# Direct release virgin into queen right colony?



## mike17l (Jun 22, 2012)

I would like to requeen some hives on a flow. I do not want to look for queens to kill. I am planning on direct releasing virgins into the top of the established colony. Virgins will be no more than 5 days old, some will be 2 days old. The hope is that the virgin will hunt down and kill the established queen, then proceed to mate and continue laying with only a short brood break. The virgin would be marked for identification and checking the success rate. 

Will this work?


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## Virgil (Jan 14, 2018)

I think there is a high chance the bees just ball the virgin. 

You could push a queen cell into the honey supers and see if they superceed - which is what I think you're after.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

You'll have better luck introducing the cells before they emerge. But if you want to run a virgin in, use a lot of smoke first or dip her abdomen in honey first....


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## mike17l (Jun 22, 2012)

Michael Bush said:


> You'll have better luck introducing the cells before they emerge. But if you want to run a virgin in, use a lot of smoke first or dip her abdomen in honey first....


Cells would be better, but I need to be able to verify acceptance, so I need to be able to mark the new queen. Also, the yard is 3 hours from home, So I will not be able to confirm acceptance of a cell either. I planed to use ample smoke, but I will add a bit of honey to the plan.


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## Son of Pete (Feb 18, 2017)

I don't have enough experience to offer any advice, but please let us know how it goes Mike.


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## Scott Gough (Dec 10, 2015)

I do not have any experience with this either but have thought about trying to do this this year. Here is a thread that might interest you..

http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...age2&highlight=virgin+queen+cell+introduction

Check out post #24 by Lauri. She mentions putting the cell in the hive that the queen emerged from when the queen is added. 

Let us know how it goes.


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## mike17l (Jun 22, 2012)

Scott Gough said:


> Check out post #24 by Lauri. She mentions putting the cell in the hive that the queen emerged from when the queen is added.
> 
> Let us know how it goes.


I saw that when looking for info on doing this. Looks promising.


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## DaisyNJ (Aug 3, 2015)

Two weeks ago, I introduced virgins hatched in incubator into Nucs made between 2 to 24 hour prior. All virgin queens were about 24 hr age and dipped in honey before introduction. 3 out of 10 killed, one 2 days later. There are bunch of threads on newly emerged queens developing pheromones after 48 hours. FYI.


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## Josh Peal (Apr 26, 2017)

DaisyNJ said:


> Two weeks ago, I introduced virgins hatched in incubator into Nucs made between 2 to 24 hour prior. All virgin queens were about 24 hr age and dipped in honey before introduction. 3 out of 10 killed, one 2 days later. There are bunch of threads on newly emerged queens developing pheromones after 48 hours. FYI.


The dipping in honey method isn't highly reliable. There are better ways to do it. 
How are you gauging the kill off? If you're checking back in 2 weeks then it's just as likely that she died during one of her flights. Depending on the time of year and the yard... I've seen as little as 33% return rate and as high as 99%.
The only way to properly determine virgin acceptance is to check back in 48-72 hours. This comes with the caveat that disturbing the hive can lead to balling of the virgin and therefore reduce "return" rates.
If you're introducing older virgins, which I've done with acceptable success, you will need to take extra care.


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## DaisyNJ (Aug 3, 2015)

Josh Peal said:


> The dipping in honey method isn't highly reliable. There are better ways to do it.
> How are you gauging the kill off? If you're checking back in 2 weeks then it's just as likely that she died during one of her flights. Depending on the time of year and the yard... I've seen as little as 33% return rate and as high as 99%.
> The only way to properly determine virgin acceptance is to check back in 48-72 hours. This comes with the caveat that disturbing the hive can lead to balling of the virgin and therefore reduce "return" rates.
> If you're introducing older virgins, which I've done with acceptable success, you will need to take extra care.


Being impatient I am, I checked the Nucs after 2 days and found two dead queens on the bottom, one head missing. They were dead for some time before I went in. And you are right, the third one got balled right in front of me, possibly due to disturbance caused by my opening of Nucs.


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## burns375 (Jul 15, 2013)

Good luck. In my experience hives do not tolerate virgins, like those that are queenright with a laying queen. That virgin has to battle the alot of workers to get to queen. You'll have much better success with weaker hopelessly queenless splits and mating nucs. I've had strong nucs chace around a hatched virgin for days. Some eventually killed her, some accepted her, some chewed the tips of her wings before accepting. The friskyness /strength of virgin is also a factor determining success.

