introduction nuc

[jenkinsbrynmair]

going through all this faff was the outcome of all the information i found from www and advice also from this forum to get the the queens as close to 100 % accepted.
but its done now and just got to move on to the next step.

So far the advice is to leave them till new queen has its own bees emerging. What is the reason behind it? all the young bees emerging from "old" added brood with new queen will accept her as their queen. Is there any scientific reason behind it ? Do other queens offsprings remember their "mother" so they have an attitude problem towards the new queen? Even though she was there before they came out of their cells?

One thing i can think of maybe worth the wait is the brood pattern and brood health? To see how well is she doing before joining with main colony.

Lauri

The reasoning behind waiting for her to be on her own brood and with her own bees is that you are putting the new queen at an advantage - she has the superior colony with bees loyal only to her so uniting two colonies is less fraught with problems.
As I tried to explain - if you don't wait the three or four weeks you might as well have put her in an introduction cage sgtraight into the receiving (Q- colony as the odds are about the same on her being accepted.
Saying that, I've never had an issue with introducing the caged queen straight into a colony almost immediately after removing the unwanted queen but leaving the candy covered for a few days so they can't get at her.

 

[sahtlinurk]

by the end of week three if she starts to lay now there will be only a very few " her" bees, most of them are the offsprings of the queen from the colony i took brood frames to make up the nucs. isn't it so. I understand the colony will be stronger but it will be as strong with in a week when all the old brood has emerged as it is after waiting for 3 weeks. only difference is the amount of new brood. And they are still not "her" bees.

next time will try to introduce the queen straight to the main colony.will see how it goes.

cheers,
Lauri