How to Requen a Far Away Hive?

[PhilK]

We have two hives at a location about 15 mins from our main bee yard. One has always been a little poorer than the other. It was a split with a queen that is less than a year old, and initially wasn't very good. We changed the location of the two hives over and their population increased and they were doing so well that we needed to give them a super.. about 4 weeks ago.

My mate has gone and done an inspection today (I am away for the next few weeks) to find about 200 dead bees in the hive/out the front/on the excluder, and a very poor brood pattern. He saw the queen (same queen with the same paint dot) and said the hive still seemed pretty busy but they had only capped about 60% of their super frames. The hive next to them had 10 deep frames fully capped of honey and very strong.

Two things..

1. I'm not sure what is happening? She was never the best queen but not this bad. She is young, so I can't see why her brood pattern has dropped off so much. Also unsure why there are so many dead bees... I was thinking possibly pesticide but that doesn't seem like enough dead bees

2. If we decide to requeen, I'd like to raise a queen from one of the colonies in our home yard that is going very well. What is the best way to do this? Create a nuc to raise the queen, then transfer the queen cell to the hive to be requeened? How do I do this - in a nuc, or cut the cell out, or frame by itself? Or is it best to raise the queen until she is laying then cage her and use her to replace the other queen?

3. Any other thoughts on what we could do? Flow is good judging by the rest of our colonies..

[Michael Bush]

The easiest solution is to use a queen cell if you have it, or make a hive queenless by putting the queen in a nuc for ten days and then take one frame with queen cells to the hive you want to requeen.  Put the cell in the hive to be requeened and let them supersede her.  Put the old queen back in the hive.  The closer you do this to two weeks before the main flow the more honey it will make for in the donor hive you when you do this.

The reason for making the strong hive queenless and letting it raise the queen cells, is they will be well fed and cared for.  In a weak nuc they may be poorly fed and that results in a poor quality queen.

[little john]

There's a rather neat article about re-queening without first de-queening on the NZ.gov website:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00288233.1972.10421270?needAccess=true

The method enables you to introduce a queen cell, ensure that the emerging virgin gets mated ok, AND check her laying pattern etc, all before replacing the old queen, so that honey production isn't set-back by the re-queening procedure.  Might be of interest in your current situation ?
LJ

[PhilK]

Put the cell in the hive to be requeened and let them supersede her.  Put the old queen back in the hive. 

Thanks MB. What do you mean by this? Remove the poor queen, put a QC in, and then replace the old queen..? Why not just pinch her.

Thanks LJ I'll have a look at that!

[Michael Bush]

I'm saying put the good queen in a nuc, so the strong hive (that had the good queen) raises queen cells.  Ten days later you put some of these in the hive with the poor queen.  If you can find the poor queen, by all means dispose of her.  But if you can't, the new queen will emerge and supersedure will take place most of the time.   At that same time (ten days after removing the queen) you can either use the other frames with queen cells to put in mating nucs and get more queens, or just let them emerge and fight it out.  The good queen (in the nuc) can now lead that colony to build back up, or you can introduce here somewhere else if you have need of a good queen...

[PhilK]

Thanks MB that makes a lot more sense!