Target Colony

There are many reasons for replacing a queen during the course of the year:

• You may want to replace a bad queen for various reasons;
• You may have a queenless colony;
• You may have a drone laying queen or
• Laying workers.

Each situation requires different handling so knowing the exact status of your target colony is essential.

Bad queen

The colony may be aggressive, they may have overmuch chalk brood or the queen may just be plain weak. Whatever the reason find her and take her out.

• Either come back in 7 days, remove queen cells and use the Introduction cage method;
• Or if you feel brave – use the Matchbox method or the Paper Bag method after about an hour;
• Alternatively – if the bees are unnaturally strong and/or aggressive you could introduce your new queen to a nuc then unite the nuc with the strong colony on day 7 after you have removed those queen cells.

Queenless Colony

Sometimes, although you may be sure a colony is queenless unless you killed the queen yourself or saw her die you can’t be certain unless you test them.

Before you  test them – always check she’s not in the supers!

Queenlessness test:

• Make absolutely sure there aren’t already queencells tucked away somewhere;
• Add in a frame of young larvae (<3 days old) from a different colony.  Nurse bees will sometimes eat the eggs of other bees but will happily draw emergency cells from small larvae;
• Come back in a week;
• If there are no queen cells they either have a queen or they think they have a queen, there is a difference; they could have a drone laying queen or laying workers – see below;
• If there are queen cells – they are queenless;
• Remove the queen cells and the colony is now hopelessly queenless and should be ready to accept a new queen now using the method of your choice.

Drone-laying queen

If there is a drone laying queen – the bees will not draw cells on a test frame.

A drone laying queen is either a young queen that was not mated properly or a queen that has become very old. Either way, the sperm she stored in her spermatheca when she mated has run out and she is firing blanks – she is laying unfertilised eggs (drones) in worker cells.

• In this case the brood nest will be ugly and distorted by the larger drone larvae outgrowing the worker cells they were laid in;
• Cells will have domed drone cappings throughout;
• Eggs may appear to be laid in a good healthy looking pattern especially if the queen is a young one.

Either way – you will have to find her and remove her then you should be able to introduce a new queen immediately.

If you can’t find her it is possible she has gone. It is also possible that they are superceding her. You could add a test frame  (see above).

Laying workers

Laying workers occur where the bees have been queenless for some time.  In the absence of brood and when a colony has become hoplessly queenless, the ovaries of young nurse bees can swing into action and one or more of them will start to lay eggs. None of the eggs laid by workers are fertilised and the result is dwarf drones – a last desperate bid to get the genes out there in the pool.

The condition can be recognised by an erratic laying pattern and there will be a scatter of eggs in each cell. If you are minding your bees you should be aware of the status of each of your colonies and alert to the possibility of laying workers in colonies that are vulnerable.

The condition can be reversed by the addition of a frame or more of young larvae and eggs – they probably won’t make emergency cells in this case.

Alternatively, drag the hive away 100m and shake out all the bees into the grass. Only flying bees will return. Laying workers are young bees that have never flown and will die out there in the cold. That’s the theory anyway. And it’s brutal, brutal brutal.

This is the worst condition to find in your bees –  by the time they get laying workers they are usually very weak it is best to just unite them with a queen-right colony or a nuc.

The state of your queen

The queen you intend to introduce may be one of the following:

• Laying queen;
• Postal queen;
• Virgin queen.

They will all need slightly different considerations. In theory, the queen cage method is the safest and often recommended. However – read on…

Laying Queens

A big fat laying queen, straight out of an Apidea, will be exuding calming queen substance and as such will have strength and fertility written all over her – just what a queenless hive is looking for. In fact sometimes, a very strong queen seems to be unable to turn off the stream of eggs and will continue to lay as you handle her.

Such queens should be the easiest to introduce – to a desperately queenless and receptive colony.

However – she will still smell wrong because she has been fed by other bees and the reception committee will notice – big time!

Postal Queens

A queen that came in the post was a laying queen when she went into the cage but she is no longer a laying queen when she gets to you.

The smell of queen substance may be diminished and the bees may develop the opinion that she is in fact failing.

