Pheromone

[grizzly]

When removing frames with bees from the brood box to make up a nuc, at what point do those bees become non returnable to the hive they came from?, minutes, hours, days?

This is not something I intend to try and I realise if we remove frames anyway it's with purpose but I'm curious.

Anyone returned a frame of bees after some time has elapsed. ?

 

[Firegazer]

A nice question - I'd be interested too.

My guess is "after 30 mins or so, the first colony will notice and react". As soon as they start swapping food with others in the nuc which contains the queen pheremone of the new (nucleus) queen.

It could be way different if there's no active queen yet in the nuc, just a sealed QC waiting to emerge. In this case, maybe it takes longer because it's just a slightly different mix of forage, rather than a different queen that's been licked

Any other guesses? Or even better, someone who knows?

FG