Introduced queen appears to be ignored.

[Aroc]

Most of our hives that either swarmed or had something happened to their queen have managed to requeen on their own with a little help of course but we have one hive we felt at this late stage we should purchase a queen and introduce her.

Here is the perception.... looks like they are largely ignoring her in her cage.  A handful of bees are marching around her but not really a whole lot of interest either positive or negative.

Any thoughts?

[Mamm7215]

That's what you want.  If there was an immovable ball of bees buzzing on her that would be bad.

[van from Arkansas]

I agree with Mamm.  I will point out another possibility.  The queen is so young she is not producing enough pheromone to attract attendants.

Virgin queens produce very little pheromone, newly mated queens produce little pheromone.  A mature established queen produces ample or lots of pheromone.  So in part pheromone is age related and also individual quantitatively related.  To complicate things, there are 7 known pheromones that are hive stability related, one mating pheromones oleic acid as a drone attraction chemical produced by virgins.  Total number of queen pheromones is unknown and is of interest.

So far, we have only discussed queen pheromones and not that of workers which is not subject related.
Van

[BeeMaster2]

I agree, time to release her.
Jim Altmiller

[Aroc]

So a bit of a complication. 

Wife went out to check on her and has since discovered a couple of  capped queen cells made in the last couple of days.  Thing is there was nothing in them.  Is that possible?  I know there wasn?t a laying worker.....yet.  She got rid of the ?queen? cells and placed the new caged queen back in the hive.

[BeeMaster2]

Aroc,
Were they queen cells or queen cups?  Bees are constantly making queen cups. It isn?t until there is an egg or larvae in them that they become a queen cell.
Jim Altmiller

[Aroc]

Aroc,
Were they queen cells or queen cups?  Bees are constantly making queen cups. It isn?t until there is an egg or larvae in them that they become a queen cell.
Jim Altmiller

Well here is the weird thing.  They were capped.  One had nothing in it and the other had royal jelly but I can?t see how it could have been a viable egg or larvae as there hasn?t been any laying activity in there for at least a couple weeks.

[TheHoneyPump]

Most likely scenario;

Per Van, the cage queen may be very young. Just barely into lay before being caged.  She does not stink much yet.

Per Jim, the bees are non aggressive towards her and she can probably be safely direct released. But first for a bit more comfort;  lift out the middle three frames.  With sugar water spray the bees on the faces of the middle 3 frames then put those back in the box. Give the queen a light spray the open the cage and let her walk down between those middle frames.

... purposely ignoring the cells as those have already been dealt with (destroyed) as well as the bees acceptance of the new queen will sort those out.