How long have you waited for a postal queen to start laying?

jenkinsbrynmair · Jul 23, 2016

maddydog said:
Fair enough, but I'd be happy to wager that the vast majority of failed queen introductions is due to there being one of: a) virgin q, b) duff mated queen, c) laying workers, in the colony.

laying workers are no problem - but a lot of the time you'll find the old queen never went!

sipa · Jul 23, 2016

So true.

Cazza · Jul 24, 2016

The LASI queen I ordered has taken approximately 12 days to begin to lay. Patience remains a virtue.
Cazza

The Drone Ranger · Jul 29, 2016

Cazza said:
The LASI queen I ordered has taken approximately 12 days to begin to lay. Patience remains a virtue.
Cazza

Was that a mated queen Cazza or a virgin ?

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Cazza · Jul 29, 2016

Mated (the £45 ones) Laying well now.
Cazza

Tremyfro · Jul 29, 2016

My LASI queen is laying but she is still only on a patch of brood. The patch is getting larger....but I'm not impressed...however...the rest of the nuc is squeaky clean!
I've introduced a few new queens this year. I lay the queen cage on top of the bars and watch for a while for the bee behaviour. I was told that if you can wipe them off the queen cage easily....then they are accepting her. If they cling on hard...she isn't being accepted at that time. I found if I took away the cage for a little while and then put it back on the frames in the same place...then the bees accepted her. I released one queen immediately but the others went into the hive for 24 hours with the tab in place...then I took off the tab and the bees released her within a few hours.
One queen...my Aga Queen, was killed when she was introduced to a nuc...which was supposed to be queenless. I had previously put in a frame and they made a couple of queen cells. So I thought it was safe but no it wasn't. There was a virgin in the nuc. She also killed the queen cells too. She is a small black queen and now laying the nuc up. She was difficult to spot...but now she wears a white dot so spotting her will hopefully be a bit easier. I did spot her originally ...when she was a virgin but not since. They can be devilish hard to see.