[mwjohnson]

Hey,it's not often that one of my clever schemes really works,but it's fun trying.

Anyway,I got a bunch of queens from Mike Thomas (aka Bjornbee),and wanted to relase the attendants before introducing them,but I didn't want to loose any,and knew doing it inside wouldn't make my wife too happy.

Solution;I used my veil.I just layed my veil on the ground and opened the cage inside of it.It kind of just draped over both hands,and I gotta say it worked bee-u-ti-fully.It stopped 2 from getting away.
We don't need no stinking muffs.

Just feeling pleased with myself and wanted to share this moment with my friends here.

Have fun out there,keep COOL.
Mark Johnson

 

[Dick Allen]

I got some Nebraska queens from MB. Half I introduced with attendants, half without. All queens were accepted.
I released mine a little differently than you Mark. The ones I released were done using an empty queen cage. Its opening was placed over the opening of the cage containing the queen and attendants. Usually, but not always, it was the queen who first ventured into the other cage.

[ July 22, 2006, 12:17 AM: Message edited by: Dick Allen ]

 

[Chef Isaac]

I have a queen muff but havent used it yet. Someday!!!

 

[George Fergusson]

There's been a lot of discussion on the matter of removing attendants, or not, and whether it has any effect on queen acceptance. From what I can tell and in my own (limited) experience, it just doesn't make a difference.

 

[Dick Allen]

As George mentioned there has been a lot of discussion on the matter. Was it Wyatt Magnum who found better queen acceptance if the attendants were removed? I don't remember.

Cornell chief apiarist Peter Borst fairly recently posted on bee-L that they requeened numerous times both ways and found it made no difference. With my new queens, I did anguish a little over the best way to install and privately emailed Peter about his Bee-L comments. His reply again, they found it made no difference.

 

[Velbert]

I have noticed when you remove the attendants almost all of the Queens were laying the 3-4 day


with the attendants left in it was 2-3 days longer before laying.


When we use to get several Queens in we would take out the attendants and place them in a 5 frame Queen less nuc with bees and some brood from a strong hive and let them take care of them


in about 2 days the queens were bigger and even a few if you looked close you would find a few eggs in the q-cage they had lost.

Now if you leave them in for a long time they start to show preference to certain Queens or queen.

I have not need to do this in a long time don't know how the new generations of bees will react
they do seem to tend to things different than use to 20 years ago

 

[Dick Allen]

Interesting comments Velbert. I actually did notice some of the queens taking longer to begin laying, but I didn't keep track of which ones.

 

[George Fergusson]

>I have noticed when you remove the attendants almost all of the Queens were laying the 3-4 day with the attendants left in it was 2-3 days longer before laying.

There was a recent article in Bee Culture that talked about the effect of banking on how soon a queen starts laying. Queens that had been banked for some time took much longer to start laying than queens which were laying up until the time they were caged and shipped. I don't see how/why attendants should affect how long it takes a queen to start laying again, but there's a lot of things I don't know.

 

[mwjohnson]

Lot's I'd like to know,too.
On question that comes to mind is do the attendants act as guardians to the queen,in addition to their feeding,cleaning duties?
The reason I'm asking is that the other day,I noticed that after I released the attendants they quickly found the box of queens and immediately started to tend to those queens from the outside of the cage.
But when I finally finished up there were 3 dead bees in the box that contained the queens.
Their stingers were drawn,and I'm thinking that one of the attendants didn't like the look or manner of them,and stung the new helper through the screen.
But I'm speculating,of course,and was wondering, what was up with that?

Thanks for the tip,Dick.I will try that,under my veil,of course.
Mark Johnson

 

[Velbert]

Hi George

The queens that I was talking about were straight from the shipping cage.With the attendants in the cage the bees in the hive don't attend to her because of the strange workers (with out the attendants they will tend to her like she is their Queen because they have been with out for awhile and will began to feed her royal jelly this jump starts her ovaries and that is why she begins to lay quicker

And when we put them in the queen bank it was just usually for 3-4 days not for 2-3 weeks or a few mounts, unless bad weather set in and we could not get them put in and then it was only for a few extra days.