dead and dying bees part 3

[Malcolm McNabb]

Well i received a new queen on saturday and did a quick look for the old queen. No queen and lots of angry bees. So I put her in still in the cage , bottom box center of box. I carefully put her in between frames closed it up and hoped for the best...i started feeding them and they are drinking about a quart a day. Well when I came home tonight and walked out to the hive , just to see whats happening outside,they were dragging out the new dead queen, green dot the old queen had a red dot.Also they were quite cocky about it, as i reached to get her , zap zap zap , ouch. I refuse to give up so I have another queen on the way. should i try the screen wire over the comb,to see if she will start laying or what? It rained yesterday and i think they stayed home just to get her out of there. Thanks for the helpful suggestions

Malcolm

[Rob Mountain]

Malcolm

Yes, go for it. Use a push in cage. Make sure that there is not a virgin in the hive.

Rob


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If a job is worth doing - Then do it well

[jfischer]

Another approach would be to release all the
attendants from the queen cage prior to putting
it into the hive. (Remove cork from non-candy
end, hold thumb near hole, watch to see that
an attendant, rather than the queen, is exiting.

If the queen starts to exit, cover the hole
with your thumb, and she will back out.

Replace the cork when done releasing the attendants,
and leave the candy plug alone, except for removing
the cork that covers it. If the candy has been eaten
away, shove a hunk of a mini-marshmallow in where the
candy-end cork was to slow the bees down.

Wyatt Mangum did an extensive study on this, and
while queen introduction is nowhere near a “sure
thing”, removing the attendants and leaving the
candy in increases the odds of a successful queen
introduction significantly.

[Michael Bush]

Once they've killed one queen, I usually take a frame of open brood a frame of emerging brood and a couple of honey and pollen and put them and the next queen in there and the the nuc to accept the queen. Of course make sure there is no queen on the brood frames.

Once the nuc accepts the queen I put the nuc on a double screen board with a board on the side for a day or two. Then I do an newspaper introduction with the board on the side to cover the gap.

I haven't seen a nuc introduction fail. But I only do them when a standard one fails.

[db_land]

Hey Malcolm,
The push-in cage or the NUC approach are sure to work. If you decide to go with removing the attendants and introducing Her in the queen cage, IMO you should NOT remove the cork and allow the worker bees to release Her. You should be the one who decides where and when the queen is released. A couple of days after introducing the queen cage, check on how the bees are behaving towards the queen: if they're still covering and biting the cage, don't release her and search for another queen; if they're easy to brush off and non-aggressive, then release her and observe. This approach has worked consistently for me.