[crofter]

Is it necessary to exclude the queen from a section of the hive where I place a 48 hr started cell. Do I have to make that section of the hive queenless to get the workers to continue capping and incubating the cell?

 

[AR Beekeeper]

I have never done that procedure so I can't say for certain, but I would think that in a healthy colony with a vigorous queen the cell would be destroyed by the workers. It may depend on how far from the brood area the cell is placed.

 

[crofter]

I have a colony that I think has 2 supercedure cells started and approaching capping. The queen is present and laying. I think that I could swap out one of my started cells in this situation where they are already thinking that way.

I have seen supercedure started by the bees for no obvious reason to me. What would a person do to mimic what they are reacting to? Just wondering what signals I could give to any given colony to induce a non disruptive supercedure with a planted cell. Motivation where change of genetics is desired without having to find or remove old queen. Maybe this is just wishful thinking and not really feasible at all.:scratch:

 

[msl]

Lauri says just pop them in over the brood nest
https://www.beesource.com/forums/sh...ening-above-an-excluder&p=1447471#post1447471

Motivation where change of genetics is desired without having to find or remove old queen

yep... I have been chewing on it as a easy way for hobbyists to requeen packages with locally adapted/mite resistant genetics after install. Going to try some when the flow ends in a few weeks

 

[crofter]

Lauri says just pop them in over the brood nest
https://www.beesource.com/forums/sh...ening-above-an-excluder&p=1447471#post1447471


yep... I have been chewing on it as a easy way for hobbyists to requeen packages with locally adapted/mite resistant genetics after install. Going to try some when the flow ends in a few weeks

I thought you might have some ideas on it; keep us informed on your results. I have read some that open cells are less a target for destruction than a ripe cell but not a whole lot of conclusive experience about how predictable the outcome would be.

I can easily force it with snelgrove or cloake board but that is disruptive unless you are looking for increase.

I will see if I can find that post by Lauri.

 

[msl]

I will see if I can find that post by Lauri.

link is in my last post

 

[crofter]

Sorry msl; I missed the link........ speed reading again...

That is the info I was looking for. Seems uncapped cells better risk. Heading out now to check the grafts.

 

[crofter]

Looks like 9 of 14 grafts are accepted. I tore out 2 capped queen cells from other hive that I want to get rid of that queen. Replaced with one of the 48 hour cells. Below that colony and Snelgrove board they should be makeing their own queen on a frame I took from another colony 20 days ago. Thought they were threatening swarm but might have been supercedure too. Queen is kind of dozy and more Italian than I like.

This will not be an acid test of the 48 hour cells into a queenright colony because I think they are quite likely bent on supercedure anyway. Will have to keep that idea on the back burner.

 

[msl]

thought on cell placement
I like to put them high up on the frame or between the top bars so I can see the top of the JZBZ cup
that way I can check in a few days and see if there is royal jelly in the cup with out moveing frames... if there is the cell is accepted. If they don't accept the cell it gets cleaned out. They will some times web in the 48 to the facing frame and if you pull it out to look the cell gets torn.

 

[Michael Palmer]

Going to try some when the flow ends in a few weeks

I wouldn't wait until the flow ends. I've requeened queen-right colonies with cells placed in the supers. Works best on a flow

 

[crofter]

thought on cell placement
I like to put them high up on the frame or between the top bars so I can see the top of the JZBZ cup
that way I can check in a few days and see if there is royal jelly in the cup with out moveing frames... if there is the cell is accepted. If they don't accept the cell it gets cleaned out. They will some times web in the 48 to the facing frame and if you pull it out to look the cell gets torn.

Good advice msl; My only rationale on placement was to have them close to the spot where I removed the two capped cells they had raised.

 

[gww]

frank
You always have nice pictures.
Thanks
gww

 

[Bob Anderson]

I'm trying something new. I tossed a virgin queen that was only 2 hours since emergence into a queenright hive. Waiting to see who wins. Virgin queens have no real pheromonal presence so bees just ignore them. You can mark them and then just put them on a comb with nectar and bees. They usually just stick their head into a cell and start eating. The other bees just walk right over them. These days I pretty much always use virgin queens for requeening queenless colonies and mating nucs. This is my first try at requeening a queenright hive with them.

 

[crofter]

Bob;

Lauri has often referred "to running in a virgin" to tidy up a colony. No finding queen or messing about. The younger the better. Once they get some age on them the virgins start getting "attitude" and the workers are more likely to slap them down too.

I have never tried it with virgins but commonly pull the Snelgrove board and let the young mated queen join the colony below. I think Snelgrove claimed 80% of the time it is the younger queen that eventually takes the crown.

 

[msl]

an word on the cells
I have some locals trying the same right now...but just bumped in to this
https://www.nev.nl/pages/publicaties/proceedings/nummers/15/29-33.pdf

When a honeybee queen starts to fail, she is often superseded by a young queen that takes over reproduction inside the colony. Natural supersedure in winter leads to an unfertilised young queen and colony loss. To reduce these losses we tried to stimulate supersedure of queens earlier in the season. In 50 colonies we introduced queen cells with one-day-old larvae and capped queen cells. Although many larvae were fed initially, few of them were reared to mature queens and none of the cases resulted in supersedure. This suggests that supersedure cannot be evoked by artificially bypassing the initial phases of the process.

Just before we started Exp. 1, a natural supersedure process was going on in two colonies, and
before we introduced a new queen cell the natural queen cells were destroyed. These colonies were
among the three colonies that accepted the introduced cells with larvae and reared new queens
(Exp. 1). Obviously these colonies did want to supersede their queen. This observation gives a
strong indication that only colonies already trying to supersede their queen, are willing to accept
introduced cells with larvae to rear a new queen.

of note

1-day-old larvae were grafted into 120 queen cells, placed on frames and put into a
dequeened colony. The following day about 90 cells were found accepted

this makes me feel much better about my grafting:lpf:

 

[gww]

To crofters comment. I also think I remember lauri mentioning that putting the queen cell she came from on the enter cover helped with acceptance. Keep in mind, my memory might not be perfect.
Cheers
gww

 

[crofter]

Two capped cells I put into a queenright colony were allowed to emerge but it appears they did not replace the existing queen. I guess the workers have to feel their queen deserves replacing or they wont allow it to happen. I have to wait a while to look for eggs in another pair of colonies I made queenless and put in a ripe cell. Wishfull thinking that I could get a queenright colony to requeen merely by putting in a ripe cell.

gww; interesting about the apparent value of the pheremones from the cell itself. Maybe a defense mechanism against haveing their colony being taken over by any tramp virgin that shows up. The delay till a new queen actually got up to speed laying would not be survivally valuable.