Sunday, August 11, 2013

Queen Caging Difficulties & Robbing Honey

All of my queens are now caged unless one of them has a distant relative by the name of "Houdini" as I have had atleast one of these in the past.  Two beekeepers have reported their queen flying off when they tried to cage her.  One reported the next day they went back into the hive to find their queen.  So they successfully captured her in her queen cage.  So if your queen flies away, just put everything back together and try again the next day.  Unless she gets eaten by a bird, chances are pretty good she'll find her way back into the hive.  Queens rarely abandon their young!!  One of my queens was unmarked and I thank Ann Johnson for helping me find her.  This particular queen was an Italian that swarmed into one of my queenless, Carniolan hives.  It was difficult to find her but she was on the last frame.  The queen caging demo went great today!  The honeyflow is over now and when it gets cold, the bees will begin eating the honey so start robbing your hives - taking one frame at a time and tapping the bees off, into the hive.  Carry the frame over to a Rubbermaid tote that is a good 20 to 30 feet away from the hive.  Brush any hitchhiking bees off the frames as you walk toward the tote.  Keep the tote covered with a lid and try to keep bees from entering the tote when you lift the lid to place the honey frames inside the tote. 

4 comments:

  1. A worker bee snuck into the cage with my queen when I caged her. I left it, figured it would be ok....any problems with that?

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  2. No problems with having an attendant in the queen cage along with her royal majesty! This is common.

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  3. That's funny, I also had a worker get in with my queen. I was able to cage both queens without any trouble.

    After I had one of the queens in her cage, I noticed some workers outside the hive eating honey from some burr comb I had removed and set on a log. So I thought about trying an experiment. If queens do indeed give off a signal telling workers to attend to her, then I can place the caged queen next to these workers and see if it is true. As soon as I set the queen cage near the workers, they all immediately stopped eating honey and crowded around the queen cage to attend to her. She has the power!

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  4. INDEED!!! Thank you for your frequent comments and updates on the blog, Jeff! It makes the blog more fun!! :)

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