Introducing Queen Bees

 

Honey Bee Picture Gallery

  1. Bee Pollinating Avocado Blossom

  2. A Honeybee Sitting on a Naked Lady

  3. Instrumentally Inseminating a Queen Bee

  4. Strange Drone Bee Mutations

  5. Beeing Intimate with a Flower

  6. A Cordovan Queen with Her Eggs

  7. Carniolan Bee on a Poppy

  8. Bee Making Orange Honey

  9. Honeybee Enjoying a Water Lily

  10. Honey Bee Taking a Sip of Water

  11. Italian Queen Bee Being Fed

  12. Queen Bee Hatching from a Queen Cell

  13. Apple Blossoms Pollinated by Honeybee

  14. Africanized Honeybee Queen

  15. Queen Bee being Marked and Clipped

  16. Varroa Sensitive Hygiene VSH Queen

  17. Honey Bee Queen Cells

  18. Bee Pollen and Bee Bread

  19. Multiple Bees Working a Camellia

  20. Queen Bee Introduction

  21. Grafting Queen Cells

  22. Honeybees and Gourd Art

  23. Ancient Egyptian Bee Hieroglyphics

 

Three hole queen cage

Push in queen introduciton cage

Close up picture of push in queen introduction cage

Introducing a new queen into a colony is one of the most important things a beekeeper does. Since the queen is the mother of all the thousands of workers and drones in the colony, her genetics control the character of the hive. Colony traits such as disease resistance, productivity and gentle temperament all are determined by the queen and the drones to whom she mated. So controlling which queen heads the colony is the key to successful and productive beekeeping.

But introducing a new queen to colony can be a tricky business. The workers of a colony are accustomed to the pheromones of their own queen mother. They feel inclined to defend the hive from any other invading queen. So the beekeeper must make the switch from one queen to another very carefully. First the old queen is removed, so the bees can get used to the new queens scent. Next the new queen is placed in the colony, but protected from the bees by a wire screen for several days. After the workers have gotten used to the new queens pheromenes she can be freed to go about the hive in peace.
In the upper picture, a queen and a few attendant workers are in a mailing cage, complete with some queen candy food for the trip. The bottom pictures show a push in intorduction cage installed on the honeycomb. This cage allows the queen to start laying eggs before she is released, making her more attractive to the bees in her new hive.

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