[music] Alright so here we are we are
going to requeen a colony. Requeening is done
in two stages: first you have to remove
the original queen. There is no point in
introducing a queen unless you've actually removed a
queen because they won't accept the new queen. So we've been into this
this colony a day ahead. We were here yesterday and
we removed the queen that was in here. She was getting older,
she is still doing ok, but we have new queens and
we wanted to replace that queen, so we went through,
found the queen, pinched her and then we
closed the hive back up again. It takes at least two hours
before the bees start to sense their queenlessness
and if we introduce a queen too quickly it lowers
the chance that she will be accepted. Sometimes we introduce
them on the same day if we're in an out yard
or a distant location. I prefer to do it in a two
stage process like this. So we have our new
queen here, she's inside this cage area here and
she is surrounded by attendant bees. So there are about five
young worker bees that are in there with her and
they are keeping her warm, they are feeding her and
cleaning her and so on. At this end of the cage you
can see a candy tube, so that candy is there for the
worker bees to feed on, but it also provides a
slow release mechanism for the queen. If we were to just put this
queen in and let her go, the colony would kill the
queen, so we don't want that to happen. If we put her in with the
candy, it takes two or three days for the bees to chew
through the candy and release the queen. In the meantime she has
grown into their smell, she has picked up their
smell and they have become accustomed to her smell
as well, so it allows a slow, gradual transition. We keep track of our
queens using a tag and then we tack that tag
on the front of the hive, so I'm going to go ahead
and put that tag on the hive right now just to make sure
we keep track of who is who. It is just held in place by a
thumbtack right above the colony number,
you can see here, and that is how we are
able to keep records of what we are doing
with our hives. So I'll just set the queen
cage down for the moment, then we will open up the
hive to install the queen. Use just a little bit of smoke
to keep the bees nice and calm, but not too much. Puff a bit of smoke there, lay the inner cover down
at the entrance and then again we always
take the second frame out first, so we'll pry
that frame loose, pry this one up and lean that frame
against the far corner. Now what we are looking
for is a frame of brood. We want to introduce the
queen next to a good solid frame of brood because we
know the bees are going to be clustered there all
day and all night keeping this brood warm. So there is a really nice
frame of brood, lots of capped pupa
in this area here. We know bees will
always stay in this area so if we put the
queen there she will get lots of attention and
will be taken care of. So we will put that
frame back into place and then we pick up
the queen cage and we turn the screen down. We'll then move that next
to the brood frame and just wiggle it back
and forth a bit to get the worker bees out of
the way, and then we can gently push that into
the comb so it is lodged into the surface of the
comb there, and then what we do is move the
next frame over and gradually wiggle that
back and forth to get the bees out of the way and
we push it up against the cage so that there is
no chance that the cage can fall down and be
abandoned by the bees. So it is firmly wedged
into place in there and then we can just
close the hive back up and reinstalling the
frames, putting them back in their original position. So I just get that frame
in there gradually. Then we will puff some
smoke on top of the frames to get the bees out of
the way so we are not crushing any with
the inner cover, and then just gradually
lay that down on top giving the bees an opportunity
to get out of the way and close the lid up. I am now going to
make a note on the lid at the back of the
hive with the date, May 10th, queen introduced. That is going to make
sure that I don't disturb this colony for a week. If we open up this hive in
less than a weeks time we disturb the hive. The queen is recently
emerged from that cage, again it takes two or three
days for her to get out through that candy, and
if we interrupt the colony while they are gradually
accepting that queen they will turn on her and
kill her, so it's important to leave the colony for
a week before you come back to see
if the queen is laying. At that point all you are
looking for is eggs inside the hive, you don't
need to find the queen but you look for eggs
and if there are eggs there then everything is
normal and you can close the hive up and
you know your queen introduction has
been successful. If you don't find any eggs,
you then may need to requeen the colony again,
but in most cases this will work out and you've
got new young queen, good genetic material in
the hive and the hive can carry on and flourish. So that's the basics of
queen introduction and I would encourage
you to be buying locally produced queens that are
adapted to our environment and have been bred for
disease resistance and support your local
queen breeders. Thanks very much.
See you next time.
