queen pheremones

rober · April 25, 2012, 10:08:42 AM

in sarahm's thead about a dead queen dr.z mentioned putting the dead queen in alcohol to use as a pheremone lure. is the alcohol for making a tincture or to preserve the body? i have 2 queens that died in their cages. what would be the best way to use them for making a lure?

Finski · April 25, 2012, 04:17:01 PM

Quote from: rober on April 25, 2012, 10:08:42 AM
in sarahm's thead about a dead queen dr.z mentioned putting the dead queen in alcohol to use as a pheremone lure. is the alcohol for making a tincture or to preserve the body? i have 2 queens that died in their cages. what would be the best way to use them for making a lure?

i put 5 queens in a 100 ml 40% alcohol and it had no lure meaning. Waste of good alcohol.

rober · April 25, 2012, 04:22:31 PM

what if you ground up the queens & put them some coconut butter or vaseline petroleum jelly to make a paste?

forrestcav · April 25, 2012, 05:16:05 PM

went a little overboard with the alcohol didn't you finski? I would more like 10-20 ml of alcohol would be more like it

D Coates · April 25, 2012, 05:19:41 PM

I don't think it would taste good at all. :-P Seriously, you could do it but I'm not sure if that would be a good or bad smell for the bees. I had over a dozen dead queens in a small jar of alcohol. Inadvertently I left on a shelf next to my little bottle of lemon grass oil while extracting. I was pleased to see the stragglers clustering around the queens until I realized more of them were clustering around lemongrass oil. I used that alcohol mixture in my swarm traps all last year with no success.

After almost 2 years it dried out this winter and I threw it away. I'll keep using my lemongrass oil. Ironically I've already caught a swarm in the trap this year using the oil. Is it a direct corelation? No, but like Finski I had no luck with trying the queen in alcohol. I've found it easier to stick with the lemongrass.

FRAMEshift · April 25, 2012, 08:02:22 PM

The point of the alcohol is to extract queen mandibular pheromone from the bodies of the queens. I put all my dead/excess queens in a small jar (20ml) of vodka to try to get as concentrated a mix of QMP as possible. I use the QMP and lemongrass oil in swarm traps. And both the QMP and the lemongrass oil stay refrigerated.

rober · April 25, 2012, 08:23:01 PM

i've used alcohol to make tinctures out of herbs. a tincture of goldenseal will heal cuts & abrasions faster than anything you'll find in a drugstore. i would think the smell of alcohol would overpower the smell of the queen. i'll experiment with vodka & see whar happens. the smell of a queen would likely draw out a queen in a hive if you were looking for her.

Michael Bush · April 26, 2012, 02:50:24 AM

I have a jar of old queens in alcohol. The alcohol gets dark after a while. I don't grind them, I just drop them in to dispose of them. A few drops is pretty much irresistible to a swarm. Combined with Lemongrass Essential oil in an old box it is pretty reliable at luring a swarm out of a tree.

AliciaH · April 26, 2012, 11:46:11 AM

I put some queens in alcohol last summer and will try using it this summer.

But vodka? Seems to me there's a much, much better use for that... ;)