Or, maybe I should have titled this "how to kill a queen in 4 seconds". Ugh!
I have a very strong hive of mutts (mostly italian behavior- pedal to the metal on brood all year, not like the frugal winter cluster of my other hives, and tendency to make too many drones). I'm interested in trying some VSH characteristics, so I got a mated VSH queen from Z's Bees last weekend to requeen a split from half of this hive. I used a queen excluder over the course of a week to shake all the bees out of the top super (5 mediums), then let them move up through the excluder. Every few days, I did the same thing with the next box under the excluder, ending up with 2 mediums under the excluder with brood & the queen, and 3 mediums above the excluder with brood and honey. I split the hive by putting the bottom two boxes (queenright) with lots of open and capped brood onto a new bottom board, swapped a few side frames to ensure plenty of nectar, honey, and pollen (knowing they'd be initially light on foragers) and set up the hive a few feet away from the original hive. As soon as they are stabilized and strong with foragers (a couple of weeks), they will be gifted to a local friend who is getting back into beekeeping.
I left the queenless half of the split in the original location (since that's the hive I wanted to keep, with the new queen, and I didn't want to move them again as they established) - three mediums, lots of open & capped brood, with the top box full of nectar and partially capped honey on 6 of 10 frames. On Monday morning (a couple of hours after splitting), I put the queen cage (with several attendants) screen down, wedged between the top bars in the middle of the top of the second box, immediately adjacent to brood. This afternoon (Friday, 4-1/2 days later), I went through the hive for queen cells, and found about a dozen (mostly capped), which I removed so that they wouldn't emerge and compete with the new queen. In addition to plenty of cool smoke, I misted with 1:1 sugar solution to add to the confusion and general happiness, but it wasn't sufficient. There were a couple of bees on the outside of the screen of the queen cage, and it looked more sociable than "balling" behavior, so I figured without a queen and with 4-1/2 days under their belt to get acquainted, it was time to release her. Big mistake! She crawled out of the cage, and in seconds she was attacked and stung to death by 3 or 4 determined bees, game over. Grrrrr....
Next time, the new queen is going in the half of the split in the new location without the foragers and older guard bees. To salvage the situation, I swapped in a frame with plenty of eggs and mixed open & capped brood from one of my other hives from whom I'd love to have a daughter queen, and I'll let them sort it out.
I have a very strong hive of mutts (mostly italian behavior- pedal to the metal on brood all year, not like the frugal winter cluster of my other hives, and tendency to make too many drones). I'm interested in trying some VSH characteristics, so I got a mated VSH queen from Z's Bees last weekend to requeen a split from half of this hive. I used a queen excluder over the course of a week to shake all the bees out of the top super (5 mediums), then let them move up through the excluder. Every few days, I did the same thing with the next box under the excluder, ending up with 2 mediums under the excluder with brood & the queen, and 3 mediums above the excluder with brood and honey. I split the hive by putting the bottom two boxes (queenright) with lots of open and capped brood onto a new bottom board, swapped a few side frames to ensure plenty of nectar, honey, and pollen (knowing they'd be initially light on foragers) and set up the hive a few feet away from the original hive. As soon as they are stabilized and strong with foragers (a couple of weeks), they will be gifted to a local friend who is getting back into beekeeping.
I left the queenless half of the split in the original location (since that's the hive I wanted to keep, with the new queen, and I didn't want to move them again as they established) - three mediums, lots of open & capped brood, with the top box full of nectar and partially capped honey on 6 of 10 frames. On Monday morning (a couple of hours after splitting), I put the queen cage (with several attendants) screen down, wedged between the top bars in the middle of the top of the second box, immediately adjacent to brood. This afternoon (Friday, 4-1/2 days later), I went through the hive for queen cells, and found about a dozen (mostly capped), which I removed so that they wouldn't emerge and compete with the new queen. In addition to plenty of cool smoke, I misted with 1:1 sugar solution to add to the confusion and general happiness, but it wasn't sufficient. There were a couple of bees on the outside of the screen of the queen cage, and it looked more sociable than "balling" behavior, so I figured without a queen and with 4-1/2 days under their belt to get acquainted, it was time to release her. Big mistake! She crawled out of the cage, and in seconds she was attacked and stung to death by 3 or 4 determined bees, game over. Grrrrr....
Next time, the new queen is going in the half of the split in the new location without the foragers and older guard bees. To salvage the situation, I swapped in a frame with plenty of eggs and mixed open & capped brood from one of my other hives from whom I'd love to have a daughter queen, and I'll let them sort it out.