[nc checkers]

I am requeening a hive with a virgin queen. I removed the old queen yesterday and put the cage on the top bars of the brood box using a spacer. I peeked in today to pull the plug and put some marshmellow in the hole and all the bees are ignoring her. Is this normal?

 

[Joseph Clemens]

Is the virgin queen less than three days old? Does the hive have its own, perhaps unnoticed, queen cell(s)/virgin queen/mated queen?

 

[Beeslave]

I think virgins don't have much for emitting pheremones. The other day I was finding queenless hives and hives that had emerging virgins from swarm cells. I just placed the virgins into the queenless hives and they didn't bother her at all. The first hive I added a virgin to I placed her on a frame and watched how the bees reacted to her. They totally ignored her. I threw 3 loose virgins in each queenless hive and will let them decide who stays.

 

[peacekeeperapiaries]

virgins dont emit the pheremones that a bred and laying queen does. As Beeslave experienced a virgin can be released and will very rarely get noticed. She will most likely kill an old queen in a queenright colony and will also spend a few days eliminating any cells (supercedure, or swarm) thus when she does fly out and breed she comes back to no competition. I would just release the virgin.

 

[nc checkers]

I think the queen will be 3 days old tomorrow afternoon so I will go in the morning to make sure she is released. Apparently her and her several sister queens were mostly emerging 16 days after I had removed the queen from that hive. I always thought bees would start cells from larvae much sooner than 3 days after the queen is gone. In this particular case they either tore down their early cells of waited a few days to start them.
I took the old queen out for a split on 4/22 and I went in on 5/8 and found several queens emerging and saw 2 on the frames. I was able to use some of the capped cells and virgins on hives that needed them.