Queen Introduction

Introducing queens into colonies can be a frustrating and difficult task for beekeepers and it comes with no guarantees of success.  You can however do a few things to increase your chances of a successful introduction by following the steps below.  This is a long read so make a cup of tea (most beekeeping problems can be solved more easily by taking the time to sit down with a cup of tea before acting), and work your way through it.  Spend time online researching techniques as well as what we do below may not suit you, but some steps are very important.

For both virgin queens and mated queens you will have more success introducing them to smaller nucleus colonies of young bees than attempting introduction to large colonies of old and angry bees.  If possible consider making up a nuc with young bees for the introduction and then combining this with the larger colony once the queen is established.

The easiest way to do this is to take a frame of food, and a couple of frames of brood in all stages, with bees and shake one further frame of bees into a nucleus box and set it up a few metres away in the same apiary.  The older flying bees will return to their old hive leaving you with young bees looking after the brood and eager to accept a new queen.

Vitally important - the colony that you are introducing a queen to must be queenless!

The colony that you are planning to introduce a queen to must not have a queen present.  The bees will not accept a new queen if they still have a queen present.  You must be sure that there is no queen there.  A visual check may not be enough as they can get very good at not being found.  Consider a test frame of eggs to see if the bees start trying to raise a new queen from them.  If there are no cells present after a few days, then you still have a queen in that colony so look again.  You could also pass the entire colony through a queen excluder if you aren't sure.  You'll often find the old queen trying to get through it that way.  Once you are sure that you don't have a queen at all, in the colony that you wish to introduce your new queen to you can proceed.

Planned introduction - Mated Queens.

If you have planned the re-queening because you want to try our genetics or just replace an ageing queen before the winter then you can take a series of steps to increase your chances of success.

Day 1 - Make the colony queenless.  Find and remove the old queen.  You can kill her or move her to another location with enough bees to maintain her, or remove enough food and brood frames into a nuc box to make a colony specifically for the queen introduction as described above.

Day 8 - Go through every frame shaking off the bees and checking thoroughly for emergency queen cells.  Take each cell down and add the newly arrived queen in her cage between two cell bars.  Leave the cage sealed.

Day 10 - Break the tab from the queen cage and replace between frames.  Ensure that the candy plug is facing downwards so that it cannot be dislodged and fall into the cage.

Resist any temptation to check progress for SEVEN DAYS.  Doing so could risk stressing the bees and cause them to kill their new queen.

Day 17 - Check for successful queen release and eggs.

Emergency Introduction - Mated Queens.

This follows all the same steps as above except you introduce the queen, in her cage on Day 1, but leave the tab in place on the cage until Day 8.

Day 8 - Go through hive removing any emergency queen cells.  Shake bees off frames and check thoroughly.  Release the tab on the cage and place fondant plug down between the frames.

Day 15 - Check for queen release and eggs.

Introducing Virgin Queens.

The steps for introducing a Virgin Queen are the same as above with an important distinction.  After removing the tab on the queen cage you must leave the colony alone for at least two and a half weeks.  Your virgin queen must leave the hive and mate and then begin laying and you can disrupt this process by disturbing the hive.  It may even take a further week for her to settle down and start to lay.  Virgin Queens are cheaper because of the risks of the queen leaving to successfully mate.  The weather could be bad, predators could pick her off, or she could fail to find her way home.  If you don't accept these risks then perhaps buy a mated queen, or double up on virgins to increase your chances of success.