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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • To: John Rintoul <beecd AT icloud.com>
  • Cc: Bynum Hoekstra <bynumhoekstra AT gmail.com>, Orange County Beekeepers Association <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Introducing a queen to an established colony
  • Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 13:28:20 -0400

Excellent pics and commentary, John!

One thing that doesn't show up in pictures is the bees' attitude. In my limited experience with caged queen introductions, if you gently brush (e.g. with your finger or clump of grass) or blow on the bees adhering to the cage and they mostly move off of it or at least lazily shift around, their attitude is LOW on the Murderous Scale. But if they hang on to the cage and refuse to move, as if they are on a sworn mission, their attitude is HIGH on the Murderous Scale.

Does this correspond to what you've observed?

Randall



On 4/6/2016 9:52 AM, John Rintoul wrote:
93BC5743-0633-4DED-8369-F1A8E2D687AC AT icloud.com" type="cite"> Bynum,
This is the pic that I told you about of a new queen being introduced to the colony. I laid the queen cage on top of the frames to see if the colony would attack or accept her. According to Jamie Mills at 7 Stands Bee Farm if the bees already had a queen, they would attack her by mobbing and balling the cage in an attempt to bite through the screen to kill the her. The bees looked murderous to me. But when Jamie looked at this picture he said, “Don’t worry, they’re just lovin’ her up.” He was right.


This experience taught me that it’s always a good plan to 1) take pics, and 2) to have more experienced beekeepers to consult with. Thank you OCBA!

Someday I will place a caged queen on the bars of a hive that I know has a queen just so I can see (and photograph) the difference between bees attacking and bees lovingly accepting a new queen. Maybe someone on the OCBA listserv already has such a pic.

-John

John Rintoul
(919) 414-4071 (M)

No trees or bees were killed in the distribution of this message, but countless electrons were seriously inconvenienced.






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