I am going to requeen my hive today, and I have never done it before. What are some good approaches? The queen I have is in a plastic JZ-BZ queen cage. The attendants are surrounding the queen cage in a separate battery box.
Do I just open the battery box, dump out the attendants, and then put the queen cage in the hive? I have read about spraying the cage with a scented sugar syrup to mask her scent for a while. Is this recommended?
As for placing the queen cage in the hive, do I try to jam it between two frames, lay it on top of the frames, put it on the bottom board (as I read in one source), etc.?
As for the cage itself, is there a special cork, etc, that I have to remove (like in the 3 hole kind...as i have heard)?
I am going to attempt this in about another 2 hours, so I will most likely just figure it out as I go, but I know how quickly some of you respond, and thought I would give it a shot.
Thanks in advance.
--Steve