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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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  • From: Alicia Reenders <a.reenders AT gmail.com>
  • To: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [ocba] New queen installed, finally on track
  • Date: Sun, 23 May 2010 19:24:30 -0400

Hello again beekeepers,

I had trouble with either a drone laying queen or laying workers with my first package installation in April. Here's what's happened, mostly for other newbiees that might be having problems.

I got a new queen, and installed her 3 weeks ago. I first did the hive dump, where you brush out all the bees 100 yds away. I'm not sure about this, they were definitely agitated about that. Then I left the queen in the cage for 2 weeks and let the bees get her out. I left the cork on the candy side for 4 days first. Then removed it and let the bees take as long as they needed to chew through. The other bees covered the cage the whole time, though didn't ever seem really aggressive.

I think they got her out about 9 days ago. They had almost gotten through about 8 days ago, then I didn't open it up since then. Now I checked the hive and saw her walking around! Yea! There's eggs laid, single ones to a cell this time. The bees aren't building a ton of new comb, and a lot of what's there has drone brood emerging now, or pollen or sugar water. I hope they will start cleaning out the old drone cells and the queen can get some more worker brood in there.

So that's my story with re-queening a laying worker- hive. I think that's what it was, rather than un-mated queen. Every cell had 4-5 eggs in it! But who really knows I guess. Hope it might be helpful for someone one day.

-Alicia


  • [ocba] New queen installed, finally on track, Alicia Reenders, 05/23/2010

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