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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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  • From: Randy Dodd <dodd.randy AT gmail.com>
  • To: "ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org" <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [ocba] Question re queen in new package
  • Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 14:22:03 -0400

Hello all,

We are newbies and today we picked up two packages and introduced them to the new hives.  When we pulled the queen cage out for each package, we saw some bees in the cage with her, much to our surprise!  And we couldn't figure out how they got in. The queens were alive and possibly a little flustered. We went ahead and put the queens and everyone else in their new homes, following the instructions from class/the book/NCSU.  So the questions:

1) is having other bees inside the queen cage intentional or accidental?  Might the other bees be her "attendants"? 

2) if it is accidental (somehow they snuck in), is there anything special to do?  Should we liberate her immediately, or would that put her at more risk?  Does it suggest we should check back on her sooner rather than later?  I've seen opinions varying for when to monitor her release from a day to 5 days.  In other words, if one or both queens don't make it, how quickly do we need to get replacements?

Thanks,

Randy Dodd



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