# How long to leave queen in cage, introduced into exisiting colony



## Wisnewbee (Apr 8, 2011)

They are just allowing additional time for the colony to accept the new queen. It increases acceptance. Good practice. You're not doing anything wrong though. Both metthods are used by many beekeepers. 10 beekeepers, 10 different ways. lol

Wisnewbee
Honey Luv Farm


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## olympic (Aug 20, 2006)

Oh OK, I thought it was 10 beekeepers and 20 different ways and big argument as to which way is right. I could be wrong however, so don't quote me on this one!


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

I'll pass along a fantastic way to introduce queens developed by the late Dr. Harry H. Laidlaw of the University of California at Davis. The Laidlaw queen introduction cage is a wooden rectangle 6 3/4" x 8 3/4" on the outside dimension, 5" wide x 7"long x 7/8" tall inside dimension. It is covered with #8 hardware cloth, and has a strip of sheet metal attached to the inside perimeter extending down 3/8" below the bottom of the wood (This design is for deep frames).

Pull a deep frame out, brush off the bees, make sure it has a very flat, even area of mostly open worker cells to place the cage. The location should have about 10% pollen and honey. Place the queen on the comb, trap her under the Laidlaw cage, push the cage into the comb until the wood bottoms out on the comb.

There is no candy release - the beekeeper checks to see that the bees are not forming a "ball", attacking the foreign queen, but are feeding her through the screen cloth, signifying that they have accepted here as the new queen. When they do this, the beekeeper releases her by removing the cage.

This much empty comb encourages her to begin laying eggs. Egg laying brings up her queen substance production, particularly pheromones, greatly improving her chances of acceptance by the host colony. 100% acceptance rates are very common with Laidlaw cages - only injured, poorly mated, or un-mated queens get rejected. The process sometimes takes longer than we expect, so the Laidlaw cage protects the new queen from having a wing or leg pulled off by an attacking worker bee, and prevents them from digging under the cage and killing her.

You can read about Dr. Laidlaw's queen introduction efforts in his book Contemporary Queen Rearing, available through Dadant and Sons, also through Dr. Larry Connor's Wicwas Press www.wicwas.com

I first read about this and went out to the shop and made a run of 50 Laidlaw cages. I've never regretted it.


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