The Ranch

Introducing the Queen

By Doolittle, in Bee Culture.

"I sent $10 for special breeding queen. Now, have you any certain way of safely introducing a queen which has come on a long journey by mail?"

The formula for introduction which comes with the cage and queen will answer very well where a man is buying from 10 to 100 untested queens as the loss which occurs in using it is generally not large enough to pay for the extra work made by the absolutely safe introduction plans; but I had rather spend a half a day on a very valuable queen than to run the risk with the ordinary instructions coming with the queen.

If you are willing to have the breeder in a nucleus, which many feel is best, then make a cage out of very thin wood and wire cloth, or of tin and wire cloth, large enough to take two of your regular sized frames, and at the same time small enough so it will go into the hive and take the place of two frames. This is quite easily done where bright tin wire cloth is soldered on tin ends and bottom. To this cage should be fitted a bee tight cover. With them go to any colony which can spare them, and get two frames of ripe brood—so ripe that you can see many young bees gnawing their way out of the cells. Shake and brush every bee off these combs and hang them in your cage. Now, before a window in a tight room, so if your queen should fly you cannot lose her, open the mailing-cage and put her and the retinue of bees which came with her in the cage with the combs of emerging brood. Put on the cage cover, all secure, and hang this cage in any strong colony, letting it take the place of two frames, which, if they have brood in them, can be put where you took the two from which are in the cage. Now leave the cage for from three to five days, when, an hour or so before sunset, brush every bee off the outside and carry it to the hive where you wish the nucleus to stand, and hang it in this hive. Now carefully remove the cover and take out the frames of brood, placing them next one side the hive, adjusting a dummy so it will make a little hive the size of the two combs. Fix the entrance at the opposite side of the hive from where the nucleus is, and put on the hive cover, allowing the few bees adhering to the cage to crawl out and go on the combs with the others at their leisure. In a week or so give this little colony another frame of ripe brood, and you will have a nice prosperous little colony from which you can secure larvae for queen rearing as often as you wish, unless you raise queens by the thousand.

Why do you have the entrance on the opposite side of the hive from the nucleus?

So as to prevent robbing. In all my years of experience with nuclei, I never knew of a single nucleus being robbed out when established in this way. And very often where robbing has started on a nucleus having its entrance right in front of the combs it contains, I have stopped it by changing the entrance, so to speak by shoving the combs over to the opposite side and putting the dummy next to them. In this way the bees from the nucleus go and come from the same place they have always done, and easily learn to travel across the bottom of the hive to their combs, so they are not bewildered as they would be by changing the entrance instead of the combs. A robber bee does not like to travel over a long space where there is danger of being grabbed by sentinels strung all the way. The combs of a ripe brood should have honey enough in them to keep the little colony in good heart while in the cage; and when put in the hive if there is not enough to make them prosperous a frame of honey should be set in next to the side of the hive, not next to the dummy. By thus setting we put the honey this much further away from robbers, for they must pass clear through the little colony to get it.

If you wish to introduce a valuable queen to a full colony of bees, take their queen away early in the forenoon, or long enough before so the bees will miss her presence a little before sunset, at which time take all the frames of brood and honey from the hive, and put in a division board feeder full of feed. This feed is preferably made of granulated sugar, but extracted honey will answer. Set this feeder away from one of the side walls of the hive about the space of two frames, and with a bent wire hang the shipping cage containing the queen and her escorts so that the cage will come two or three inches from the back side of the hive and mid-way between the feeder and the side opposite it. Or it is just as well to put two empty frames in this space between the feeder and the side of the hive, allowing the caged queen to hang between them, down two or three inches from the top bars. Before putting in the caged queen, uncover the candy, as per the direction accompanying the cage; and when all is ready, cover the hive. Now shake and brush all the bees off their comb down in front of the entrance to their old home, into which they will at once run, and if done near sunset, few will take wing during the commotion which will soon commence when they find out the changed condition. They will run over the hive for two or three hours; but before morning, settle down to the conclusion that they can not find their old queen or combs, and cluster about the cage and the new queen. The combs of beeless broods may be given in an upper story to another colony to care for during the next two days, or until the queen is out, and has commenced to lay in the comb which will be built from the food in the feeder when their old combs should be given back to them after the feeder and the two frames are removed.