In addition she will smell wrong because she has been fed by other bees and as before – they’re going to notice.

After she is accepted, it will take a little time for her to get into the full of her lay and the bees may draw queen cells in the interim thinking that she is failing rather than getting going. Check she’s still there and laying properly then just knock them off.

Virgins

A virgin can be the most challenging of all. There is no scent of queen substance to calm the reception committee but there will be more to it than that – perhaps they can smell her genes and her potential to supplant their own; they probably smell a cuckoo!

And of course she has been fed by other bees and will smell wrong for that reason as well.

Which Introduction method?

There are many ways to introduce a queen bee and the choice is all yours. But remember:

The main reason you can’t just walk a new queen into the hive is because she doesn’t smell right. The thing is to get the bees to feed her before they kill her.

To do that you can either:

• Cage the queen and stick her in the hive. That’s the Introduction Cage method;

Or:

• You can cage some bees, confuse them, then stick the queen in with them. They are too confused to kill her but they will feed her. That’s the matchbox method.

Alternatively:

•  If your target colony is very strong or aggressive or just plain scary – you can introduce the queen to  nuc and unite the nuc with your target colony. It seldom fails – nucs are pussy cats.

Click here for the Introduction Cage Method

Click here for the Matchbox method

Click here for the Paper bag method

Click here for How to Introduce a queen bee to an Apidea

Click here for how to introduce a queen bee from a postal cage

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2015.  All Rights Reserved.

Click here for a timetable to use your Jenter kit with a Cloake board system

Which Queen to breed from

For this to work well you need to choose your queen with care.

She should be young and she should be laying full tilt. If the weather has been poor, there is a good chance she won’t be and you should feed for a week beforehand.

Ideally you will have chosen your queen mother using Colony Assessment and Appraisal records from the previous year. If you don’t have records – how do you know what you are breeding?

Some bees are angelic in the early spring – butter wouldn’t melt – but come summer when they are at full strength it’s a different story altogether.

Other things to be aware of

Remember, the Jenter kit sticks out a bit. If you are using castellations in your brood box you may find that the face of the Queen cage is pressed too close to the adjoining frame for the bees to access the queen. This can be overcome by cutting a square out of an old frame – this allows the bees to access the queen. You can leave this frame in after you have removed your Jenter frame and the bees quite quickly refurbish the frame, filling the space with drone comb.

Try to site the Jenter frame near the centre of the brood nest where there are plenty of nurse bees.

If you are using plain runners, remove a frame and space them appropriately.

Timing

Timing is not as easy as it seems. Consider these points:

• As we know the best age larvae are between 12 and 36 hours old – that’s 84-108 hours including the 3 days as an egg depending on who you talk to.
• If you put your queen into the cage on say… Tuesday and remove her at the same time Wednesday – how old are those eggs ?
• You don’t know do you – they could be one hour old and they could be 12 or 24.
• You could start guessing the angle they are leaning over at but that’s all very subjective.
• Or you could put her in for just 12 hours then you could be more sure but the chances are – you’ll find only half the frame laid up. Or not at all.
• It’s a safe bet that the queen doesn’t get straight down and lay into the frame. Instead she will trundle about a bit and the workers will do the same. Then the workers will have to hoover out the cells before the queen can lay into them.
• Better then to assume that after 24 hours with the queen in the cage – the eggs will be mostly around 12 hours old.

Here’s what I do…

…I put the queen into the cage at about 19.00hrs – come hell or high water and I take her out next day at the same time – come hell or high water.  I make the aforementioned assumption that the queen gets laying after about 12 hours. You can cogitate if you like, about whether I’m right or wrong but the fact is that the following works for me:

• Call the day the queen comes OUT of the frame ‘day zero’ For me, day zero is usually a Wednesday and at 19.00hrs and assume these eggs are about 12 hours old;
• Thursday 19.00hrs – day 1 (36 hours);
• Friday 19.00 – day 2 (60 hours);
• Saturday 19.00 – day 3 (84 hours)
• Sunday MORNING at about 7.00am they will be 96 hours old;
• At about 9.00 Sunday morning I take the frame out;
• The larvae will average about 98 hours old in total – that’s the 72 hours as eggs plus an average of 16 hours as larvae.

