fall requeening

[latebee]

Howdy everyone,
                  Recently spoke to two elderly beekeepers here, and they presented a very interesting method of fall requeening. This may not be practical on a very large scale, but controversial enough to be very interesting. Between the 2 of them there is 80+ years of experience. The method briefly presented would be to place a caged queen in the upper hive body of a two deep colony, since the new queen has stronger phermones she will gradually be accepted as the mother and the old queen driven out or killed. They claim 9 out of 10 colonies treated in this manner will be occupied by the new queen in the spring. Anyone else ever try this? Also what would you consider to be the downside of this idea? :roll:

[Idahobeeguy]

What are the differences between this method and the standard requeening method? Does one still place an edible barrier in the end of the queen cage? If not, you must have to go back and release the queen before spring in order for her to begin laying eggs.

[leominsterbeeman]

I know of some experienced beekeepers that use this method,  the best reason to do it -  no hunting down the old queen and having to dispatch her.    

I will give it a try and report back.

[beemaster]

Today when Big Rog and I were doing a good inspection of C3 (now H1 - hive 1) of Rogers, we found the queen in the upper super where she lived all summer long (as did the other hives I've had this year. It's strange and I might have to assume something reoccuring in the bee world - maybe (think it might be a cicada thing as crazy as that sounds) but hey, anything is possible why you have ruled out the probable!

Starting her up to can't hurt in my opinion. As the frames are drawn out she'll make her rounds and as cells become available (and when most are already brood or food filled) she'll make her way down stairs to get that box going too!

The bees in Roger's hive we wall to wall and elbow to elbow, I'm assuming we had 100,000 bees in that hive which I know is very close to swarming! Roger has got his self the makings for adding a third super (which I was able to find for him) for either a feeder or get some frames from his local Dadants place (which I had one nearby - but started trying to power wash, it wasn't buiding up pressure right and it was cutting holds in the super better than it was power washing) and let the hive build up and not out.

Note: cause I imagine Rog might read this, after he left, the air got out of the system and the powerwash was working like it should - but either way, your boxes will last those Virginia ladies for many years :)

All that said and back to the original post - it will be interesting if the new queen (caged) can indeed over power the older failing queen and force an inevitable killing off of the old queen and slowly turn the hive into her domain. Please let us stay informed, but I think it's a great experiment and worth trying especially if rounding up the old queen is hard to do and/or if yo just want to try a method tried and tested prior by experience keepers. Great post thanks.

[Anonymous]

Got to wondering if any body has tried it ? Did it work?
 :D Al

[Finman]

Howdy everyone,
                -   interesting method of fall requeening.
- a caged queen in the upper hive body of a two deep colony, since the new queen has stronger phermones she will gradually be accepted as the mother and the old queen driven out or killed
. .............. this idea? :roll:

First question: Why to do that, what is the value ? - Seems complicated. Never heard.

I use much late fall requeening. In  August, when bee summer is over, bees do not like requeening. They kill a new queen very often, or tear its foot nails or antenna away.

When  you feed winter sugar to colony a couple of days, they take a new queen very easily.  This autumn I changed 25% my queens.

Little hives I put together in order to get a whole box  for winter. In all cases I protected the queen with little cage and I feeded bees that they bellies were full of sugar. All those queens are alive now.