# Timing for requeening or dispatching?



## Rusty Hills Farm (Mar 24, 2010)

I've only done this once. I searched through the box for the nasty queen, using a cappings scratcher on the drone brood as I went, then killed off the old girl, and added a caged queen the next morning.

Of course that did nothing for the drones already flying, but it was the best I could come up with at the time. 

HTH

Rusty


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## drlonzo (Apr 15, 2014)

When hives become nasty, it can be a real chore to try and requeen. Breaking the hive up into smaller NUC's and giving each a queen or queen cell may be an easier way to deal with them. One method I've seen used is to break down the hive into NUC's, allow them to try and make their own queen, then tear down the cell and insert the good queen cell inside of a protector sleve. Since they are already queenless they accept the new queen, each NUC is given a brood break, and you increase hive count too. Then in 30 days or so, new queen is laying up the place.


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## SouthTexasJohn (Mar 16, 2015)

drlonzo said:


> When hives become nasty, it can be a real chore to try and requeen. Breaking the hive up into smaller NUC's and giving each a queen or queen cell may be an easier way to deal with them. One method I've seen used is to break down the hive into NUC's, allow them to try and make their own queen, then tear down the cell and insert the good queen cell inside of a protector sleve. Since they are already queenless they accept the new queen, each NUC is given a brood break, and you increase hive count too. Then in 30 days or so, new queen is laying up the place.


X2


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## mgstei1 (Jan 11, 2014)

My point I guess I am trying to make is to improve the genetics in our area. The drones from the mean queen can still go out and spread the meaness to someone elses virgins and it gets worse as each one mates. 
Thats why I am thinking before I let this ol girl have more drones and spread her demeanor to other virgins via her drones to dispatch it and would be better overall to kill the whole colony, drones and drone cells also.
Far to many good natured queens and bees left in my yards to keep mean ones and there by helping the gene pool in our area.
Ive had mean ones before but nothing like this ol girl has produced.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

The only success I've had re-queening nasty AHB colonies is to use a Laidlaw queen introduction cage. It is a 5" x 7" rectangle of wood with #8 hardware cloth over the top. The wood frame members are 7/8" tall and 3/4"wide. Yeah, I go to the trouble of finger jointing them, but you probably don't have to.

The underside has a 1" strip of sheet metal attached so that it protrudes 3/8" below the bottom of the rectangle. I usually make this in 2 pieces bent at 90 degrees, and fitted to the inside perimeter, then stapled into place. If the corners don't line up exactly, I file them.

Remove a nice flat comb with emerging brood and a little corner of honey & pollen. Brush all the bees off. In a different room, release the mated queen onto the comb and cover her with the Laidlaw cage, pushing it down until the sheet metal is embedded into the comb all the way to the wood.

The queen can lay eggs in the empty cells, raising her pheromone & queen substance levels. The emerging baby bees accept her as "Mommy". The rest of the bees will accept her, though the AHB are quite recalcitrant about it. She has to get laying pretty good before they accept her. 

The Laidlaw cage has no candy plug, nor other bee escape. The beekeeper releases the queen after he sees that the bees are no longer forming an "attack ball", but instead are feeding her through the hardware cloth. The Laidlaw cage is not used for virgin queens.

DO kill unwanted AHB drones regularly. Drone combs are placed and killed about 21 days after they are introduced. Any small patches of drone cells in otherwise worker cell combs are killed with a capping fork, and checked for mites while you're at it.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

mgstei1 said:


> When is best time to either dispatch a hostile aggressive colony or try requeening? Requeening limits the timing when virgins are available and that also means drones available.


Re-queen them when you discover their bad temper and queens are available. Don't worry so about her drones. Just keep your colonies with he queens you like. Your trying to change the neighborhood, sand that takes years...and may be impossible where AHB throws usurpation swarms. 

Kilo has it right as far as method. I don't bother building a fancy wood and wire push-in cage. Easier and just as effective to make a simple wire cage. One good thing about the push-in is multiple queen colony. Often enough I've killed the old queen in a mean colony, introduced my new queen...just to find out later the mean hive had more than one queen...and I had to look through that nasty stinging mess to find the second queen...and of course they had killed my newly introduced queen. 

http://youtu.be/aGbjfYV8v38


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

A study several years ago showed that 1 colony in 20 will have 2 queens during part of the year. Michael, while I understand how you are using the push in cage to detect 2 queen colonies and resolve the problem before losing the introduced queen, it might help if you explained the process.


