RE-queening

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Poly Hive

Queen Bee
Joined
Dec 4, 2008
Messages
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Location
Scottish Borders
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
12 and 18 Nucs
6 weeks is the life of the worker yes? Give or take a day or three aye?

Given nasty bees how soon would a change of queens make an odds? 6 weeks or so yes?

I did a re-queening exercise some 14 days ago, for some who have not been reading, and with in some 4 days there was a difference in that bees were not meeting me at the gate and wanting to sting...

Now there is a profound difference.

Which says what?

It is not the queen per see, but it is the queen substance which has been my thinking for long enough but this is the first time I have done an experiment on this scale, 18 queens bought in and 17 accepted.

Temperament changed as said above with in four days.

As I say I have my thoughts but please feel free to discuss.

PH
 
Totally agree but I find when selling queens and instructing people how to introduce that lack of patience is the big problem, I left a queen in a cage for in excess of 10 days in a colony that just would not accept her but carefull watching on a couple of occasions told me when to let them eat her out and then to leave for at least ten days after release, temper changed immediately to me but then that was ten days later as I left them to it, but yes the new queen can and does change the temper of bees that are not her proginy.
kev
 
I think it's both. Both the hormone factor and the genetic factor.

A change of queen can have an almost immediate effect on colony temperament, but also after 6 weeks you can get the emergence of different bees with a more gentle disposition, thanks to their genes.

Temper is definitely a hereditary trait in bees.
 
Hi
New and curious so hope you don't mind me asking.

Were there any other changes, ie weather, wasps etc

Pete
 
The weather turned for the worse after the intro. Flow also dried up so they should have been getting worse not better.

PH
 
Re queening does have a quick effect on colony temper.....found this many times. I prefer to raise my own queens through the summer and use these rather than buy in.....athough i do buy some for breeding purposes.
Surprised you had so many bad tempered one's Poly.....where did they come from,are they carni crosses?
 
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Only one really bad one and that was the swarm that came in that I got on vid.

My main reason was to go back to AMM.

PH
 
Totally agree but I find when selling queens and instructing people how to introduce that lack of patience is the big problem, I left a queen in a cage for in excess of 10 days in a colony that just would not accept her but carefull watching on a couple of occasions told me when to let them eat her out and then to leave for at least ten days after release, temper changed immediately to me but then that was ten days later as I left them to it, but yes the new queen can and does change the temper of bees that are not her proginy.
kev
Kev,
What indicators do you watch for or how do you know when to remove the candy door.
 
Kev,
What indicators do you watch for or how do you know when to remove the candy door.

I'm not Kev, but.....

Having lost £60 worth of new queens this season due to balling ( and possibly impatience on my part), I have made a new crownboard for one of my nuclei- this is the design on the dave cushman site that has a hinged perspex viewing area. The idea is that you can unobtrusively observe the bees behaviour towards the queen and only release her when they stop the cage biting.

I put my newly arrived queen in a butler cage ( sealed with bee proof material) this morning, and already cage looks like a hedgehog with bees biting the cage. She will only get released when all this settles down: I believe this can take up to 10 days. I'll take a video and post later.
 
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What indicators do you watch for or how do you know when to remove the candy door

I use JZ BZ cages and much as plumberman says but not with any fancy crownboards,( I have'nt got the time to spare,) I just watch the bees behaviour towards the caged queen, when they are not trying to bite or kill her and they are feeding her I then remove the plastic cap and LEAVE THEM COMPLETELY ALONE for at least 7 preferably ten days, going in to soon will cause panic and risk balling.
kev
 
I put my newly arrived queen in a butler cage ( sealed with bee proof material) this morning, and already cage looks like a hedgehog with bees biting the cage. She will only get released when all this settles down: I believe this can take up to 10 days.

I had a similar problem this year with one colony who had failed to raise their own queens from 3 test frames and then killed a caged queen, so I made up a nuc of young bees who were more than happy to accept a caged queen, unfortunately they couldn't defend themselves against a major attack of wasps. Hundreds of dead bees and over 30 dead wasp littered the floor.

I had no option but to combine them with the queenless hive as planned but I didn't have the equipment spare to do it properly. I caught the queen in a queen clip

945211297.jpg


with several other bees and opened the queenless hive and removed the QE and replaced it with a crown board after coating all the queenless bees in the brood chamber from above with powdered sugar. I removed 2 undrawn super frames and placed the queen clip in the space and all the remaining young bees and once again covered them with an extra generous coating of powdered sugar.
3 days later I returned to check if they were balling, the queen was fine, no other bees in the clip were dead the whole hive was clean and sugar free.

In a week or so time I hope to combine another long term queenless colony with this one if the queen is laying but I will use the newspaper method which has to date been 100% successful numerous times.
 
Vid of bees surrounding butler cage. Blue marked queen just visible beneath.

I'll see if I can take a comparative video when they are settled.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRm2Yi2oUug[/ame]
 
Nice video plumberman.

I lost two queens a fortnight ago that i tried introducing. One was in one of theose orange cages and i made the mistake of removing the plastic tab straight away and letting them start removing the candy.
The other Q was put in one of those flat cages about 5" square that you push into emerging brood. They had left the candy plug and tunnelled in through the wax. No sign of eggs in either hive this week so i assume they killed her off.

3 being introduced at the moment. Put them in Wednesday and have just been up and remove the plastic tab on two but the other hive is still making Q cells so i`ve knocked them down and i`ll give them a few more days to see if they accept her.

I`d be boring if it was easy :banghead:
 
I used the 'Norton' method of introducing 3 queens a couple of weeks ago. This seemed to work well with only a single failure which was probably due to me not puting enough tape over the candy plug. The little monkeys can chew through 2 layers of masking tape overnight! bee-smillie
I would love to be able to replicate Polyhives success and hope experience will show me before I waste too many good queens?
Cheers
 
I like plumbermans idea, I`ve got a couple of perspex crown boards. I might try it that way next time.

Darren.
 
I thought i`d seen it somewhere before. Hope you have better luck than me.
0/2 so far.
Hopefully it will be 3/5 in a few days. :)

Darren.
 
Are you guys trying to introduce new Queens to full hives.......or nuc-size colonies?

It makes a big difference!
 
Are you guys trying to introduce new Queens to full hives.......or nuc-size colonies?

It makes a big difference!

One was a colony that had been Qless for about 6 weeks and the other was a nuc.

I made the mistake of pulling the tab on the cage straight away.

I`ve just had 3/3 so may average is going up.
I left the Q`s in a sealed cages and checked for aggressiveness after 3 days before letting them at the candy.
1 colony was still aggressive so was left a further 3 days.

All happily laying now :)
 
Introducing queens is always a gamble but the best we can do is minimise the risk and breed our own queens so that there is always a spare, buying in most be done occasionally to break down the gene pool but thats another thread.
kev
 
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