requeening with queen cells

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wondervet

House Bee
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Location
west yorkshire
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I am interested in the possibility of requeening with foil-protected sealed queen cells. basically it sounds like it might be possible to do it with a minimum of colony disturbance, cost or effort.

I've read some stuff about reasonable success rates with just introducing a QC to a Q+ colony without killing original Q.

i have a question tho. Is there likely to be a fight to the death in the immediate aftermath of hatching and then a broodless period if the newly hatched Q is the victor? Or what are the chances that the colony treats it as a forced supercedure with the original queen keeping laying until the newbie is mated?

thanks in anticipation.
 
Read something similar on the BBKA forum the other day. If you take a look there you should find the thread it was interesting.
 
I've read some stuff about reasonable success rates with just introducing a QC to a Q+ colony without killing original Q..

That's what you do if you have the BBC turn up wanting to film a swarm leaving a hive. Bad idea. It's what they do in the U.S. when they have to get aroung a thousand colonies in a few days.

I use little spiral queen cell protectors instead of foil whenever introducing queen cells.

And the BBKA Forum sucks.
 
.
A wiser way is to make first a mating nuc.
Queen cell system take too much time from productive hive.

Cell time and then 10 days before the queen starts to lay. It takes often one month.

Too much time to have a hive without laying. After 6 weeks hive has a huge lack of foragers and hive cannot forage surpluss honey.

When you calculate with honey price, how much a byed laying queen means as kilos, the price is ridiculous.

.a good byed queen gives often douple yield on second year.

.
 
If the technique works as described - and apparently it does, then the bees consider the new queen a supercedure queen so there'e no loss of laying. I assume the old one goes once the young-un has started to lay.

Of course you can guarantee nothing in beekeeping!
 
Its more to do with the leadership that sucks but that's another thread.

If you want to use cells to produce replacement queens there are manyt slips tween spoon and mouth.

For safety it is very advisable to use mating nucs so that you can prove to yourself that the queen is viable BEFORE risking introduction, and further if you are using five frame nucs to mate them then introduction is that much easier.

The old adage holds very good in bees, if it sounds too easy to be true it damn well is.

PH
 
I've read some stuff about reasonable success rates with just introducing a QC to a Q+ colony without killing original Q.

i have a question tho. Is there likely to be a fight to the death in the immediate aftermath of hatching and then a broodless period if the newly hatched Q is the victor? Or what are the chances that the colony treats it as a forced supercedure with the original queen keeping laying until the newbie is mated?

thanks in anticipation.

here is at least 2 mistakes:

a laying queen's basic job is to hinder new queen cells rearing.
Last Autumn I saw first time how a laying queen cuts the sides of queen cells with its jaws.
It cutted the cell like with scissors. It pushed with its hindlegs to get forge to cutting.

You may put the cell to incubate over the excluder. But what is the idea to put with laying queen?

Artificial supercedure! A second nonsence.
Once I cutted a hing leg from queen and after couple of days they started to rear queen cells.

To keep extra queen in the productive hive in really strange idea.
It is quite usual to keep excluder between old and new queen.

.
 
I've read about this method. (can't remember which book)
It's used In New Zealand and has a 75% success rate.
Edges of cell are sealed with sellotape.
The colony treats it as a supercedure cell.

That's the theory anyway. Sorry I can't remember the reference.
 
It's in Ron Brown's "Beekeeping: A Seasonal Guide"
 

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