Introducing queens

SUMMER HEAT ADVISORY

For Queen shipments during July, August, and September: With temperatures rising, the summer months for shipping live queens is very high risk and we will be unable to guarantee live delivery. It helps to have your queens shipped to a UPS hub for pickup instead of a delivery address.

You should have read one of the books on beekeeping that we list in our brochure. For those who have not, here are some brief instructions:

Make sure your hive is queenless. (Finding queens for requeening colonies is a subject for another set of instructions). You may install the new queen immediately after killing the old one but it is best to wait a day, or you may wait as long as four or five days. Remove the cork from the candy end of the queen mailing cage. If the candy is hard, make a small nail hole almost all the way through it. If the candy is soft, don't do anything with it. It is not necessary to remove the attendant bees from the queen cage, but some beekeepers believe it helps. If you have 10 frames in your hive you might have to remove one of the wall combs to be able to wedge the queen cage between two of the center combs with the screen on the cage exposed downward so the bees in your hive can communicate with the queen. The cage should be slanted with the candy end lower than the other end. The queen must be placed in the part of the hive where the bees are clustered. Close the hive and wait five to seven days before opening it. At that time the queen should be out of the cage, and she should have laid eggs in one or two of the combs. If she is not out of the cage, release her by taking the screen off, then check back in four or five days to see if she is laying.

If you know a method that works for you then use it.

Hives that have been queenless so long that all of the brood has hatched out, and hives that have developed laying workers do not accept new queens very well. Such hives should be given one or two combs with open brood in them from another hive if you have it available before you introduce the new queen.

Richard Weaver
2010

THE PRODUCTS WE SELL

Please remember us when you need Queen Bees, Package Bees, 4-Frame Nucs, One-Story Established Colonies, eginners Outfits, Books on Beekeeping and Bee Supplies. You can see a full description right here at our web site.

Other TIPS: Finding queens, Hive a package of bees, and The Bee Smoker