Even if she laid her first egg immediately you shut her into the box  – that egging event was only 110 hours ago and the larva that breaks from that first egg can only be 36 hours at the most. In my experience they are seldom that old.

There are over 100 plugs in a Jenter kit and you will find a range of sizes/ages of larvae there.

None of them will be too old and none of them will be eggs – so take your pick and transfer them to the bar frame then put the bar frame into your rearer colony.

Timetable

Acclimatise the Jenter Frame

Spray the Jenter frame with syrup and leave it in the hive for about 24 hours so the bees can clean it and it will start to smell beeish.

Call this Day -2

Put the Queen in the Jenter Box

The face of the Jenter box has a circular opening with a removable door. Remove the door, put the queen into the box and replace the little door.

Put the frame back into the hive and close it up.

Take note of the time and the date.

Call this Day -1

Take the Queen out of the Jenter box

24 hours later, check that the queen has laid up the box. If she has, remove the front plate and release her then replace the front plate.

This is Day 0

Put the Jenter frame back into the hive for another 4 days.

If she hasn’t laid sufficent eggs, you could leave her in for another 24 hours. If she still won’t lay into it – consider grafting instead.

Plug Day

Plug day is Day 4.

On Day 4, remove the Jenter frame from the hive. The frame should now contain an assortment of larvae for you to choose from.

Slot your plugs into the plug holders which you will have set into a bar frame and acclimatised in your cell raiser. Then put the bar frame into your cell raiser for the bees to raise queen cells. Transfer to Apideas or nucs when ripe.

Note from a hot summer

Here’s something to be aware of – in a very hot summer such as last year (2018), metamorphosis can speed up and queens will emerge much earlier than expected so be aware of that possibility and don’t be ambushed like wot I was – with virgins running around all over the place. It was ridiculous.

Click here for a timetable to use the Cloake board system with a Jenter kit

Click here for Queen rearing using the Cloake Board method

Click here for How to Improve Your Bees

Click here for How to set up your Jenter Kit

Click here for How to Graft

Click here for How to set up an Apidea

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2015.  All Rights Reserved.

Here’s a simple introduction method:

• You’ll need one of the flat plastic postal cages;
• Plug the gate with candy if you are using candy;
• An alternative is to enclose the open end (after you have added the queen) in a couple of layers of newspaper – smear with a little honey and secure with an elastic band;
• Make sure you remove the plastic gateway if it is a new cage;
• Add in your queen – on her own – no escort;
• Remove the red plastic ventilation grille from the front panel of your Apidea;
• Slide the door panel up to the top so it covers the gap left by the grille;
• There is now a nice size cavity between the door panel and the first frame;
• Add your queen cage into it thus:

• Replace the crown-board and roof;
• Put the ventilation grille somewhere safe;
• Leave for a few days

If you haven’t got a postal cage you could use a queen shuttle. Click here for how to make an Apidea Shuttle

Click here for How to set up an Apidea

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2015.  All Rights Reserved.

Native Irish queen bees for sale (Apis mellifera mellifera) – ready now.

Selected for good temperament, productivity and low-swarming. Click here for more about JanesBees

Contact Jane info@beespoke.info

Click here for more about the Native Irish Bee

Click here for Bee Improvement

Click here for Colony Assessment

Click here for Colony Appraisal

Most advice is to set the Apidea over a nuc and unite the two but this often comes to one sort of sticky end or another and is less viable when you have a number of them.

Here’s a neat alternative:

The Quandry

At the tail-end of last year’s queen-rearing season I found myself with a bunch of sad, queenless and broodless Apideas and one queen-right Apidea with no home to go to.

It occurred to me that the solution was staring me in the face. This method is more or less the same we use to create Apideas and hinges on the ‘Third Box Principle’ of uniting bees.

Click here for Apidea Instructions.

Click here for more on the Third Box Principle.

