Worldwide Beekeeping
Beekeeping => General Beekeeping => Topic started by: Papakeith on August 16, 2014, 09:15:30 pm
-
i have one colony in a double deep. the queen is no more. No brood to make another queen with either.
I have a mated queen in a queen castle. She has two frames of brood and bees.
If I were to just insert this queen and her frames into the existing queenless colony will her bees protect her until the others accept her?
-
NO
-
I'm curious as to why not?
How much different is this than a newspaper combine?
-
24 hours and the stronger half queen is the one normally kept in a combine.
-
My initial thought was maybe a newspaper combine? I don't know if that would work or not.
Sent from my DROID X2 using Tapatalk 2
-
we are getting to the time of year where the introduction of queens is harder as the population of old worker bees in the hive out number the young nurse bees that will readily accept a new queen. And in the case of a hive that is queenless there are no young nurse bees. how long has the colony been queenless? Depending on the answer to this the value of these bees to another colony may be limited.
You would have better success placing a medium size hive in this hives place and shake the bees and let them fly into and join the new colony. The hive for the bees to join should be at least 1 super of bees so there are enough bees to protect the queen. Scratch the cappings on a little bit of honey comb and smoke the bees regularly for an hour so the bees are well gorged with honey before they are shaken off the comb and allow to fly back to the new hive in the original location. also take your time in shaking out the bees so they can be checked out and accepted by the bees in the new hive. Look at the reaction of the bees at the hive they are returning to, When the bees start fanning across their Nasonov gland this is an indication the bees are being accepted so the bees can be shaken off quicker.
If you want to get the queen from the queen castle in to nucs or singles for winter add frames of brood with young bees from strong queen right colonies.
-
Apisbees has outlined a really clever plan for you. I have used a push in cage when I was not entirely sure a combine would go off smoothly. It keeps the queen from getting balled, but also does not require the queen to be handled.
(https://worldwidebeekeeping.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs7.postimg.cc%2F9qv3ipziv%2Fqueencage.jpg&hash=1c3f7a27819c9907659a2b4c6d00716315cef08d) (http://postimg.cc/image/9qv3ipziv/)