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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: John Rintoul <beecd AT icloud.com>
  • To: Walter Starks <walterstarks AT icloud.com>
  • Cc: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>, Orange County Beekeepers Association <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Introducing a queen to an established colony
  • Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2016 16:44:10 -0400

Good points, Walter and Randall. The distinction between easily moving the bees off of the cage and having to virtually pull them off is helpful. This is the only queen that I've had to install since so far my bees have made their own new queens. I have yet to experience the difference between high and low murderous intent. I was amazed that Jamie Miles (it's Miles, not Mills) could see the difference in attitude simply by looking at the pic I sent him.

-John 

On Apr 6, 2016, at 3:28 PM, Walter Starks <walterstarks AT icloud.com> wrote:

That's usually my test. I don't really like to just pull the plug on the candy end of the cage and hope everything works out for the best. I like to leave in both plugs and check the hive again in a few days. If I can blow on the bees outside the cage and have them just scatter I'll go ahead and open the cage manually. If I can't get the bees to let go then I'll leave the plugs in and put her back in the hive for a few more days. If it's been more than a week or so and the workers still haven't accepted her, I'll start looking for a second queen already in the hive or some other explanation, but at least I can still possibly install the caged queen into a queen castle or something similar. They're expensive and I hate to waste them.

______

Walter


You never can tell with bees. ~ Winnie-the-Pooh

On Apr 6, 2016, at 1:28 PM, Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com> wrote:

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.

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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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