queen killed by ants

[tandemrx]

nearby 1st year beekeeper bought a queen for a queenless hive.  He received the queen in the mail and was going out to install her.  He removed the attendant bees and all looked fine and dandy and went to bee hives, set the queen cage/queen in the grass near the hive in the shade and proceeded to ready the hive for the queen.  Came back to the queen to find the queen cage & queen had been totally balled up with hundreds of little red ants and queen was dead - evidently killed by the ants.  :shock:

New one on me.  I guess I usually set the queen cage on my hive stand somewhere while I am getting things ready, but ants could as easily find her there.

Guess I will put her in my pocket from now on!

I visited his hive a day or so later and it turned out he had frames filled with eggs and very young larvae, so he had a queen anyway, but it was still a bit of a traumatic experience for the guy.

Anybody ever heard of such a thing?  Learn something new every day!

[Kathyp]

why did he remove the attendants? 

we don't have a problem with those kinds of ants here, but when i lived in s. ca, the red ants were awful.  they would go after anything, dead or alive.  had an injured duck that we were rehabbing and the ants overwhelmed her and almost killed her.

[G3farms]

I would say the ants were going for the sugar candy plug and the queen was just an innocent bystander.

Why did he remove the attendants??

[tandemrx]

From Michael Bush's website (also think there is a couple paragraghs about this in "The Hive and the Honey Bee"):

It is advantageous to acceptance to release the attendants in the queen cage

I have done it and I have not done it.  I don't have enough experience to know if one way worked better than another.

All I know is that the plastic queen cages that have the tube end (with the sugar plug) and the other port I find hard to remove attendants, because I can't really see the queen well so its hard to know who I am letting out (plastic cage has narrow slits and its just not easy to see in there).

Last time I tried with a wood cage and wire mesh, none of the attendants wanted to leave (certainly would not come out the plug hole).  I had to open up the mesh pretty much all the way and coax them out by having them grab the end of a stick and draw them out.  And here I thought they were anxious to leave there little prison, but I open the door and they refuse to leave :shock:.

Anyone have any great methods to remove attendants let me know (particularly from those white plastic queen cages).

Also want to know how they get a queen and attendants into a cage! (if they don't use those cages that surround the queen cell but are capturing a mated queen).  that is off topic from the ant story though.

[Scadsobees]

He must have set it on an ant nest in the yard!

I'm glad everything turned out ok, though.  How often don't we get ready to re-queen when we find out they took care of it themselves!

[AllenF]

Never ever place a queen cage on top of the dirt mound near the bee hives.  There might me ants in there.