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## Clayton Huestis (Jan 6, 2013)

You could also pull a few frames from a mean colony and start a nuc with your new queen. After your new queen is laying find and kill the old queen. Do a newspaper combine. More than one way to skin a cat. Either way it doesn't taste good


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## BjornH (Nov 8, 2013)

If its not to many supers on, I remove them and carry away the brood box and put a smaller but nicer colony on old spot ( allways good to have dome dpare nucs, right  ). Supers put back. Next day or two do a drive-by and shake evil brood box through sive-box in front of another hive that could use some young bees. Angry queen/queens shows up and destryed. Brood frames in the freezer...Easier to have angry worker in a lone yard working to death in production than having them in nucs and fighting them every feeding...dying stuck in my gloves...I have smoke free Buckfast bees ( im Swedish) and i want it to be that way ( slight asthma). Bad temprament just slow things down. Someone in the neighbourhood area throws nasty drones sometimes.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Fusion_power said:


> A study several years ago showed that 1 colony in 20 will have 2 queens during part of the year. Michael, while I understand how you are using the push in cage to detect 2 queen colonies and resolve the problem before losing the introduced queen, it might help if you explained the process.


Remove the old queen. Locate a comb with emerging brood and nectar. Brush off the bees. Locate the push-in cage above emerging brood and a bit of nectar. Hold the new queen by the wings and place her beneath the cage. Touching her snoot to an emerging bee or nectar will distract her for a second so you can let her go and lower the cage. Push the cage into the comb to the mid rib. Replace the comb in the hive and mark top bar so you know which frame it is on. Close up hive.

4 days later, open hive, pull a side frame and then the marked comb...you don't want to have the cage come off. Notice how the bees are acting on the outside of the push-in cage. Are they gripping the cage tightly or only walking/standing on the cage. Gripping and biting the cage indicates a possible second queen...the new queen hasn't been accepted. Look in the comb for eggs, before you pull the cage. No eggs and bees walking on cage and the queen has been accepted. Pull the cage...be sure the queen is walking on the comb and not the cage...she might fly if she's on the cage. Look for eggs in the cells beneath the cage. She should be laying.

On those occasions when you find them gripping and biting then cage, and there are eggs in the cells outside the cage, there is another queen present. She must be removed and the cage re-set. Of more than 100 colonies re-queened this way in 2015, I would say that 5 had multiple queens, and we repeated the method and those accepted the queen the second time.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Push-in cages are close to 100% queen acceptance if the beekeeper is patient and makes sure the new queen is laying and accepted before releasing her. Push-in cages should *NOT* have candy releases. Push-in cages are for mated queens, not virgin queens.

The Laidlaw cage is just more difficult for those AHB b!+ches to dig underneath to kill your VSH or other valuable new queen. 3/4 of an inch to cross under the wood, then that dang metal strip stops 'em. They usually give up, she starts laying, they accept her - except, of course, if she's damaged, poorly-mated, or if there is a second queen, for which good ol' Mike has laid out a nice procedure above. 

If you want to see an attack ball, as MP describes as "gripping the cage" or "biting the cage", try adding a new mated queen under a push-in cage in a hive with a hot, solid laying queen. You will see attack behavior.

Then add a queen under a push-in cage into a nuc' that has been queenless for 2 hours. Most likely, they will accept her. You should see the difference quite easily. The walking on the cage is more normal, and you may see an attendant feeding the queen or another young bee emerged under the cage to hand off to the queen. That's when it is safe to release her.

Clayton - I have tried that with AHB, and it does not always work. The Laidlaw cage is the answer to re-queening AHB colonies. It sometimes takes 2 tries - I've even had some dig through from the back of the comb to kill an Italian queen, but it has the best chance to get a laying, mellow-behaved queen into that hot colony.

I have also tried breaking the AHB colony up into 2 or 3 smaller colonies and introducing queens with the Laidlaw cages. It sometimes works faster, but I had one turn around and kill a queen they had previously appeared to accept. My first cages were too small, and I failed to wait for her to lay eggs under the cage. The larger 5" x 7" Laidlaw cage is still 100% for me, though, when the introduced queen was a good one.


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