Requeen Each Colony Every Year

The queen is normally the mother of all the other bees in the colony. She lays 1, 000 to 2, 000 eggs a day which may equal twice her weight so you can see that she is working herself to death at a rapid rate. Normally a queen does her best work the first year and should be replaced thereafter so as to keep up the colony strength.

The killing off of old queens needs to be a heartless job but your colonies will deteriorate, production will drop and the wax worms will take over if failing queens are permitted to remain in the hives. Some queens may be old and worn out after three or more months while others may be good for two or more years but the best thing to do is to ever keep on the alert for failing queens and weak colonies and replace the queen whenever found. It is advisable to requeen all colonies once a year.

A queen cage is a hollowed out piece of wood, covered with screen wire with ventilation slots and entrance and exit holes. One of the large holes is paraffined and filled with a candy feed. One queen and several worker attendants are placed in each cage, which acts as an introducing as well as a shipping cage.

A queen cage is a hollowed out piece of wood, covered with screen wire with ventilation slots and entrance and exit holes. One of the large holes is paraffined and filled with a candy feed. One queen and several worker-attendants are placed in each cage, which acts as an introducing as well as a shipping cage.

Never Kill Your Queens Before Receiving Your Young Queens

Frequently beekeepers order queens for shipment on a certain date and then kill their old queens so that the colonies will be queenless a few days. This is very bad practice; first because it may rain at the queen breeders yard the day he promised to ship them and second you are losing several days of valuable egg laying time.

The Time To Requeen

A good time to requeen is during the fall honey flow. If you interrupt the colony work you are not missing salable honey as usually fall honey is more or less dark and somewhat stronger than spring honey. Also at this season the bees are not anxious to grow another queen and they will much more readily accept the queen that is given them. During the late summer and fall queens are the most plentiful also the lowest in price.

Most queens are introduced in the mailing cages in which they are received. The old queen must be found and killed at the time of introduction. The queen cage containing the new queen and her attendants is placed between the brood frames after first removing the cork or the paper on the candy end. The bees in the colony will eat through the candy in two or three days and the queen will be released under normal conditions in the darkness and quiet of the hive.

Never release the queen yourself because in most cases the bees will kill her as an intruder.

You will have much greater success in introducing with the mailing cage method if you remove all of the attendant bees in the queen mailing cage before attempting introduction to the colony.

However a better and safer method of requeening is with the double screen which is described elsewhere in this book.

Spring Requeening And Swarm Prevention

The best time for most beekeepers to requeen is in the spring so that this procedure can be combined with swarm control, so as to insure the largest possible crop of the light colored, mild flavored spring and early summer honey.

When the bees cluster on the front of the hives in large number, as shown here, they are crowded and too hot and may swarm at any time. To overcome this provide more ventilation and additional room.

When the bees cluster on the front of the hives in large number, as shown here, they are crowded and too hot and may swarm at any time. To overcome this provide more ventilation and additional room.

In this operation the brood nest should consist of two or more hive bodies and preferably with both hive bodies left solid with honey from the fall before. Remember, the fall honey is usually dark and strong in flavor and much, if not all, should be left in the hive to produce bees which in turn will gather much more white honey in the spring than if you had removed the fall crop.

Depending on the part of the country in which you live, probably in March on the Gulf Coast and in May in the Northern States, your colonies will have built up very strong, having 12 to 14 frames of brood and will be boiling over with bees. If they are not this strong and the main honey flow is approaching probably you will find it best to requeen in the normal manner or possibly to skip requeening at this time if there is a young and vigorous queen in the colony. In requeening use the double screen method described in the following paragraphs.

Two Queen Colonies Using The Double Screen Method

Requeening a colony is a serious proposition; in many respects as serious as childbirth. If you kill the queen and the bees do not accept either the first or the second queen that you attempt to introduce you may as well unite it with some weaker colony by using the newspaper method. Then make a division later on.

To overcome the danger of loss caused by killing the queen before introducing the new queen it is possible at small cost to divide your colonies using a double screen and to introduce your new queen into the upper story permitting her to lay there 30 or more days before killing the old queen and reuniting the colony. This system is practical and is being used in the author's apiaries with the greatest success.

The main advantage of the double screen method is that you never have a colony without a queen. On the other hand you have all or most of your colonies with two queens for thirty days so that your colony strength actually increases under this system. If queens can be secured in early spring and this system of two queens used until the start of the honey flow the colony strength may be increased greatly while the tendency to swarm is reduced. The colony is then reunited with a substantial increase in the size of the honey crop.

The main advantage of the double screen method is that you never have a colony without a queen. On the other hand you have all or most of your colonies with two queens for thirty days so that your colony strength actually increases under this system. If queens can be secured in early spring and this system of two queens used until the start of the honey flow the colony strength may be increased greatly while the tendency to swarm is reduced. The colony is then reunited with a substantial increase in the size of the honey crop.