Introducing Queen Bees to a new Hive

Posted by Thomas Shaw on November 26th, 2019



Sometimes beekeepers have to have to requeen a colony. Either the old queen died or the hive is not performing at the same time as desired. The new queen's offspring can bring desirable traits towards the colony. Commonly, these desirable traits involve gentleness, excellent collectors of pollen or nectar, pest and illness resistance, lowered swarming behavior, a desired physique color, or effective pollination. Get far more info about order queen bee online



It is critical to meet certain criteria before trying to introduce a new queen otherwise the colony could reject or perhaps kill the new queen. There are several procedures for introducing a new queen to a hive, but no specific procedure has been universally agreed upon because the most effective for all situations.

Most normally the process involves an introductory period of about 3 days. During this introductory period the queen is kept separated in the colony inside a wire gauze cage. The workers within the colony will feed her by means of the mesh on the cage. The workers can let the caged queen into the hive by consuming away a candy entrance plug inside the cage. This makes it possible for for the queen to become introduced with out the interference of your beekeeper. The beekeeper may also manually introduce the queen also.

Younger bees are often more receptive to a brand new queen. Separating the older foragers from the younger bees can help make introducing a brand new queen less difficult. You may separate younger bees by turning the colony so the entrance is facing the opposite direction. A distinct hive with no less than one frame of honey, but no bees, is placed using the entrance facing in the identical direction because the old colony. As older foragers leave the repositioned hive they may return to the new hive. Following about a day, all the bees left in the original hive is going to be young bees, while the majority of the older worker bees will be within the temporary new hive. The new queen could be safely introduced towards the hive using the younger bees. Right after a couple days, the colonies are reunited and the new queen is established.

A very good solution to inform if a brand new queen may be safely released will be to observe the behavior of the bees outdoors the queen's cage. In the event the outdoors bees are clinging to the cage and are hard to brush off, it is possibly not safe to release the queen but. If the outdoors bees could be simply brushed off, the queen may be released.

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Thomas Shaw

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Thomas Shaw
Joined: March 17th, 2018
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