[Unknowntoman]

Ok so I have a heavily populated nasty hive with two supers on which I need to get off, and I have a spare queen which I bought for a nuc which I thought was queenless but turns out there is larvae and eggs today when i went to install her.

I want to somehow get this new queen into my hive and I am looking for any advice from anyone as this is my first attempt at re-queening. I am just not sure the best way to go about it.

 

[Richinbama]

Make a split off that nasty large hive. Pull a little honey, but leave enough for them to keep going. Also, fall flow there? You will need to feed your Bees up for fall and winter. Make sure ifntoud pull any honey, you give em plenty on winter food. Isn't Seattle a wet rainy place? Beat to start early, and .Make sure you have good winter population for em to survive. I'd pull one super of honey, and divide the 2nd box between the two hives and the split. Let em keep all they collect for winter stores, and feed them and give emnpollen sub to get pop up .

 

[kilocharlie]

Welcome to Beesource!

One trick is to disassemble the hive, place a brood box on the stand, close the entrance(S), and brush / blow off bees and place the brood frames back into the box, then cover it with a queen excluder. Place an empty box over the brood nest.

Now shake all the bees back into the upper box to go down through the excluder into the bottom brood box with the combs and brood in it. You'll very likely be able to spot the queen trying to get back down into the brood nest when most of the bees are back inside.

This brood / queen excluder / empty box arrangement acts as a filter to help you find the queen you wish to replace.

Grab the queen mother of the nasty hive by pressing down on her thorax and pinching her sides gently (or use a queen catcher clip), and cage her. Place her into a nuc' with a few dozen attendant girls. She stays alive as a backup plan until the new queen is accepted.

Next, place the new queen onto a nice flat frame with emerging capped brood under a push-in queen introduction cage. This allows her to lay eggs in any open cells, which brings up her pheromone levels, causing the wicked colony to accept here as the new queen.