# Would you dare?



## bevy's honeybees (Apr 21, 2011)

This was briefly mentioned at the queen rearing class I went to in May:
Take a laying queen from one hive--do not cage her--and direct release into a queenless hive and she will be accepted immediately. The instructor said he's not tried this but has heard it goes fine. Too risky?

I want to do this with the hive where I will put my grafted queens tomorrow. I want to move her into a queenless hive (after I check carefully for queen cells) without caging her first. 
Thoughts? Experiences?


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## Sunday Farmer (Nov 13, 2013)

Do I dare, disturb the universe? 

I think this is something brother Adam would do.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Will the queenless hive be hopelessly queenless or will there be eggs/new larvae? I have heard of dipping the queen in honey and toss her in but I would not do it unless I had some spare laying queens. Too chicken. I have had cells started even with a caged queen


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

What Brother Adam did was remove the laying queen from a colony to be requeened, and add a laying queen that he had just removed from the mating nuc. Remove a laying queen and add a laying queen. A different situation that adding a laying queen to a queenless colony.

He also said that if the new queen is something that you think is important or something you really care about...take extra precautions.

I guess I would use a push-in cage over emerging brood. There is emerging brood? How long has the colony been queenless?


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

bevy's honeybees said:


> I want to move her into a queenless hive (after I check carefully for queen cells) without caging her first.
> Thoughts? Experiences?


Why? What's the issue with caging her?


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## capitalbeesupply (Jul 28, 2013)

bevy's honeybees said:


> This was briefly mentioned at the queen rearing class I went to in May:
> Take a laying queen from one hive--do not cage her--and direct release into a queenless hive and she will be accepted immediately. The instructor said he's not tried this but has heard it goes fine. Too risky?
> 
> I want to do this with the hive where I will put my grafted queens tomorrow. I want to move her into a queenless hive (after I check carefully for queen cells) without caging her first.
> Thoughts? Experiences?


I've been told similar things by a couple old beekeepers at different times in my career......take the queen and put her at the entrance of the queenless hive and let her walk right on in the front door......their claim is that she will waltz in there acting like she owns the place and the bees will bow to her heinous or some similar line ....now with that said, I've never tried it and often wondered if this idea of letting her in the front door works or if this was just a couple of gasbags screwing with the rookie back then...dunno

Rich


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## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

I have even done it pulling a laying queen and replacing her with a virgin and it works fine. But I would be skeptical of doing it with a queenless hive.


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

I've covered a virgin in honey prior to intro and had it work out successful but I'd bet it's one of them things covered by the dreaded 50/50 . It either works or it don't.


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## bevy's honeybees (Apr 21, 2011)

Michael Palmer said:


> What Brother Adam did was remove the laying queen from a colony to be requeened, and add a laying queen that he had just removed from the mating nuc. Remove a laying queen and add a laying queen. A different situation that adding a laying queen to a queenless colony.
> 
> He also said that if the new queen is something that you think is important or something you really care about...take extra precautions.
> 
> I guess I would use a push-in cage over emerging brood. There is emerging brood? How long has the colony been queenless?


This makes sense. 
Astrobee, no specific issue as far as using a cage and I will use one as the queen I'm pulling is from my best backyard hive. That's why it's my starter hive. The hive she's going into has been queenless for 5 days. Too long. I have wanted to ask this since I heard it at the class. I will try it when mated queens are ready for the hives I want to requeen... I will do a mix of cages, and direct release right after failing queen removed. Thank you for the information.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

bevy's honeybees said:


> I will use one as the queen I'm pulling is from my best backyard hive.


Yeah, if you consider this your best, then maximum protection is warranted. Good luck.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

What amount of time elapse since becoming queenless is the best and worst chance for acceptance? 

Some say a matter of minutes; -------24 hours; ---------- and some say a week to make sure they have no viable larvae to raise a queen instead of accepting the introduced one. Would the same odds apply to direct introduction as it would to caged introduction?


