Requeening questions

[dougn]

My four new queens just arrived. I've requeened in the past. But my hives are a bit different this year, so I'm looking for advice. This year my hives have more drone comb than usual, seem a bit more scattered, but also have plenty of regular brood. I suspect I won't be able to zip through them and find all the old queens immediately, so I may requeen over several days/evenings. My questions are:
1. How long can queens survive in those little boxes?
2. Do you usually feed them something? She has attendants.
3. Where is the best place to keep them?
4. Do most people kill the old queen, wait a day, then introduce the new queen?
5. How exactly do you kill the old queen - sort of thank her, then squish her?
6. Should I do anything differently if I find queen cells in a hive?

Thanks,
Doug

[BEES4U]

1. How long can queens survive in those little boxes?
No more than 3 days--5 maximum!

2. Do you usually feed them something? She has attendants.
One droplet of water daily. The attendants care for her/their needs.

3. Where is the best place to keep them?
In the dark at 60-70 degrees F.

4. Do most people kill the old queen, wait a day, then introduce the new queen?
In the field we kill the old queen and introduce the new queen. However, you can kill the old queen the day before you introduce the caged queen.

5. How exactly do you kill the old queen - sort of thank her, then squish her?
you might put her in a 2 frame divide for back up in case the new queen does not become accepted. Some people squish her remains over the caged queen's screen.

6. Should I do anything differently if I find queen cells in a hive?
Destoy all rogue queen cells. The rogue cells prevent acceptance of your caged queen.
# 7. Feed the colony syrup to help queen acceptance 3 days prior and post introduction.

# 8. Do not disturbe the hive for 7-10 days. Wait for the new queen to get a egg laying pattern deveoped. Disturbance can trigger balling of the queen.

# 9. I just shook out 200 four pound packages and I will not disturbe those hives for 7-10 days. Please be patient and let the queen do her work.
Good Luck,
Ernie Lucas Apiaries
(Queen Breeder)

[dougn]

Thanks for the answers Ernie - I will follow your advice.

Doug

[Michael Palmer]

Try this...

Are your colonies in two deeps and some supers? Brood in all stages in the deeps? OK, the top deep in each hive to be requeened will be your re-queening nuc.

Remove the supers from hive to be re-queened. Remove frames from top brood box, shaking ALL the bees back into the colony, and remove box. Place supers back on hive. Place excluder on supers. Place brood box and brood frames on excluder. There is honey and brood in all stages here. Cover, and leave over night.

Next morning, replace excluder with an inner cover. The escape hole must be closed with duct tape, etc. The inner cover rim should be up, and entrance notch to the rear of the hive. Brood box and brood and bees goes on this inner cover. Give caged queen. Pull cork. Cover.

Allow new queen to lay for 3-4 weeks. Then, when you have more time, kill old queen(s) below, and unite over newspaper.

You can set up many colonies like this in a day. You don't have to spend time searching for queens, so you gets the queens in a nuc right away. For a time there are two queens laying, so you get more brood. You can judge the new queen, before you get rid of the old one...sometimes, the new queen is worse than the old one.

[Fred Bee]

>>5. How exactly do you kill the old queen - sort of thank her, then squish her?<<

I hate killing my old queens. It seems a thankless task...but I just tell myself it is in the best interest of the colony. Yes...I usually just catch the old queen and say "thanks" for everything...and then do the deed of smushing her. I don't like to do it...but I do. I used to smush her on the new queen cage to impart some of her odor but I quit doing that a number of years ago and have found that it hasn't made much difference in acceptance.

[Michael Bush]

I drop all the old queens in a jar of alcohol. I use the alcohol for swarm lure.