Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => REQUEENING & RAISING NEW QUEENS => Topic started by: orvette1 on January 06, 2009, 11:32:38 pm
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I caught a swarm about 3 months ago. They are doing very well. The old queen died and they made a new one before I could stop it. The hive has always been very mean. You can hardly walk up to them without them going crazy. I was thinking of requeening in 2010. Do you think I can just put the new queen in the cage in the bottom of the hive? I was told this works most times with a queen who is over 1 year old. The new queen will take over. Any thoughts?
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Remove the old queen first, (on a hot hive that can be interesting) otherwise the new queen will more than likely be killed. I would let them be queenless for a day or two before introducing a new queen. They will accept her more readily.
David
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http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfaqs.htm#requeening
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I caught a swarm about 3 months ago. They are doing very well. The old queen died and they made a new one before I could stop it. The hive has always been very mean. You can hardly walk up to them without them going crazy. I was thinking of requeening in 2010. Do you think I can just put the new queen in the cage in the bottom of the hive? I was told this works most times with a queen who is over 1 year old. The new queen will take over. Any thoughts?
A queenless hive can be mean, and with a new queen they can still be mean but once she gets to laying good see if they calm down, its in the pheromones that the queen produces, if they are still mean do like said above.
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I understand the question to be whether the poster can put in a new queen with the existing queen still in the hive and hope for a successful re-queening.
The answer is no (if that's your question). You'll have to find and kill the existing queen. And there could be two of them.
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I caught a swarm about 3 months ago. They are doing very well. The old queen died and they made a new one before I could stop it. Any thoughts?
orvette,
This is off topic of what you desired, but is addressed to something in your comment.
When a swarm is issued from the original hive, the old queen normally leaves in the primary (first) swarm. Swarming is a form of supercedure. Most think that swarming is about perpetuation of species, and that is correct. But it also is supercedure for the parent colony. And nature always plays the odds to it's advantage. So they keep the new, young, queen in the parent colony, even though there is risk in mating, etc. Nature dictates that the old queen leave with the first swarm, which has very slim odds of making it through the first winter.
So the swarm, with the old queen, many times replaces the queen as soon as they have a chance. This could be for failing pheromones, or even perhaps natures built-in system of playing better odds, that a younger queen increases the odds.
What I'm saying is...primary swarms at about 50%, will replace a queen within a period of time of a month or two. Don't try to stop this queen replacement. To do so, you may be doing more harm than good.
Many suggest to replace a queen for some perceived "swarm trait". (To which I do not buy into) But replacing a swarm queen may actually be better for the fact they will do it themselves anyways, but at a much greater loss of resources, compared to if the beekeeper does it themselves.
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Finding the queen and killing her is something I have tried before without success.