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## Colobee (May 15, 2014)

bevy's honeybees;1444817...The instructor said he's not tried this but has heard it goes fine. Too risky?[/QUOTE said:


> I've heard it's usually easier to bet someone else's money...
> 
> I've heard & read (a thousand times) that bees will generally attack & kill a foreign queen immediately. As a result, I've never tried it.
> 
> It's probably a better bet to put the old queen in a small nuc with her some of her own brood.


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## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

Brother Adam was not just removing a laying queen and replacing her with another laying queen by direct introduction. He used one of his queen cages with a candy plug so that it would take several hours for her to be released.

I have replaced queens as Brother Adam did with success, I have also tried direct release and had a laying queen immediately killed when she ran in. The queen had been removed from her nuc to requeen a colony for a friend, but upon inspection the supposed queenless colony had a virgin queen. When I returned home an hour and a half later, I was going to return the queen to her own nuc so I thought I could save a little time and not make another inspection of the nuc to release her, I just opened the nuc and ran her in. The bees did not ball her, the first worker she ran by jumped on her back and stung her. Taking short-cuts always cause me trouble.


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

I was recently thumbing through the Laidlaw and Page queenrearing book...they have a whole section on direct introduction.

I've dredged a laying queen in honey and done a successful direct release, but I'd rather bet someone else's money on such a thing.


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## DG2015 (Mar 4, 2015)

This topic came up when Michael Palmer spoke at my local bee club meeting in April.  I was curious so I tried replacing one laying Queen for another. It worked out well. :thumbsup:


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## asd (Jun 10, 2015)

I think you can test bees reaction a bit before releasing: put the queen in a cage and watch. In critical times of the year they instantly accept her.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

I actually do this direct introduction a couple hundred times every year. 

My mating nucs are 4 way. Two nucs on either side of a central divider. The two are separated by a movable division board feeder. At the last catch, we remove the queen on one side of the feeder, remove the feeder, move the removed queen's combs over against the remaining queen, and put the feeder at the side wall. The remaining queen does just fine with the other little colony combined with her's. No fighting, no balling, no queen loss.


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

Mike, to me I would call that a 'combine' rather than an 'introduction'


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## Colobee (May 15, 2014)

Agreed - I've had success with combining small (nuc) colonies. I can't knock direct release, as I've never done it. 

However, the last thing I'd do is drop one of my best queens directly into a queenless hive - as the OP is questioning. ANY kind of slow release - be it a regular cage with candy, or push in- those would be my first choices. 

Introducing her right on the frame of her own brood that she is on would be even better, and with 3 frames of her own brood is _almost_ a slam dunk.

But that's just me - betting my own money...


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## DG2015 (Mar 4, 2015)

Having caught a few swarms and extra queens to experiment, I also tried the direct release without removing the existing Queen. Placed her on the landing board followed by a little smoke. A few days later both marked queens were on the same frame. Motivation from a great presentation, a flow and some luck.....things worked out. It may have simulated a supercedeure.


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## asd (Jun 10, 2015)

It's interesting to do all these experiments when you have extra queens: for example I have blue queens that I want to replace with white ones. Some of them are laying great and I really feel sorry for them.

- took one green queen from a colony and right away put it in a small queenless 2 frame nuc - accepted instantly
- yesterday killed blue queen and right away direct introduce another blue better queen(I'll remove them anyway later on) - don't know the result yet

It might depend on the bees mood and they are pretty good mood these days - very gentle

I don't do this with the white queens  and not in full sized colonies, though I think is doable


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

I have on many occasion to play with the idea of swapping the queens to 
see what will happen next. Over the years many queens got balled! It is all
because of my wrong doing. I'm a bad bee killer admitting my sins!
Yes, it is true that running a queen into a queen less hive or even in a queen right
hive will get her balled to death. Yes, it is true that on certain time of the year say in early
Autumn you can get away with it. The honey rolled queen sometime work and sometime not.
To be successful at this queen introduction or replacement trick you need lots of newly emerged
bees and the young nurse bees. The older bees will balled the new queen. Once you have a few
frames of the newly emerged bees then it is safe for a direct release. The young innocent young
bees are not aggressive toward their new queen. No, it is not balling, it is acceptance. So your timing
have to be just right at introduction time. Releasing a queen into the older workers hive I cannot imagine
the result. Will never do that again.