Here’s what to do…

• Find the queen and put her into a matchbox;
• Gently shake all of the bees out of all of the Apideas into a plastic bucket spraying them lightly with water;
• Find a nuc box, block the entrance with foam then add two frames of stores, a frame of pollen and leave a space in the middle;
• Pour the bucket of bees into the space, give them another bit of a spray if they’re coming up at you;
• Drop the queen in on top of them then carefully add two empty, drawn frames into the space;
• If you are worried about your queen, cage her first and suspend the cage between the middle frames;
• Close it up and take it away;
• You can feed it but be careful – this is the robbing season.

As I say, that’s what I did last year. That nuc came steaming through the winter and is now into a full box. Of course I could have been just lucky but I’ll try it again and let you know how I get on.

An alternative is to overwinter a queenright Apidea and decant it into a nuc in the spring.

Click here for more on how to overwinter an Apidea

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2015.  All Rights Reserved.

Here’s what to do with the feed though:

Get a spare roof…

… and pack the roof cavities with fondant.

Remove the roof from your hungry Apidea…

… and fold back the the little flap in the crownboard.

Quickly put the spare, fondant-packed roof in its place and replace the brick. The bees will access the fondant through the feed hole and eat their way through the galleries and channels in the roof which holds about 150g or 6oz of fondant.

Another alternative might be to remove the crownboard altogether but I haven’t tried that yet and wonder if the fondant might ooze down into the cluster?

Keep an eye on it:

• If the bees are using the fondant you will see water carriers unless it is very cold in which case they will use very little.
• If the weather is mild and the bees are active you might want to check it but give it a couple of weeks and bear in mind – when you lift the roof this time, the crownboard will almost certainly be stuck to it so there will be disturbance. Choose a mild day and be ready to prise it off with your hive-tool. Have a spare crownboard and the other roof at hand – packed with more fondant or Neopoll if we’re into February.
• Neopoll is a pollen supplement with a similar consistency to the fondant but more like marzipan – it’s delicious!
• If it still feels heavy – leave it alone;
• Do not feed syrup in the winter – the bees will not be able to ripen it.

Click here for instructions on How to Overwinter an Apidea

Click here for full Apidea instructions

Click here to listen to Piping Queens

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2015. All Rights Reserved.

Here is the quandary I found myself in this year: I had several sad little queenless Apideas and two other strong ones, each with five frames (feeder removed) and with good laying queens in them. I can never quite face shaking the poor queenless bees out, nucs weren’t possible and there’s nothing so sad as watching an Apidea dwindle its way into winter with laying workers and a bellyful of slugs.

So here’s the recipe:

Ingredients

• 5 queenless Apideas
• 2 queenright Apideas
• 1 nuc box
• 2 fat frames of stores
• 1 frame pollen
• 2 empty drawn frames
• 1 spare Apidea body box
• 1 Apidea Miller feeder
• 1 large plastic bucket
• 1 water sprayer
• Foam
• Travelling mesh

Method

• Take the nuc and add in the two frames of stores one at each side leaving a good gap in the middle;
• Bung the entrance with foam;
• Now the brutal bit – take the plastic bucket and and lightly spray the inside of the bucket;
• Shook all the bees out of the queenless Apideas into the bucket and tumble them around together spraying a bit more water to keep them flightless;
• Once these are completely mixed shake in all the bees and the queen from the weakest of the strong Apideas. Do this as gently as possible especially once you’ve found the queen – be sure to shake that frame with the greatest care. If you can’t find the queen just be careful with all of them;
• While you are doing this sort out the frames of brood from the shaken queenright Apidea and the best frames of stores from the others and put them into the spare Apidea body box;
• Pour all the bees into the nuc and carefully put the other 3 frames in on top of them;
• Fit the crownboard covering the feed hole with travelling/ventilation mesh then take it away to an out-apiary and feed it feed it feed it, but keep the entrance as small as possible to deter robbers.

My nuc is now as strong as a horse, queenright, stuffed with ivy honey and ready for the winter.

