# Introducing Virgin Queens in Full sized Colonies



## rniles (Oct 10, 2012)

To* those who have introduced virgin queens into full sized colonies*, what was your success rate in her becoming a laying queen?

A study for introducing virgin queens into nucs can be found at https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00892217/document ..in brief, their findings were, _"proportions of introductions that resulted in a laying queen were 70% (queen cell introduction), 65% (1 day old virgin queen), 55% (4 day old virgin queen), and 29% (1 day old virgin queen introduced into a queenright hive)"._

From a different thread, Rob proposed the above question, I would be interested in other peoples experiences as well.


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

80% would be a real decent result.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Whatever you do make sure she is no older than 3 days.
The 29% is not true. The success rate is higher.


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## rniles (Oct 10, 2012)

As for me, introducing into full sized colonies, in a queen cage with candy, the last 5 out of 6 were accepted (that's all I've introduced to full sized colonies this year, the rest have been nucs). Meaning they were walking around on the cells and were released by the bees who ate through the queen candy. The remaining one disappeared, we went through the hive and found a virgin queen that wasn't marked (I mark my virgin queens - pretty much for this reason. I want to see how well they are accepted, go on their mating flights and start laying).


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

You will see something different when trying to
introduce the 3-4 days old virgin queen either through a
cage or running into the hive method.


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## camero7 (Sep 21, 2009)

Best method is ammonium nitrate. Quick, don't need to come back for 30 days and then recombine the failures with the successful nucs. I've been getting about 80% success with this method. Most of my virgins are well over a week old by the time I get them.


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## rsjohnson2u (Apr 23, 2012)

Robert, sorry if I missed it, but how old are the queens you mark and cage when introduced to these full sized colonies?
Thanks,
Rob


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## rniles (Oct 10, 2012)

rsjohnson2u said:


> Robert, sorry if I missed it, but how old are the queens you mark and cage when introduced to these full sized colonies?
> Thanks,
> Rob


This is just for the full sized colonies.

#1. Emerged 4/13, installed 4/16
#2. Emerged 4/18, installed 4/20
#3 and #4: Emerged 4/28, installed 4/29 (one of these was replaced by an unknown unmarked VQ)
#5: Emerged 5/10, installed 5/12

I'm still learning what works, how and why. I'm also using cells, virgin queens and mated queens.

I'm very interested in mastering the use of virgin queens because with them, it is possible to have the most flexibility, greater time frames, and fewest resources (nucs, frames, bees). I'm still learning the trials and errors, limits, and how good these are and under what conditions.


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## rniles (Oct 10, 2012)

camero7 said:


> Best method is ammonium nitrate. Quick, don't need to come back for 30 days and then recombine the failures with the successful nucs. I've been getting about 80% success with this method. Most of my virgins are well over a week old by the time I get them.


OK, I gotta find that thread again ..but I was just reading about someone using ammonium nitrate in their smokers. Intriguing.


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## camero7 (Sep 21, 2009)

rniles said:


> OK, I gotta find that thread again ..but I was just reading about someone using ammonium nitrate in their smokers. Intriguing.



check out these threads
http://www.beesource.com/forums/show...monium+nitrate
http://www.beesource.com/forums/show...monium+nitrate
http://www.beesource.com/forums/show...n+introduction


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## rniles (Oct 10, 2012)

beepro said:


> You will see something different when trying to
> introduce the 3-4 days old virgin queen either through a
> cage or running into the hive method.


Whatcha mean beepro?


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Here is what I found out so that you can cut down on the
learning experience. These experiments I have done it every year for
the last 4 years. Introducing a few hours virgin into a full size hive is not
an issue. The problem comes when trying to introduce a 3 days or older one. From
day 1-3 the virgin is allow to roam on the frames spreading her bee scent as
she mature trying to dominate the hive all over. Maybe that is why a virgin can ]
out run the worker bees. The workers gradually accepted her presence
without any problem. If you take this virgin out and put her in another hive then the foreign older workers will balled on her. This is because of the scent difference from one hive to another. But if you put her in a hive that has all the newly emerged young bees then they will accept her happily. Newly emerged bee has no defense just an innocent looking helpless bee. The Italians are a bit easy to introduce than the Russians. Somehow the
Russian bees are a bit picky that they don't accept the new queen that easily. That is also why I don't give a frame of foreign bees from another hive to an existing virgin queen hive. The foreign bees will find the virgin while she is roaming the hive and balled on her. Then her own workers trying to save her that created a further bigger balled mess when everything got meshed together. What an ugly sight! So I have to give them the queen cells to start of. In S. Am. they use the carbon dioxide to put the bees to asleep then put the new queen with them. Not sure how effective it is for an old virgin though. Now you see how different type of bees and how they like to accept the virgin queens.


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