells with the queen caged...even under a push-in cage. Just pull the old queen, cut the emergency cells before any emerge, and requeen.
Re: Caging a queen to break brood cycle for requeening?
Still had a lot of drones as of yesterday.
Re: Caging a queen to break brood cycle for requeening?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Michael Palmer
Some will still make emergency cells with the queen caged...even under a push-in cage. Just pull the old queen, cut the emergency cells before any emerge, and requeen.
Yep I've personally witnessed that. Caged a queen after a cutout. Left the hive closed for a couple days. When i got the hive home and inspected it. It was loaded with queen cells. I released the queen and she ignored them as though they weren't even there. Even allowed them to cap them. So i made a couple splits. One was successful.
Re: Caging a queen to break brood cycle for requeening?
Yup, using the Mann Lake grid graftless system for obtaining larva for queen cells, the hives sometimes made wild queen cells with the original queen locked up in the grid in the hive. I opened my hive with my best breeder queen and found a new queen residing there! Then I found the original marked queen! THEN I found ANOTHER new queen! All laying. DOH!
Luckily I was able to remove two of the queens and give them their own hives. I obviously missed the queen cells they made while the breeder was in the grid. I was very lucky I didn't lose the original queen.
Re: Caging a queen to break brood cycle for requeening?
Queen needs to move around to spread her pheromones and/or the bees sense a shutdown and think the queen has gone bad, hence they make some emergency cells.
Re: Caging a queen to break brood cycle for requeening?
MP is right on, as usual. I'd only suggest that they be left queenless for 2 or 3 hours, and the new queen be introduced in a Laidlaw push-in queen introduction cage. No self-release candy, inspect that they are not balling the introduced queen, but are feeding and tending her. Then release her yourself. I would go with a mated queen, not a cell nor a virgin this late in the year. If a break in the brood cycle is your goal, you are taking a risk. I'd do that mid-season, maybe as late as mid-August. A queen cell is a natural choice then. Give her brood to another colony instead, or split them and add a queen to the new split, watching it for mite count. Pull the drone brood out with your capping fork and check visually for mites. Best of luck.
