Requeening with queen cells

[Ian]

Does anyone here have any experience with re-queening thier hives by placing cells into the hive during a flow?
I am just wondering, when placing the cells on the outer edge of the nest, in a flow/feed situation, what kind of likely tear down % there is if the cell is put in without pertection.

In this induced superceedure, does anyone have any feel of what kind of re-queen sucess likely would happen during this proceedure?

Anyone with comments or links to references is quite welcome,

[suttonbeeman]

Use the plastic queen cell protector and you will have over a 4-5 year period about 80% success! I never find a queen unless the hive is very hot or just happen to see her.....I average about 80 percent!

[Ian]

Cool. 80% is great.
How many hives do you requeen this way a year? when do you do it?
What kind of queen cell protector do you use? the ones I find in my local bee shop seem to be way too small.
Do you make your own cells?

[jean-marc]

Ian:

I've also read 80% success that people claim to have but I'm very skeptical. I've done something like what you said except that I place 2 queen cells in the hive. Previous to that I place a solid inner cover between the 2 boxes. I do not check for the queen.The top box gets the entrance facing the back. I've done this 2 times. Basically it's a giant pain. Sometimes I get lucky and both boxes have a new queen. Sometimes I'm real unlucky and neither box has a queen. Other times I have the old queen in 1 box a new in the other. I also get 1 new and 1 queenless so on and so forth. The real trouble is when the queenless unit does not accept the cell and makes it's own. Then when you start checking for eggs you have a virgin. So that's the real pain because I have to check again.

What I do not like about the method is that sometimes virgin hatches and kills the old queen, goes out to get mated and bird eats her. So when I started out I had a colont with a perfectly good, albeit older queen and now I have a queenless colony that has no chance of requeening herself. Now if you have some bees that exhibit the mother daughter
combination and you requeen with that kind of cell the virgin does not kill mother/aunt, thenif she does not get mated you are not out a queen. I know a little bit about keeping bees on the prairies, you guys do not have a lot of time to fool around. The season is very short and intense and you don't really have time to be checking for queens when you are pulling honey.

Suttonbeeman: What happens to the other 20% that do not have success? Are they queenless?

Jean-Marc

[suttonbeeman]

We use queen cells and only buy queens to use for grafting to get differant breeds for hybrid vigor. Last year I requeened about 400 ....what happens to the other 20%.....The old queen surives or on occasion they may raise their own queen or it goes queenless. I am planning on runnning 1200 colonies next year.....If one goes queenless you either unite it or give it a queen cell....you cant worry about the 10% of hives that dont work out.....takes too much time to baby them!

[suttonbeeman]

Almost forgot...the protector can be bought from Mann Lake....you can purchase the one that hangs between the top bars or a push in cage....I use the top bar type for speed. They are orange in color.....and I think about 5 cents and I have reused them. I will be leaving for Florida tomorrow as my bees are coming back from California and will be away from computer for a couple of weeks. Rick

[suttonbeeman]

Works best during a honey flow

[Ian]

So basically Jean-marc , your setting up a two queen hive. Sounds interesting
Say, do you do any frame orginization within the two boxes before you slide in your divide? Also are you doing this proceedure after your split?
How do you manage the boxes after the new queened unit has mated and started laying? would you manage the hive with screened division boards up until the flow, and then unite the two boxes?

[sjj]

I have just read an article on requeening with a queen cell without looking for the old queen.
http://www.carricell.com/Articals.html

I am very impressed but I would like to ask a question:

Can the young virgin queen swarm? Or the old queen: can she run away with the bees?

[ScadsOBees]

Can the young virgin queen swarm? Or the old queen: can she run away with the bees?

Only if they were already ready to swarm. And then they would be full of swarm cells anyway. Otherwise the young queen could lay along side of the old queen for a while, or the old queen will be killed.