Now for the rest:

• Take the spare Apidea body box and equip it with the frames of brood we mentioned earlier and the best two frames of stores;
• Set this box on top of the other queen-right Apidea;
• On top of this, fit the Miller feeder. If you’re using these be aware that you will need to throw in a handful of straws or wood-shavings or similar as the bees have direct access to the syrup and will float off and drown otherwise. Unless, of course, I’m doing something bloody silly in which case, Dear Reader, I ask you to correct me using the comment form at the bottom of this post.

By the way the Miller feeders come with a strip of queen excluder to pin underneath to keep ‘Herself’ out of the syrup.

The perfect place to overwinter an Apidea is the sort of south facing windowsill that is really too hot in summer – like the one in the pictures above.

I should add, I have overwintered Apideas on a single box in the past but you need to have them very well provisioned, you need to pack the roof space with fondant and you need to keep a close eye on them especially in the early spring.

Click here for instructions on how to feed an overwintering Apidea

Click here for full Apidea instructions

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2014. All Rights Reserved.

Alternatively you could just put a big sponge on the roof and wet it at intervals. Make sure there is a slope is away from the entrance or water will run in.

Also, make sure that you have the ventilation grille partially open so the bees can circulate the air. If you fully open the door you will fully close the grille so avoid that – see the photo above.

Click here for instructions on how to set up an Apidea

Click here for how to overwinter an Apidea

Click here for how to feed a winter Apidea

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2014. All Rights Reserved.

Apideas are far and away the best mating nuc on the market – they cost a little more but are worth every penny for the elegance of the design and the quality of the product.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat and the same can be said for Apideas but here is how I’ve been doing mine for the past 15 years…

Preferably you need to start your Apideas 3 days before your queen cells are ready to be moved.

Assembly

1. Snap the 3 plastic frames together making sure you have the grooves for bedding the wax on the inside.
2. Fit each frame with 3cm deep strip of foundation as a ‘starter’. Make sure you have the foundation the right way up, the hexagons should be points up thus:or the bees will not draw the wax. Secure in place by dribbling a line of wax from a beeswax candle into the groove in the top bar alongside the foundation.
3. Do not be tempted to use drawn frames from last year because they take up too much space and you won’t be able to get the full complement of bees in when you come to fill it. Also, drawing wax helps the bees to bond into a unit.
4. Be sure to arrange the frames so that two of the semi-circular cut-outs in the top bars meet beneath the hole in the crownboard. This space will accommodate a queen cell and it is important you get it right from the start so check it – stick your finger in it to be sure.
5. The funny bits of red plastic which don’t seem to belong anywhere are in fact queen excluders; one slots into the feed compartment and the other can be pinned, or screwed, to the inside of the door panel so it covers the entrance. This last one is to stop your bees from absconding. Only put this in place after the queen starts to lay!
6. The other bit is a ventilation grille and you can see where that fits, the lip points inwards and overlaps the crownboard.
7. Fill the feed compartment with fondant.
8. Make sure the edge of the crownboard is tucked under the lip of the ventilation grille.
9. When you have your Apidea assembled, put the lid on and close the door, then turn it upside down and slide the floor partially out to reveal the frames. You are now ready to populate it.

Adding the Bees

Choose a good strong colony – preferably with supers full of bees.  Supers always contain a lot of young bees and as long as you have a queen excluder in place –  no drones and hopefully not the queen.

It is tempting to shake bees from a brood box stuffed with bees especially if you know where the queen is – however, if you do this you will almost certainly include a lot of drones and these are neither use nor ornament in an Apidea.

You will need a large plastic bucket, a water sprayer and a jug or some sort of scoop with 300ml level marked on it.

300mls is approximately 1,000 bees. If you consider that your queen is probably laying 1,500 – 2,000 eggs per day then 1,000 bees is less than a day’s brood production.

1. Find a frame with lots of bees on it and give it a light shake back into the hive – this will remove the older, flying bees and leave you with the younger ones.
2. Shake these into a your plastic bucket and immediately spray them lightly with a little water – just enough to stop them from flying.  Gently tap the bucket on the ground – tumbling the bees to get them clumped.
3. DO NOT over-wet them.
4. Scoop out 300mls of bees and pour them into the Apidea.
5. If you have a virgin you can drop her in at this stage.
6. Now quickly but carefully close the floor.
7. You can use bees from the brood box if you prefer, but make sure you know where your queen is and try not to include too many drones.
8. Turn the Apidea the right way up and place in a dark, quiet place for 2-3 days while the bees adjust and bond together.
9. Spray the ventilation panel with a little water twice a day.

