they can be safely handled with bare fingers. They should never be handled through gloves, due to the loss of delicate touch. To prevent damaging her delicate ovaries, avoid ever touching her abdomen. To pick up a queen, approach her from the rear, and gently pinch her wings together (Figure 5.34).
There is likely little reason for a vet to handle a client's queens. But you may get a call about a queen suddenly dropping dead while being handled. It is a relatively common behavior for a queen to play possum when handled, but very alarming to the novice (Figure 5.35).
Figure 5.34 Queens are typically held by both wings. If you only get one wing, release her before she wrenches around and hurts herself.
Figure 5.35 Even when gently handled, some queens may play possum. Do not let this scare you – simply return her to her bees on a frame held horizontally, and she will soon “come to.”
If a queen is disturbed, she may start “running,” causing her own workers to attack her. To prevent this, if I am going to be disturbing a colony greatly, I will often temporarily place the queen in a queen cage, returning her to the colony when I'm finished (Figure 5.36).
Introduction of Queens
There are a million suggestions for introducing queens. In general:
Remove the old queen and wait a day.
If the replacement queen is closely related, and in laying condition, she can be successfully introduced at the entrance with a few puffs of white smoke.Figure 5.36 Placing a queen headfirst into a queen cage for her own protection, to be used to release her back into the colony after it has been put back together. I will plug the end with a miniature marshmallow or piece of green leaf, which then allows the colony to calm down by the time the bees have chewed their way through the plug.Figure 5.37 Bee behavior indicating acceptance of a caged queen. The bees will be moving over the screen, offering the queen food, and can be easily brushed away with a finger. Once you observe this behavior, it is safe to remove the cover from the candy plug, in order to allow the workers to release the queen some time after you have closed the hive back up. Then replace the still‐plugged cage into the hive with the screen exposed to the workers.
Requeening via the insertion of queen cells into a queenright hive has been shown again and again not to be successful.
For extremely valuable queens, use a push‐in cage, or better yet, introduce her first into a nuc containing only brood and nurse bees.
Otherwise, introduce her in a queen cage with a candy plug, pushed into a brood frame (but not into honey, which may drown her).
Releasing any attendants from the queen cage will greatly improve success at introduction. Do so in an enclosed area to avoid having a queen fly off (although if you hold still, she may return to the cage).Figure 5.38 Bees that are not accepting a queen. These workers are attempting to bite and “ball” the queen. They will be biting the screen and cannot be easily moved away with a finger. Such behavior generally means that there is already another queen in the hive, or that the queen in the cage has a very different odor than the “colony scent.”
For best results, do not remove the candy plug cover until after inspecting the caged queen the next day (Figures 5.37 and 5.38)
Practical application: It is often difficult to replace a queen with a queen of another race.
Introduction via Queen Cell
When splitting a colony in the spring, a ripe queen cell (a swarm cell from another hive, or a grafted queen cell) can be introduced successfully after a queenless split has been sitting for a day (Figure 5.39).
Figure 5.39 The round opening at the bottom of the inserted queen cell indicates successful emergence. Any chewing on the side of the cell would indicate that the bees killed the queen.
Wrap Up
A well‐reared queen of good stock can make beekeeping a pleasure. There is no reason to keep bees that are not gentle, productive, and disease and parasite resistant. In general, colonies should enter the winter with a queen that is not more than a year old. Every beekeeper should learn how to rear a few queens (Oliver 2014), and then keep queenright nucs on hand. All beekeepers should demand that queen producers start selecting for varroa‐resistant stock.
References
1 Anderson, K. et al. (2018). The queen's gut refines with age: longevity phenotypes in a social insect model. Microbiome 6: 108.
2 Baer, B. et al. (2016). Sperm use economy of honeybee (Apis mellifera) queens. Ecology and Evolution 6 (9): 2877–2885.
3 Bee Informed Partnership (2019). Sentinel Apiary Program Final Report 2019.
4 Collison, C. (2017). A Closer Look. https://www.beeculture.com/a‐closer‐look‐8.
5 Farrar, C. (1947). Nosema losses in package bees as related to queen supersedure and honey yields. Journal of Economic Entomology 40: 333–338.
6 Mangum, W. (2010). The usurpations (takeover) of established colonies by summer swarms in Virginia. American Bee Journal 150 (12): 1139–1144.
7 Maori, E. et al. (2019). A transmissible RNA pathway in honey bees. Cell Reports 27: 1–11.
8 Niño, E. et al. (2013). Chemical profiles of two pheromone glands are differentially regulated by distinct mating factors in honey bee queens (Apis mellifera L.). PLoS One 8 (11): e78637.
9 Oliver, R. (2014). Queens for Pennies. http://scientificbeekeeping.com/queens‐for‐pennies.
10 Oliver, R. (2015). Minimizing Swarming http://scientificbeekeeping.com/understanding‐colony‐buildup‐and‐decline‐part‐7b.
