Queen introduction on a cutout-help/advice please

[OzBuzz]

Hi everybody, I'm in need of some help/advice. Ordered a queen Wednesday last week received her Friday-did a cutout Saturday. Left it sit for a few hours and put queen cage in to the hive containing the cutout. Needed to take the lid off when I put it in my yard and tge cage had dropped to the bottom candy down. I replaced the cage between the frames with the candy up (queen was still alive) today I needed to combine a second box I got from the cutout with the first so I made a five fram nuc super to go above. I took the lid off and the cage had dropped down again-candy down. This time I sat the cage on top of the frames, pierced the candy with a nail, and used an elastic band to hold it in place. I then put the five frame 'super' on top and closed it up. She's been through a lot! Attendants are dying! And tomorrow she will have been caged 6 days! What should I do? Manual release? She's been in the first box of bees for 24hrs and will have been with the second box for 24hrs tomorrow (and 48hrs for the first box). Any advice appreciated

[JP]

I would release her now.


...JP

[AllenF]

Set her free.  If she is still in there.

[OzBuzz]

Hopefully she has been released overnight but i'll check this afternoon to make sure... the attendants have been dying and she was still kicking yesterday so i can only assume that the hive has been feeding her through the mesh. I hope she's ok! She's a Kangaroo Island Ligurian.

I've never been an expectant father (yet) but if i get nervous at a Queen being released i'm going to be a shocker when the time comes for babies hahah

How resiliant are caged Queens?

[OzBuzz]

I checked on her this afternoon-she was still alive :-D all of the attendants were dead! So she was obviously being fed. I manually released her and the bees raced up and started preening her now they just have to survive