# Will the queen fly back to a hive if you move her to a weak hive nearby?



## bonykj (Oct 20, 2016)

Will the queen fly back to a hive if you move her to a weak hive nearby? A person asked this question on our forum. 

When I did the splitting of my first hive, I put the queen and few bees 10 meters next to my hive(my mistake). After few days I found the moved queen in the same strong hive. Queen was 4 months old. She was a mated queen from other site.


How did the queen fly back to same strong hive?


----------



## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Yes she can and often too.
How? Well, she can smell her baby bees. You see, each hive has its own queen smell signature because
each individual queen's pheromone is different from one another. Also, the older queen can recognized her
own hive location too. Both the hive smell and the location of the original hive will tell the queen to fly back her
own home. Sometime you will see that a young forager bee will fly into the wrong hive and quickly backed out. This is
because her scent is different that the other bees recognized that she's not one of theirs. As a matter of fact, a queen can
find her original home no matter if the hive is a weak or a strong nearby hive. Some will move the weak hive to another location to
prevent the queen and other foragers from flying back. If you are at another foreign location wouldn't you feel home sick too?


----------



## HarryVanderpool (Apr 11, 2005)

Beepro, I have to hand it to you:
Unless I am missing out on some type of deep sarcastic humor that has flown right over my head; your answer is one with the highest level of ****amaminess in the history of BeeSource.
You were joking; right?
I read your answer several times and just could not parse out the humor aspect so I just had to ask..
At any rate, questions posted here deserve a serious answer.
Don't you agree?


----------



## RDY-B (May 20, 2007)

when you make your split --leave old queen with the parent colony--brood and adhering bees
make the split for the new queen(and can reman in the smame yard)--remember to achieve a adequate
period of time for introduction
this is why most failures hapen-simpley leave-the old queen with the field-forces and enjoy a successful
split------RDY-B


----------



## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

I move my mated queens around in my hives quite a bit and have never had them return to the original hive. I only lost one mated queen last year when I moved her over to one of those Styrofoam mini mating nucs for "holding". They didn't like the digs even though it had drawn comb in there and they left for parts unknown. She definitely didn't go back to the original colony as I got a nice new queen from her original hive, just very sad to see her go.

I have seen however when a queen gets accidentally shaken off the comb near the hive return to it. Also had that happen with a fairly new queens who had been raised in that hive so she had done her orientation flights on that box. She was moved about a foot away on a box but managed to return home safely that night.


----------



## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

RDY-B said:


> when you make your split --leave old queen with the parent colony--brood and adhering bees
> make the split for the new queen(and can reman in the smame yard)--remember to achieve a adequate
> period of time for introduction
> this is why most failures hapen-simpley leave-the old queen with the field-forces and enjoy a successful
> split------RDY-B


 How does that work for a walk away split when doing swarm control? In which the beekeeper is simulating the appearance that the hive has already swarmed. Kind of hard to convince the rank and file that their hive has swarmed and they need to get down to building a queen socking in stores and returning to productive hive life if the queen is left there. 

The reality is that if a queen has attendants and workers and those workers have brood to attend to. In all likely hood she and they are going to stay where things are good rather than venture into the unknown, Now the foragers, That is a different story!

I am not saying the queen will never return to the parent hive, It is just not the norm!


----------



## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

beepro said:


> Yes she can and often too.
> How? Well, she can smell her baby bees. You see, each hive has its own queen smell signature because
> each individual queen's pheromone is different from one another. Also, the older queen can recognized her
> own hive location too. Both the hive smell and the location of the original hive will tell the queen to fly back her
> ...


Did you suffer a real bad head injury recently? If so I suggest you see a doctor as you are not thinking very clearly.


----------



## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

I have had young newly mated queens escape while I was trying to catch them for marking and think that was the last I would see of that queen only to find her and mark her the next day. I have also found young queens from one nuc appear in a queenless nuc next door and settle down in that little colony. I have also dropped an old queen in some long grass in front of her hive and searched for some time and never saw her again, so very young queens newly or not mated might end up in another hive, But have not come across this with old established queens.
Johno


----------



## bonykj (Oct 20, 2016)

I always swap the queen between nuc and strong hive within few seconds(Brother Adam method). The queen from nuc has to be at least few months old, say 3 months. Bees accept both the queen in their respective hives. So what happens to the smell of hive. Who gives the smell to the hive, queen or bees ?


----------



## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

The OP asked:

Will the queen fly back to a hive if you move her to a weak hive nearby? 

answer: She is a woman, and will do what she wants. They do not read the same books we do.

The OP also asked:

How did the queen fly back to same strong hive? 

answer: With her wings.

That said, they can do alot of things we do not understand why. Yes, I have seen where a queen went on a "walkabout". Our job is to minimize the chances theyget a silly thought in their heads. That is where experience comes in.

Crazy(and single) Roland


----------

