1st time shaking a laying worker out and adding over ripe queen cell. About 1.5 week ago I couldn't find the queen in one of my single deep's started in middle of June with queen cell. I did find tons of capped drone and cells containing 1-3 eggs per cell. I had a wanna be queen roaming around but thought that I would wait to requeen with ripe cell when next batch was ready. Never shaken a hive out but wow, I can only imagine what shaking a double deep looks like. I then stole a brood frame from another really strong hive and shook 2 more frames of workers in and waited 2 days to add queen cell. When I was placing my ripe cells in all the nucs they were of course starting to hatch and ended up releasing hatched queen directly on to frame in queenless hive with no problems of acceptance at all. Checked back couple days later and the lovely lady made it back from her mating flight. I've seen some of my nucs boot or ball and kill a mated queen before when I've had to instantly manually release her as all the attendants had died. Makes me wonder, is the acceptance level higher with virgins? Less Phermones in virgins?
The best acceptance rate is with supercedures--that's what the bees took your queen for. I find that supercedure, natural or forced is a good way to requeen and a good way to spred the influence of a good queen throughout the bee yard.
When I first started most beekeepers requeened via forced supercedure as the availability of commercially grown queens were not near as numerous as they are today. Today everybody seems to think requeening solves everything. It does not replace good hive management and is too often used to fix a non-problem. I like the old ways--it's more challenging.
Quote from: Matz1st time shaking a laying worker out and adding over ripe queen cell.
A laying worker is old story and pure belief. In new reseaches it has been found that there are tens or hundreds laying workers in desparetly queenless hive.
http://www.lasi.group.shef.ac.uk/aps323/ConflictInBeeHive.pdfWhen yu give larva combs hive will be normal. You need not shake bees.