What is the spearmint going to do? You need some open brood or queen pheromone to suppress the laying workers. The issue isn't with how the queen smells.
spraying laying worker hive for requeening
Has anybody successfully sprayed sugar water with spearmint on a laying worker hive and the new queen? I am going to try it today with some older queens that we are replacing.
Dave
Dave
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The idea for the spearmint is that it will hopefully disrupt the odors of the hive enough that they will not immediately recognize the queen as foreign. By the time that the sugar is cleaned up the hive odors will be transferred to the new queen. I realize this is probably not going to work. We do not have enough time left in the season to do the brood frame trick. The hives that we are dealing with are nucs that failed to re-queen themselves. I have been layed up from hip replacement surgery the past 3 weeks, and could not tend the hives to keep them from becoming laying worker hives.
Dave
Dave
Keep us updated Dave, I would like to hear the outcome of your trial :thumbsup:.
I think this would have better success with a regular requeening, especially if you were trying to remove the old queen and introduce the new queen at the same time. With laying workers, you are trying keep the new queen alive long enough to have her pheromones and/or open brood pheromones suppress the laying workers. You could try the spearmint with and extra long release of the queen or a manual release in 5 days or a week. You could increase the release time by putting some masking tape of the candy for them to chew through.The idea for the spearmint is that it will hopefully disrupt the odors of the hive enough that they will not immediately recognize the queen as foreign. By the time that the sugar is cleaned up the hive odors will be transferred to the new queen.
I have not tried it and I would be interested in the outcome. But I don't think it's an issue of "hive odors". I think it's an issue of them thinking they have a queen all ready...
Sorry to hear you have been out of commission.
Sounds like a hail mary. Good luck and let us know how it turns out.
Sounds like a hail mary. Good luck and let us know how it turns out.
had one with a laying worker I took them about 80 foot and shaked the bees out ,put the hive back and requeened. seem really simple to me.
Not with laying workers, but I have done it with Honey B Healthy for direct release of a queen in a queenless hive. That works very well, I'd love to know if you have any luck with a laying worker hive.Has anybody successfully sprayed sugar water with spearmint on a laying worker hive and the new queen? I am going to try it today with some older queens that we are replacing.
Dave
Not that simple, I've done that and had them kill the new queen immediately.
never had them kill a queen immediately. I asways put my queens in cages for few day to let them accept queen. always kept them from being killed also I guess you could leave them a day or so after shaking to let the pheromone dissipate and them to realize their queenless.Not that simple, I've done that and had them kill the new queen immediately.
I had tried it before and ended up killing my good productive queen.
First of all it is hard to measure how much spearmint to use in a solution without killing them.
And secondly, the smell wear off really fast so not enough time to mask the queen scent and for the
workers to accept her. The queen scent is too strong that the workers recognized it wasn't what they are used to.
And they will balled her without any hesitant.
Yep, too embarrassing to post my findings/experiments here so to speak. What works for me is to put the queen
inside a #8 window screen cover the frame entirely with the about to hatch capped workers.
First of all it is hard to measure how much spearmint to use in a solution without killing them.
And secondly, the smell wear off really fast so not enough time to mask the queen scent and for the
workers to accept her. The queen scent is too strong that the workers recognized it wasn't what they are used to.
And they will balled her without any hesitant.
Yep, too embarrassing to post my findings/experiments here so to speak. What works for me is to put the queen
inside a #8 window screen cover the frame entirely with the about to hatch capped workers.
Larry Connor spoke about this idea last weekend. He contends that there is not just "a laying worker", but several and they can fly. That one shakes them on the ground away from the hive, by the time you get back to the hive they beat you back. He didn't say how he recommends fixing things.had one with a laying worker I took them about 80 foot and shaked the bees out ,put the hive back and requeened. seem really simple to me.
Were I trying to requeen a laying worker(s) hive I would leave all the candy in the new queen's cage and remove any attendants from that cage. Better yet would be a cage that would confine the queen to a patch of comb until the bees were used to her so her odor could do its job.
Larry Connor spoke about this idea last weekend. He contends that there is not just "a laying worker", but several and they can fly. That one shakes them on the ground away from the hive, by the time you get back to the hive they beat you back. He didn't say how he recommends fixing things.
QUOTE]
I think the whole thing about shaking them out is that the laying worker has never left the hive so they cant find their way back or that what I been told by our beekeepers ass. here. sounded good and I only had to do it once but I work like a charm for me. the one thing that the old timers told me is to make sure all bees are out of it when you put hive back or if not you may not have knocked out the "want to bee queen".
Queens are hostile to each other and will actually hunt down other queens to kill them. I am wondering if this would be true for laying workers as well? In addition bees are hostile toward any queen but their own and will attack them immediately. This leads me to wonder if you could not combine two laying worker colonies and that thee bees would then hut down and kill any foreign laying workers? Add a frame of open brood at the same time and give the bees an opportunity to re queen themselves.
I don't think you can just ad a new queen to a laying worker colony because the colony considered it has a queen and will be hostile toward any new queen.
I don't think you can just ad a new queen to a laying worker colony because the colony considered it has a queen and will be hostile toward any new queen.
Update: We succeeded 100%. We re-queened 4 out of 4.
Dave
Dave
Good to know. Thanks for the report.
It looked like the queens never missed a beat on laying eggs. There are eggs to 3-4 day old larvae in all 4 hives. The queens pretty much had most of the available space layed up. When I had this idea I did not think there was a chance of 1 of the hives re-queening, much less all 4. It was a Hail Mary move. We saw all four queens and they were also marked. The mix I used is the same one that is on here for home made honey be healthy. It is 2:1 with lecithin as an emulsifier, lemon grass oil, and spearmint. Another point there were not any cells with multiple eggs. All of the eggs were dead center of the cells. What happened to the laying workers? When we introduced the queens, a week ago, there were cells all over the hive with multiple eggs. Some of the cells had so many eggs in them they looked like fly blow.
Dave
Dave
and lets not forget that all queenright hives most likely have many laying workers.
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