We have arrived at the point in the beekeeping season when some re-queening of hives takes place. Given that it is very early for current-season UK raised queens to be available (I have a few), the queen to be introduced will likely be an over-wintered one, born last season, or a queen imported from somewhere further south, such as Italy or Greece. Wherever she comes from, she is a valuable insect, and care must be taken with her introduction. Don’t sentence your queen to death!
Doing The Splits
As somebody who produces queens and takes them through winter, I am able to do some spring re-queening. In fact, my goal is to be able to have queens available throughout the season so that I can re-queen whenever I want. As far as I can tell, the majority of spring queen introductions are into newly made nucleus colonies (splits). These are made by harvesting excess brood from strong colonies that may be inclined to swarm if not so treated. Sure, you can let them make their own, but it’s much quicker and more reliable to give them a mated queen.
My queen introductions so far this season have been into nuclei, but also production colonies headed by yellow-dot queens – those now in their third season. I believe that Brother Adam was right about many things, including his contention that the best colonies for honey production contain a queen born in the previous season. Those going into their third season tend to have smaller colonies and are much more likely to swarm, in my experience, which is why I change them.
Death Is Everywhere
There are all sorts of theories and techniques to ensure that queen introductions are successful. To my knowledge, everybody who has kept more than a handful of colonies for several years will have experienced the loss of a newly introduced queen. Nature is like that – death is everywhere (as is birth, thankfully). I expect that the reasons given for one technique or another being ‘the best’ are not always correct, but what really matters is the outcome.
Brother Adam’s Spring Re-Queening
How does one introduce a queen to a colony so that they accept her as their own? Brother Adam would take queens through the winter in their mating boxes up on Dartmoor, so the survivors in spring would be battle hardened and mature laying queens. These would be caged with a few attendants and taken down to where the hives to be re-queened were located. The cages were the ‘Butler’ type made of mesh, with wood blocks at the ends, one of which had a hole in it, which was plugged with sugar candy/fondant.
Adam would remove the old queen, place her in the same type of cage, and immediately pop the new one into the now queenless colony. The bees would release the new queen within an hour or two, and she would generally be accepted because she was a mature and laying queen. The old queens were taken back up to Dartmoor to sit in the mating boxes until queen cells were made at the queen rearing unit. He believed that acceptance was due to the behaviour of the new queen, not her odour. I don’t know about that, but I do know that a mature and laying queen is very acceptable to most queenless colonies.
Key To Acceptance
I tend to follow Brother Adam’s approach with my overwintered queens, although occasionally, I remove the old queen, and then 30 minutes later I let the new queen run out onto a comb and watch to see how she is greeted by the workers. Mostly, they get straight to licking and feeding her. The key to acceptance in these situations is that the colony has no queen (including virgins) and no queen cells, combined with the replacement queen being mature and laying. Very young queens, such as those who only emerged two or three weeks ago, do not tend to last very long – the bees often supersede them.
I think that most problems come when there are queen cells or a virgin in the hive, or if the new queen has been sitting in a cage for several days. Every so often there are two mated queens in a colony (mother and daughter), so by removing just one and assuming they are queenless, you are sentencing the new queen to death. This is a tricky one; most people do not go hunting for the second queen.
Are They Queenless?
A good test, with my bees anyway, is their behaviour. When my bees have a laying queen they are usually very pleasant, but if they only have queen cells or a virgin they tend to be pretty bad-tempered. Furthermore, if I place the caged queen on top of the frames of the colony, I can tell by the response of the workers whether they are pleased to see her. If they are gripping and/or stinging the cage, they don’t want her, which might mean they have a virgin queen or queen cells. If bees are making their own queen, they don’t want whatever you are trying to give them.
Introducing Purchased Queens
What I do with purchased queens that have been in a cage for days, and are consequently dehydrated and not in the right condition to lay eggs, is as follows:
Option 1 (Slow)
- Put the purchased queen in a new cage with new candy, and no attendants
- Place her cage between the top bars of the brood frames of a queenless nucleus (or mini-plus) colony
- Leave the tab on for a day or two
- Then snap off the tab and let the workers release the new queen
- After a week (or several weeks, ideally) the queen can be caged and introduced to a production colony, as she is now mature and laying
Option 2 (Fast)
- Put the purchased queen in a new cage with new candy, and no attendants
- Remove the old queen from the production colony and check that there are no queen cells/other queen
- Remove a comb with emerging brood, some empty cells, and some cells with nectar, and shake off the bees
- place the new queen on the comb and press a push-in cage into the comb so that she is securely caught inside (I make my own using a modified Manley design)
- Mark the top bar with an ‘X’ and place in the colony
- Return in four days to release her, after checking for any eggs outside the cage (which means they already have a laying queen), and removing any queen cells
Nothing Is Ever 100%
Both of these methods are successful for me, but nothing is ever 100%. I would say they are 90% or better, though. I would rather put one of my overwintered queens into a production colony and purchased queens into a nuc early in the season. The queen in her second season is proven, readily accepted, and will get straight on with her job. The purchased queen may not be well mated and may not be very good – a nuc is a good place to let her show what she can do. It also gives her time to fully develop into a mature queen.
Later in the season I have my own current season queens, which go into production colonies using a push in cage, or into nucs, where they will stay until the following season.
Queen Caging
Finally, there is something on social media about a technique for re-queening that is ‘doing the rounds’. The old queen is caged for a week but kept in the hive, so that (theoretically) they won’t make queen cells – because they are not queenless – and when the new queen is introduced, the remaining brood is too old for them to make their own. I tried this and the second part is true. However, in several cases they did make queen cells, under the supersedure response. If you have a mature and laying queen to put into the hive, they should accept her anyway, without the extra work of caging the old queen.
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