Queen Intro. ???

[NeilV]

I have a smallish hive that I requeened. I put the cage in there last Tuesday. This was one of the wooden queen cages, and it had candy in one end and a cork wedged in the other. When I installed it, I covered the candy end with electrical tape to slow the introduction. I checked on Saturday, and the bees were being aggressive to her, so I put it back in.

I checked after work, and the queen was out and the cork was gone (the electrical tape over the candy end was okay). Question: Can bees remove those corks/what the heck happened?

I did an inspection to see if they had killed her. Good news. First saw eggs, then saw the queen walking around with bees treating her nicely. However, I also had two frames where there were what looked like very small queen cells. I assume that they started rasing queens with old larvae and got some goofy/small queen cells. I tore all of them out that I could find, figuring that they do have eggs at this point.

Question: Should I check for more queen cells or leave it alone at this point?

[Hambone]

Not sure about the cork. I guess with team work anything can happen.

The small queen cells were probably queen cups. Normal. They may not like her though and they will let her lay enough eggs to supercede her with. Inspect and see if there is larve in the cups.

They will not raise queens with old larve.

[NeilV]

These were not cups. Some of my hives are Russian, so I know all about cups. These were capped.

[Velbert]

was banking a queen a few years back and have seen 80% of the cork misssing.