Adding the Queen Cell

The Apidea is ready for a queen cell after the first day or so in the dark. This time-lapse will:

• Allow the bees dry out and to cluster up on the frames – if you have over-wet them, they will sit in a clump on the floor for a while and if you put the cell straight in – it may chill.
• They will have time to consider their position and realise they are alone and queenless.

1. As long as your crownboard has been fitted correctly, the roof can be removed without releasing any bees. The little flap in the crown board can be quickly and quietly lifted. A gentle wisp of smoke will stop escapees while the queen cell is placed in the hole. If you are using a Jenter or Cupkit system or grafting into cell holders, these will nest neatly into the hole and not drop through. If you have harvested a queen cell from a swarming colony you will need to either suspend the cell using a cunningly placed cocktail stick or use a wire cell-protector.
2. Regarding wire cell-protectors – if like me – you think it won’t fit the hole try screwing it in!
3. After the three days in the dark have elapsed, your Apidea can be sited outside and the bees released.

Siting your Apidea

Somewhere sheltered, off the ground and not too sunny is ideal – Apideas are made of thermo-efficient plastic and can overheat and abscond in direct summer sunshine like this:

If you kidnapped bees from hives close by, as long as they’ve had the required time in the dark, they will not fly back to the parent hive.

• Young bees that have never been outside don’t know where they came from.
• Flying bees will have melded into a unit during their incarceration and will fix on their new location.

1. Put a brick on the top or strap the roof on with a large elastic band or a circle of car inner tube. They are quite light weight even with fondant and bees in. Strong winds and/or cats can dislodge them and if they hit the floor with a bang – catastrophe!
2. You will almost certainly need to feed again but don’t feed so much that there is nowhere left for the queen to lay. The crown board is flexible enough to be prised up at the feeder end without releasing the bees from the brood chamber – strong syrup can be poured in from a jug. Alternatively, gently remove the crownboard and set it horizontally across the frames to keep the bees in place while you fiddle about. Add a few broken twigs to the syrup as floats so the bees don’t drown.
3. If you added a capped queen cell leave alone for 2-3 weeks depending on the weather. If you added a virgin leave alone for 2 weeks. If there are no eggs after 4 weeks something is wrong. Click here for Queen Rearing Timeline.
4. Once you have seen eggs you can pin, or screw, the little queen excluder over the entrance – this will stop the queen from absconding (see photo above). And by the way, if you re-use your Apideas for another batch of queens – don’t forget to remove the queen excluders!
5. If, like me, you have placed your Apidea/s in a spot that overheats in very hot weather you can easily cool them by draping a white flannel or a strip of pale towelling over them. The pale colour will reflect a lot of the heat and if you periodically drench the cloth with cold water the problem is solved.

Overwintering

Apideas will overwinter but only do this if you cannot get them into a nuc somehow

They will need to be strong and they will need to be sited somewhere dry and sheltered – in this case a south facing windowsill to maximise any sunshine is ideal. The internal feeder can be removed to accommodate two extra frames and special Miller type feeders can be purchased for autumn feeding. In addition, the roof of the Apidea incorporates a series of linked compartments which can be packed with fondant/granulated honey which the bees can then access through the hole in the crownboard – just fold back the little plastic flap when you replace the lid.

If you have a number of queenless Apideas, an alternative is to unite them.

Click here for a queen rearing timetable for Jenter Kit and Cloake Board system

Click here for How to set up your Jenter kit

Click here for how to introduce a new queen to an established Apidea

Click here for the basics of queen bee introduction

Click here for how to unite a number of queenless Apideas

Click here for more on overwintering Apideas

Click here for how to feed a winter Apidea

Click here to listen to piping queens

Click here for How to Set up a Jenter Kit

Click here for How to Graft

If all else fails – click here to buy one of my mated Native Irish queens

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2014. All Rights Reserved.