attendants in queen cages

[danno]

Waht is the reason for removing attendant bee's sent with a queen.  Some say do it others dont mention it.  I undersatnd that if the cage is place wrong that they could clog the exit but is there anouther reason

[Robo]

It is thought that they aren't excepted by the new colony and possibly raise the defense level of the new colony and perhaps effect the acceptance of the new queen.

[danno]

Is the plus side of this worth the chance of having the queen slip out and fly away?

[BjornBee]

What happens is some new beekeepers do not prep the hive correctly, and then they have problems.  If you have the queen removed from the hive for requeening or splitting, and have waited a period of time (24 hours), then the bees will take the queen, whether she has attendants or not. I have seen some do a split and then place a queen at the same time. Perhaps taking the attendants out may give you an edge, as compared to leaving them in the cage. Myself, I would rather give the bees the BEST chance, regardless of attendants or not, and make sure the hive is PREPARED to receive her. I have never had any loss to even make a note about in regards to with or without attendants. When you do it correctly, then the bees will almost certainly start feeding the queen and other bees, as soon as they can stick their tongues through the screen.

Then you throw in those observing situations where a queen would not be taken regardless of other bees, like when a second queen is present. Then you here the story of one queen being killed, and the hive raises a new queen. So the next year, they are seeking what could of gone wrong, and they hear about removing the attendants. And almost magically, the queen is taken the second time.. And then they swear over and over again about some difference it makes to remove the attendants.

And if it were a problem for some, I would certainly suggest some sugar water, or maybe some HBH added, to throw off any aggressive bees. By the time they have all the smell and syrup cleaned up, they should be fine with the queen.

I have heard many fly away queen stories, damaged queens, and even possible queen problems from  scent being transferred to the queen in additional handling, by those using "queen muffs", etc.

And I have also found that a queen, even though being balled, will survive (if no second queen situation) about 90% of the times. But some new beekeeper goes in, tries to save the queen, screws it all up, then blames the attendants. If they wanted the queen dead, they would just simply kill her.

[tlynn]

I have only done 2 re-queens so far and both went fine.  I did not remove attendants, mostly out of concern of injuring/unnecessarily handling the queen.  I did pull the old queen and wait about 24 hours both times.  I also figure since they are there for food transfer I can't see how it would be helpful to remove attendants.

[Michael Bush]

IMO if you have a hive where there is no reason to expect problems requeening, in other words, it's not a hot hive, it's only been queenless somewhere between 12 hours and a few days, you're not introducing a Russian queen to Italian workers, you have no laying workers, you have not already failed introducing a queen once, then I don't think it makes any noticeable difference if you remove the attendants or not.

If none of those things are true (it's a hot hive or it's been queenless for a long time, or it has laying workers etc.)  it makes a lot of difference if you remove them.

[BjornBee]

IMO if you have a hive where there is no reason to expect problems requeening, in other words, it's not a hot hive, it's only been queenless somewhere between 12 hours and a few days, you're not introducing a Russian queen to Italian workers, you have no laying workers, you have not already failed introducing a queen once, then I don't think it makes any noticeable difference if you remove the attendants or not.

If none of those things are true (it's a hot hive or it's been queenless for a long time, or it has laying workers etc.)  it makes a lot of difference if you remove them.

If I am reading this correctly, are you not contradicting yourself.... :?

It's hard for me to contradict you, when your beating me to it...  :-D

[rdy-b]

Waht is the reason for removing attendant bee's sent with a queen.  Some say do it others dont mention it.  I understand that if the cage is place wrong that they could clog the exit but is there another reason

It makes a  difference if you are going to BANK your queens-(remove attendants) other wise let them do there jobs- 8-) RDY-B

[Shawn]

I thought hthey were just there to feed the queen while in the cage. I've only re-queened once and left them in there and had no problems. I veven saw the attendants in the hive for a couple more weeks after, they were a lot darker than my bees.

[Brian D. Bray]

A hive that has been without it's queen for at least 12 hours will have every bee in the hive aware of the loss, a hive that has experienced a queen loss of only a few hours or minutes means very few bees are aware of the loss.  This can affect the acceptance of the queen.  The attendants are really immaterial to the process with the exception of foriegn odor when dealing with subspecies queen substitutions.  I recommend a 1 day minimum between removal of the queen and requeening with the new one.  I've never experienced a requeening failure, with or without attendants, when using a 24 hour delay with the exceptiion of some subspecies substitutions.1
The longer a hive is without a queen, before going LW, the quicker and easier they will accept a replacement queen introduced to it.  they will take an introduced queen even has they are sealing queen cells.  But once they are within a few days of queen cells hatching they go back to being queenright, and requeening has to be approached by removing the queen cells.   *The only time I would recommend removing queen cells is when they are well progressed within a hive and you are requeening with outside stock.  Even then it is probably best to use some of the cells in a nuc just in case of requeening failure.

If you are requeening using bees of different subspecies, where odors (pheromones) can become a problem the best way to have a successful requeening is to use a masking agent such as vanilla, HBH, or mint flavorings or oils applied in a syrup spray directly to the hive at the time of introducing the queen.  Be sure to spray the non-screen surfaces of the queen cage as well.

1 Russian, NWC or OWC hives can be requeened fairly straight forward between these subspecies without too much consideration of genetics and pheromones.  Although more concern is probably more deserved in the case of NWC.

NWC and MH seem to be fairly interchangable.

In the case of Italians being requeened with Russian, OWC, or NWC, and visa versa, I would recommend an pheromone masking agent.

[danno]

"In the case of Italians being requeened with Russian, OWC, or NWC, and visa versa, I would recommend an pheromone masking agent."   This is good to know Thanks

[Michael Bush]

>If I am reading this correctly, are you not contradicting yourself.... huh

Not at all.  I stated two scenarios with different outcomes.

[BjornBee]

>If I am reading this correctly, are you not contradicting yourself.... huh

Not at all.  I stated two scenarios with different outcomes.

Yeah I see it now. I just read your comments, and by you saying "If none of those things are true" and then listing items in parenthesis, I thought you were adding a "not" to each item (ie...Not hot, etc.), which is what I think by listing items separately like that.

I looked at it perhaps my minds way of how I would of wrote it "If any of those things are TRUE (A hot hive, queenless for a long period, etc.) then it would matter.......

My bad!