Queen was not released

goodeva · April 23, 2006, 02:59:30 PM

I checked the new hive for the first time today. I introduced them 5 days ago. The queen was still in her cage so I removed the cork on the non candy side and let her crawl out of the cage onto the frame full of bees. I have never had this situation before and was wondering when I should check back to try and find her? After she came out of the cage I did not see where she went so I removed the frames to look for her but did not see her. I didnt spend much time looking though. I do not like to disturb them much. I am assuming that she crawled onto the center frame. I released her about five or six inches into the deep.

ian michael davison · April 23, 2006, 03:49:48 PM

Hi all
Goodeva dont disturb the hive for at least a week. If you go in again to soon they could ball the queen (ive done it

)

A great sign is the bees returning with pollen once you see this you can normaly be certain that all is well and the queen is accepted and laying.

Regards Ian

goodeva · April 23, 2006, 04:07:14 PM

I went back out an they seem to have gone back to bussiness as usual. Brining in pollen and one worker is outside fanning as usual also. These bees have been great to work with. I placed the empty queen cage just outside of the entrance and there are bees all over it. I guess now that they can get inside they are eating the candy. There have also been more Drones outside the entrance next to the cage. I replaced the suryp in the entrance feeder while I was inspecting and a half inch since this morrning. They have gone through three quarts in 5 days. Thanks for the advice I am going out of town on Thursday and will check them before I leave or next Sunday when I get back.

Robo · April 23, 2006, 08:42:52 PM

Is your queen marked? The reason I ask is because I once had a package that showed no interest in releasing the queen. Turns out that when the package was shook, the queen from the mother hive ended up in the package. Of course I didn't find this out until a few days later when the marked queen was dead in front of the hive. So although I ended up with a queen, she was an older queen.

goodeva · April 23, 2006, 08:53:30 PM

No shes not marked. They had made some burr comb in the empty frame space around her. I removed this and found no eggs. When I inspected the middle frames I found only pollen and uncapped honey and suryp. If there was another queen Im sure that I would have seen some eggs. When I check next Sunday I will inspect without smoke inorder to have better chances of spotting her. They are still working and bringing in pollen. The drones have seemed to have settled down. I have not seen that much drone activity outside the hive before.

Jerrymac · April 24, 2006, 12:05:48 AM

Quote from: goodevaI guess now that they can get inside they are eating the candy.

I'm just wondering about this part of your statment. You mean they couldn't get to the candy before?

Jack Parr · April 24, 2006, 06:07:39 AM

He probably didn't remove the cork :?:

Although I just replaced some queens and after three days the queens were still in the cage with candy gone. Corks were removed for sure. I lifted the screens and let them free. I went back after a few days and both queens are doing fine or so it seems.

goodeva · April 30, 2006, 10:31:41 PM

Got back form vacation today and checked the hive. I was glad to see that the queen was busy laying eggs and still alive. I aslo checked the package that I got from Rossman last monday and that queen was also laying eggs. After reading the post on direct releasing the queen I decided to release that queen directly also. I think that I prefer this method now and will continue to direct release for now on. Thanks for the tips.