# odd way to requeen



## pahvantpiper (Apr 25, 2006)

Has anyone requeened a hive by inserting a queen cell toward the top of the hive so when she hatches out this young queen will seek out and destroy the older queen? Can it successfully be done?


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## Bob Russell (Sep 9, 2003)

Parvantpiper
The method is not odd and has been practiced by many commercial beekeepers in New Zealand for decades.A protected cell is introduced in the Autumn without dequeening,a success rate of 80% would not be uncommon.

Another method using two day old cells has been practiced for over 60 years by one of our largest beekeeping operations where the whole hive raises a single cell.Take a look.

http://www.beesource.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=5;t=000455#000000

[ September 19, 2006, 04:07 AM: Message edited by: Bob Russell ]


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## pahvantpiper (Apr 25, 2006)

Thanks Bob, this way sure seems faster and easier than finding the old queen and killing her and then hope the colony accepts the new one. I wonder why this method isn't used more regularly in the US, especially with larger operations. Seems like a great time saver

-Rob

[ September 19, 2006, 10:15 AM: Message edited by: pahvantpiper ]


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## Jim Fischer (Jan 5, 2001)

> Seems like a great time saver...

Yes, but it introduces risk, and it has a much
lower potential success rate when one has a 
smaller number of colonies in the area, as it
assumes that the queen can mate locally.

No one "likes" finding and dispatching a queen,
but it eliminates the risk of rejection of the
new queen. Cells work great if one has a 
large number of colonies, and is willing to
accept a 20% failure rate, but when only has
a handful of colonies, the "20%" can become
"100%" for the smaller number of hives.


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## pahvantpiper (Apr 25, 2006)

Good advice Jim, I appreciate your insight. Can you actually get 100% rate for requeening after killing the old queen? It's been my experience (limited as it may be) that even after killing the old queen many times the hive won't accept the new queen.


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## fat/beeman (Aug 23, 2002)

hello
at todays's prices on queens I would find old queens first. just a thought.
Don


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## Jim Fischer (Jan 5, 2001)

> Can you actually get 100% rate for requeening 
> after killing the old queen? It's been my 
> experience (limited as it may be) that even 
> after killing the old queen many times the hive 
> won't accept the new queen.

There is no such thing as 100% anything in 
beekeeping, but 80% is a terrible success
rate.

Wyatt Mangum proved with clarity that one thing
that increases acceptance dramatically is to 
release the attendants from queen cages before 
introducing the queen to a split or full colony 
to be requeened.

If your hive won't accept a new queen, was
it _really_ queenless? I keep saying over 
and over that more hives are home to two queens
than many beekeepers think, so I'd keep looking
after finding the queen, to see if I found
another! 

Another approach would be to de-queen, and let 
the hive sit for a few days, then come back and 
see if it is making that classic "queenless roar",
re-checking those hives that inexplicably do not 
have the louder noise level one would expect.

So no, I do not expect, nor do I get, 100%
success from any endeavor associated with
beekeeping, nor would such expectations be
reasonable. But 80% success means 20% losses,
and that's a serious number to someone who
has to buy and bank (or raise and bank) 20%
more cells/queens than he needs just to make 
up for the drawbacks inherent in taking what I 
would call the "lazy man's approach".

Sorry, if you wanna keep bees, you gotta 
strip down the colony to the bottom board
once in a while, and yep, looking for queens
is tedious.


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## sierrabees (Jul 7, 2006)

I've been thinking of using the 2 day system for 2007. I notice that there was a lot of interest when this topic came up in Jan 06. I would like to hear from any of you who tried it and get your opinions. I have five outyards spread over more than 100 miles and this sounds like it could save me a lot of time and travel.


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## magnet-man (Jul 10, 2004)

My only concern with this method would be the hive might swarm on you instead.


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## sierrabees (Jul 7, 2006)

magnet-man

Do you mean the cell builder hive or the hives that that are being re-queened?


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## magnet-man (Jul 10, 2004)

Hive that are being re-queened. Put a queen cell in a hive with out killing the queen seems a good way to get them to swarm.


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## sierrabees (Jul 7, 2006)

In the descriptions I've read, you are supposed to find and remove the queen before you put the cell in, but you don't have to wait the usual day or two, you just remove the queen and put in the cell.


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## Craig W. (Feb 26, 2006)

I wonder what kind of success one would have if you just killed the old queen and let the hive build its own cells and re-queen itself. I assume one would have to go in a destroy some of the cells though, you think?


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## sierrabees (Jul 7, 2006)

Craig W.

That would work for getting new queens but it wouldn't give you any control over the genetics. Using the 2 day system should give you the ability to select your breeder queens for the traits you want to keep.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>I wonder what kind of success one would have if you just killed the old queen and let the hive build its own cells and re-queen itself. 

If you time it right it could work well (just before or early in the flow). If not it will cost you a lot of honey or a lot of winter bees.

The underlying concept of queen rearing is to get the most number of queens from the least resources.

To illustrate that let's examine the extremes. If we make a strong hive queenless. They could have, during that 28 days of having no laying queen, reared a full turnover of brood. The queen could have been laying several thousand eggs a day and a strong hive could easily rear those several thousand brood. The we have lost the potential for about 30,000 or more workers by making this hive queenless and resulted in only one queen. And, actually, this hive made many queen cells, but they were all destroyed by the first queen out.

In most queen rearing scenarios we are making the least number of bees queenless for the least amount of time and resulting in the most number of laying queens when we are done.


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