I bought a new queen for a hive that I thought was queenless. When I checked it I had no brood--capped or open. There were a few open supercedure cells, but no evidence of a queen. The ladies were backfilling the brood cells with nectar and pollen. My new queen arrived a week later. When I checked the hive it was loaded with brood! Now I've got a queen to use, so I decided I'd try doing a split since I've never done one. My question is, do I turn her loose right away, or let them release her? None of the info I've found on doing a split addresses using a caged queen.
Kelly
It's the same as adding a caged queen to a package. In this case the "package" was not shipped with the queen so they aren't used to her. I would say to put the cage in the split hive (preferably on the bottom under the frames) and wait a couple of days. Then check to see if the bees are trying to attack the cage, biting and being aggressive. If they seem benign you could then direct release her. Or.....
since you have plenty of eggs available, you could just include some eggs in the split and then immediately release the queen. If they kill her, they will then make their own queen from eggs. Unless the caged queen is definitely better than the original queen, you won\'t lose much. This time of year you don't want a huge amount of brood anyway, and the brood break will help with mite control.
>since you have plenty of eggs available, you could just include some eggs in the split and then immediately release the queen. If they kill her, they will then make their own queen from eggs.
You would be waiting a long time for a laying queen from eggs 28+- couple days. How is your drone population for mating, are you in a flow to get a good feed queen cell, will you feed ahead to assure a cell is feed well if no flow? Can you afford that time period with the split? You have the new queen go with her!
Quote from: FRAMEshift on July 17, 2011, 11:24:57 PM
... you could just include some eggs in the split and then immediately release the queen.
Or you can kill her without releasing. The result will be probably the same.
I wander what drives people to give so malicious advice.
If you don't want to loose the young queen, introduce her using one of the well proven methods. In your case probably the cage with candy is the simplest one.
Quote from: boca on July 18, 2011, 04:21:26 AM
Or you can kill her without releasing. The result will be probably the same.
I wander what drives people to give so malicious advice.
:-D You may not agree with the advice, but it's certainly not malicious. I prefer locally mated queens, so unless the caged queen is locally mated or has some genetically dominant characteristic you want to breed for, raising a queen from eggs is a better idea. I wouldn't give this advice to someone from Finland in the Fall of the year, but in Florida in the Summer there is no great hurry to get a laying queen. And yes, I think he has drones.
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If you don't want to loose the young queen, introduce her using one of the well proven methods. In your case probably the cage with candy is the simplest one.
A hive that has been queenless for more than a day is not likely to reject a queen, especially if she has been recently laying. So the chances of the caged queen being killed are small, and especially small if she is left with them for a short time in the cage. You can wait for them to eat the candy, but you will still have to go back and check on her. It's faster to just go back once and release her. I've done this plenty of times and it works.
I made a split in June, waited 24 hours to let them figure out there was no queen, bought a queen, and tried to figure out which side had the old queen. Neither was good. One would climb on the cage and cling to the screen. The other would climb on the cage and cling to the screen.
I looked closely and found one side wanted to sting the cage. So I put it in the little nuc box with its 5 frames of bees, brood, and stores with the candy cork popped out. I checked for 3 days until I decided to just open the cage. I waited a half hour, looked again and she was walking around on the outside. She went down in the frames and I have since hived that nuc.
Don't just release her.
Starve them of her queen for 24 hours.
Make sure there is capped brood to keep the population up.
The thing is they have a queen which cost more than I would want to spend. Why put her in jeopardy? Making a queen will stop production for 3 weeks at least.
Yea I figured he had drones in Florida --- just laying out the food for thought!
The time loss is his big determination and taking the chance of a good bred local queen. Yea I realize good bred local queens are better than producer queens.
Is there not some deal about AHB and open breed queens in Florida?
Quote from: sc-bee on July 18, 2011, 02:32:57 PM
Yea I figured he had drones in Florida --- just laying out the food for thought!
The time loss is his big determination and taking the chance of a good bred local queen. Yea I realize good bred local queens are better than producer queens.
Is there not some deal about AHB and open breed queens in Florida?
Well there is a "recommendation" from the state that you requeen frequently if you don't have a marked queen. But kedgel probably already has a locally mated queen in his other hive since he saw no brood and open queen cells and then lots of brood. We would have to know the timing and the appearance of the queen cells to be sure
. I think as long as he is paying attention to the degree of aggressiveness of his bees, and replaces any queen in a nasty hive, he will be fine. I think the rules are for large commercial beeks who are not able to watch the behavior of each hive.
Thanks all for the input!! I think given all the input, the prudent thing to do is let them release her (after all, she cost $20!). I will, however, poke a nail through the candy to expedite her release.
I bought a queen from a supplier in the panhandle, so she is sort-of a local. no one in my local association had any for sale and the next closest supplier (Miksa) never answered their phone or returned my call. I considered letting them make their own queen, but didn't want the down-time. My other hive's queen is a couple years old and they are CRANKY, so I figured I'd just buy a couple queens and be done with it. These are both feral hives I got from cut-outs, so I figured a commercially bred queen might help the genetic variability.
I was kind of hoping the concensus would be to just turn her loose in the hive since the rainy season has hit South FL with a vengeance. Every time I want to work my bees it tries to rain on me! I'll report back how it goes...
Kelly
A standard candy release is as good as anything for what you intend. I would not direct release except with a package.
So you paid $20 for a queen, then did you have to pay to have it shipped or have you figured out a way around that?
If it came from the Panhandle of FL, it's a LONG ways down to Bonita Springs! A common price for queens seem to be around the $20 mark, give or take a few $. Shipping is always extra and the cost of shipping really depends upon temperature. I think the USPS has some policies about temperature and insurance too. If it's warm to hot, between location A and B they usually want to ship via Express Mail which is about as much as a queen. If you've got cooler weather, Priority Mail can work, that is about $5 or $6 via USPS. Usually you can find a local supply of queens this time of year unless you are looking for a special queen. The Naples area is pretty built up so maybe there aren't a lot of beeks in the area.
When I do splits I let the split hives stay queenless for 4-6 hours before I introduce a caged queen. That's enough time for the bees to conclude they are queenless.
I had a carni queen given to me by a friend. He raises queen and she escaped from the minicage and never got her back in. He put here in a paper bag with a few bees and handed it to me. I split a hive and let them stay queenless for 24 hours and let the queen walk out of the bag and today (4 weeks later) I put them into a deep from thier nuc. They were on the cusp of swarming.