Theres also a chance they may try to cast out the virgin in a swarm. I think this would probably only happen with a hive that already swarmed though.


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## DerTiefster (Oct 27, 2016)

Suggested references on BeeSource:

Direct release technique from Lauri
http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...ducing-cells-or-virgins&p=1572688#post1572688
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?343903-Is-there-a-trick-to-introducing-a-virgin-queen

I personally have no experience as yet with this.

Michael


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

I've had good luck introducing virgin queens into smaller hives or nucs with powdered sugar. I pull each comb and dust it liberally with the powdered sugar so there are a lot of ghost bees flying around cleaning each other up. The queen goes on the screened floor (of my topbar hive) or on a comb away from the fray. She is usually always accepted.


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## Spur9 (Sep 13, 2016)

Scott Gough said:


> I do not have any experience with this either but have thought about trying to do this this year. Here is a thread that might interest you..
> 
> http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...age2&highlight=virgin+queen+cell+introduction
> 
> ...


Saturday I found myself in this situation. I was checking a hive that swarmed earlier in the week for cells that I could use to start a double nuc. No problem finding a couple of frames with capped cells for that project. I also found another frame with a capped cell. The queen was beginning to cut herself out. I was going to leave it in the hive until I saw a virgin queen on another frame. 

For personal experience (and not wanting the hive to potentially cast another swarm), I took the frame with the emerging queen to a split that I had made few weeks earlier. The split's 1st attempt at making a queen had failed. I had placed a second frame of brood in the split and they had made a qc. By the time I was ready to place the frame with the emerging queen in the hive, she had cut the cell cap. I could see her moving around in the cell. So in went the frame. I'll check the split in a couple of weeks.


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## Scott Gough (Dec 10, 2015)

Spur9 said:


> I'll check the split in a couple of weeks.


Please let us know how it went.


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## mike17l (Jun 22, 2012)

DaisyNJ said:


> Two weeks ago, I introduced virgins hatched in incubator into Nucs made between 2 to 24 hour prior. All virgin queens were about 24 hr age and dipped in honey before introduction. 3 out of 10 killed, one 2 days later. There are bunch of threads on newly emerged queens developing pheromones after 48 hours. FYI.


So you had 7 accepted to be able to mate? have you checked for success since then?


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## DaisyNJ (Aug 3, 2015)

mike17l said:


> So you had 7 accepted to be able to mate? have you checked for success since then?


Yep. 6 of 7 laying and 7th is still there but no eggs yet, probably running couple of days late.


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## mike17l (Jun 22, 2012)

DaisyNJ said:


> Yep. 6 of 7 laying and 7th is still there but no eggs yet, probably running couple of days late.


excellent!!


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

DaisyNJ said:


> Two weeks ago, I introduced virgins hatched in incubator into Nucs made between 2 to 24 hour prior. All virgin queens were about 24 hr age and dipped in honey before introduction. 3 out of 10 killed, one 2 days later. There are bunch of threads on newly emerged queens developing pheromones after 48 hours. FYI.


Sounds like you were working with queenless nucs, right? The OP wants to place virgins in queenright colonies.


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## mike17l (Jun 22, 2012)

AstroBee said:


> Sounds like you were working with queenless nucs, right? The OP wants to place virgins in queenright colonies.


Ideally, yes, id like to release into queenright colonies. However it is sounding like that will be a waste. I will release into QR only if I cannot find the queens to kill.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

mike17l said:


> Cells would be better, but I need to be able to verify acceptance, so I need to be able to mark the new queen. Also, the yard is 3 hours from home, So I will not be able to confirm acceptance of a cell either. I planed to use ample smoke, but I will add a bit of honey to the plan.


How many colonies are you looking to requeen? I've never attempted what you propose, but my guess is that the yields are going to be low. Is there no way that you can do this with cells?? You say that you "need to be able to verify acceptance", but if the old queen is removed, then that's about at good as it gets. Is it that you can't find or don't have the time to locate the old queens? Would <50% success be an acceptable outcome? That number is a total guess, but if these are full-sized queenright colonies, I would expect pretty low yields, which (if true) seems like a waste of resources (time/gas/queens). Maybe others have some queen magic to share, but I'd be looking for an alternate approach.


