3Reds and I have had some really aggressive bees lately, and we needed to requeen our three hives. We also did a split and captured one swarm (we caught more than that, but only had one stay ... unless you count the one we boxed yesterday).
Any way, we've had to do a lot of requeening over the last couple of weeks. Each time we wondered if we did it right. Each time we wondered if the bees killed the queen.
And each time we found a live queen, or at least evidence of her, in our hives.
In one hive, we introduced the queen by rubber-banding the queen cage to the frame. This hive had been without a queen for a long time. There were some capped brood, but nothing was left for the bees to make a new queen. We'd removed all of the queen cells and cups in two earlier sweeps of the hive. The bees seemed gentle enough with her, so we were actually confident she'd succeed. 7 days later the queen cage was empty. The bees seemed to be a little calmer. But we never saw the queen. Or eggs. Or larvae. We ordered another queen. Three days later we went back into the hive, thinking we were going to add a new queen. Instead, I saw small larvae swimming in royal jelly. I thought I could see eggs, too. The queen we had installed was doing her job. She just extended her vacation a little longer than we had anticipated.
We used push cages for two of the other hives. In each case, we left "too many" of the hive's bees under the cage with her. We sprayed sugar water on everyone in the first cage, and powdered sugar in the second. For the first, when we opened the hive four days later, I couldn't tell if the queen was still in the cage. Too many bees were in there. I pulled it off, and couldn't find her. I also couldn't tell if any eggs had been laid under the cage. Another trip to Sequin for a new queen. Two days later, and there were small larvae in the cells, and then we spotted the queen. She had slipped out without us spotting her.
For the second push cage, I watched in horror as one of the hive's bees made a "bee-line" for the cage and started attacking an attendant in the cage. The wood cage that the queen came in was under the push cage, and I had managed to push the cork inside with the bees, rather than pull it out. A bad situation all the way around. I was surprised to watch a bee roll the cork out of the way so the queen, if she were still alive, could exit. We crossed our fingers and put the frame back in the hive. Four days later, we pulled the frame back out. I searched and again could not find the queen. The bees had drilled a hole into the push cage from the other side. I saw with relief that there were small larvae and even eggs in the cells under the push cage. After some searching (the second time through the box) 3Reds spotted our marked queen.
Requeening is a suspense - filled project. But, it feels so good when you finally get confirmation that the new queen has been accepted and is working.
Next on our list of chores is to find the two queens we introduced that were not marked and put a little bit green paint on them. And hope we don't kill them!