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## asd (Jun 10, 2015)

The new queen is alive and well - direct swap of queens. I think I'm entering a new level in beekeeping


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## Colobee (May 15, 2014)

Yeah - they call it the "Why not try it, it _might_ work" level".... 

This is one of the reasons I like catching swarms - if it doesn't work out - you haven't lost all that much.


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## Dave Burrup (Jul 22, 2008)

To years ago we pinched a bunch of old queens that had started nucs in the spring. We replace all of the old queens in our nucs in late summer. I had a hip replaced while they were re-queening themselves. 6 of the nucs did not successfully re-queen and became laying workers before I could get back to them. After I got back in gear we had some more nucs to re-queen. Just to see what happened we took 6 queens directly from their nucs and dumped them in the top of the laying worker nucs. All six were accepted. Would I do this again? Not unless I was doing a Hail Mary with queens I did not want any more. The populations of the laying worker nucs were declining, but were still pretty good.


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## asd (Jun 10, 2015)

Colobee said:


> Yeah - they call it the "Why not try it, it _might_ work" level"....
> 
> This is one of the reasons I like catching swarms - if it doesn't work out - you haven't lost all that much.


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## bentonkb (May 24, 2016)

If it is the older bees that reject the queen, could you introduce the queen to a frame with only young bees as an intermediate step? You could take a brood frame a few feet away and shake the bees off on the ground in front of an empty nuc box. Put the beeless frame in the nuc and let the young bees crawl into the box while the older bees fly home. Then introduce the queen to the young bees for a few minutes before bringing the frame back to the hive.

I have no experience, so it's just an idea. From the sounds of it there is a lot of voodoo associated with queen introduction, so there is little harm in experimenting.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

anytime I suspect a queen to be lost wether from mating or what ever, I will catch a queen from one of my nucs in a queen clip and lay it on the top bars and see how they react. If they feed her and are excited, I will tuck her beside the last frame and the wall and put the lid back on as close to normal as I can and go do other things, when I'm done for the day I will return to that colony usually 15-20 min later and see if they are still tending to her, if so I open the clip and let her walk right in. I have done this a couple dozen of times and never had an issue. If they don't feed and tend to her immediately I pull her out and close it up, that usually means they got one somewhere.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

beepro said:


> Yes, it is true that running a queen into a queen less hive or even in a queen right
> hive will get her balled to death. Yes, it is true that on certain time of the year say in early
> Autumn you can get away with it. .



I think your definition and my definition of " Will" is two different things, you say it like it's an absolute, you sure that's not allogrooming? I have never killed a queen walking one into a queenless hive, and 1 time I was even able to somehow walk a queen into a queen right hive and they co-existed for sever weeks before a caught it, and this was just about a month and a half ago, so no they WILL not always ball the queen.


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## Clairesmom (Jun 6, 2012)

I just did this.

I had pulled 5 frames from a hive which I placed in a nuc box because I wanted a new queen to put in an observation hive.

I did this without my glasses (which, apparently, I now need to wear in order to see the eggs and young larvae, for the first time this year- last year I was fine without them), and thought I had eggs and larvae on the frames I used to make up the nuc. um, maybe not, cause when I went back to check last week I had no queen cells.

Since I was once again out in the bee yard without my glasses, I just took the old queen out of the original hive and stuck her in the nuc. No cage, no nothing- just placed her on the top bars and let her crawl down into the frames.

Went back to check yesterday and she is fine- laying up a storm.


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