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## mike17l (Jun 22, 2012)

AstroBee said:


> How many colonies are you looking to requeen? I've never attempted what you propose, but my guess is that the yields are going to be low. Is there no way that you can do this with cells?? You say that you "need to be able to verify acceptance", but if the old queen is removed, then that's about at good as it gets. Is it that you can't find or don't have the time to locate the old queens? Would <50% success be an acceptable outcome? That number is a total guess, but if these are full-sized queenright colonies, I would expect pretty low yields, which (if true) seems like a waste of resources (time/gas/queens). Maybe others have some queen magic to share, but I'd be looking for an alternate approach.


The location is 3 hours away, I have a full time job. Someone else is making the virgins for me and I will not be able to get them sooner. I will be dropping a trailer off on a very strong flow. Time constraints are the biggest issue. I have found some time in my schedule and hope to remove queens 3 days prior to introduction. I will be dropping in their queen cups when I install them.

Personally, I really want to use virgins, so that I can mark them prior to release. We are in an area with a heavily africanized population and I want to keep the genetics going away from that as much as possible. Marking helps to know genetics.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

This thread made me do a search and I came up with a study that had real low numbers of queen cells being accepted with a queen in a hive and I thought it was like zero to 17 percent acceptance of a virgin and in the end it was the old queen still in the hive when checked latter.. I thought roger patterson, on the old dave cushman site covered this and was even saying that he would make them queen less for 8 days to garrentee cell acceptance. I know I had young nurse bees accept a cell with just a couple of hours tops.

I would not be in a hurry and expect it to work. If I could set it up where I could watch it like a hawk, I might try it thinking it would fail. I am new and this is all from reading and not experiance except like I said giving young bees a cell.
Cheers
gww


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## Spur9 (Sep 13, 2016)

Scott Gough said:


> Please let us know how it went.


I checked the hive today and saw the queen still alive. I did not see any eggs though. She may need a few more days to get going. 

I went ahead and added a mixed frame of open and capped brood to the hive. I placed the frame next to the one that she was on. 

While I wouldn’t say I’m out of the woods just yet, she does have a week under her belt.


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## Scott Gough (Dec 10, 2015)

Spur9 said:


> I checked the hive today and saw the queen still alive. I did not see any eggs though. She may need a few more days to get going.
> 
> I went ahead and added a mixed frame of open and capped brood to the hive. I placed the frame next to the one that she was on.
> 
> While I wouldn’t say I’m out of the woods just yet, she does have a week under her belt.


Thanks for the update!


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## mike17l (Jun 22, 2012)

I introduced 14 virgins a week ago. Had 6 successful. The virgins were 4 days old. The colonies were queenless for 1-3 days prior. Virgin was released directly in top box. I put the queen cell in at the same time as the virgin. A week later 6 had eggs. The others all had multiple queen cells, I assume these were not accepted. If they had been accepted, the queen cells would have been removed. 
Over all I was happy with 43% success for the first time trying. 

I removed the in hive made cells and inserted my own into the colonies that had rejected the virgins.

Thanks for all the advice.


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

I know this is not exactly what this thread is about, but it is similar. A paper that goes over the process of different ways of requeening colonies without dequeening first...

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00288233.1972.10421270?needAccess=true


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

mike17l said:


> Over all I was happy with 43% success for the first time trying.


I appreciate the follow-up.

43% during a strong spring flow is pretty poor success even for large colonies. I'd expect using cells, your success would have been above 85% (possibly higher). I've seen low yields before, but it's typically during mid-summer (dearth + massive dragonflies). I understand that you had several constraints, but it doesn't seem like a good use of resources to me.


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## mike17l (Jun 22, 2012)

AstroBee said:


> I appreciate the follow-up.
> 
> 43% during a strong spring flow is pretty poor success even for large colonies. I'd expect using cells, your success would have been above 85% (possibly higher). I've seen low yields before, but it's typically during mid-summer (dearth + massive dragonflies). I understand that you had several constraints, but it doesn't seem like a good use of resources to me.


Considering I wanted to use virgins and not cells, this was not possible. Thanks.


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