HOW TO REQUEEN A BEEHIVE

Wondering how to requeen a beehive? This page will give you a range of resources to help you replace queens.

There are many methods of re-queening beehives. You can remove the queen and let the bees raise emergency cells, but this can lead to poor quality queens. We always recommend replacing with a mated queen or a grafted cell.

how to requeen

HOW TO REQUEEN A BEEHIVE WITH A MATED QUEEN

1. FIND QUEEN

Day 0: This is generally the hardest part of requeening a beehive you MUST find the queen. If you do not find the queen and you go and ahead and introduce a mated queen, the original queen will just kill her.

If you cant find her, take a look at this video to help track her down - FIND A QUEEN.

2. KILL QUEEN

Day 0: It's never nice to kill a living creature but in order to successfully requeen a beehive, you must first dispatch the original queen.

Once you have found the queen, pick her up and squish her between your fingers. This is the most humane method to kill a queen as it's as quick as it can possibly be.

3. REMOVE CELLS

Day 0: Once the queen has been killed, close the hive back and leave the bees alone for 8 days.

Day 8: After 8 days, go through every single frame and shake the bees off. Identify all emergency cells and remove then. Double check - you need to remove ALL the cells.

4. ADD CAGED QUEEN

Day 8: Immediately after destroying ALL the emergency cells, the colony is now hopelessly queenless. They have no queen and no resources (eggs or larvae) to create one.

Add a mated queen, in a sealed queen cage and place between two frames of brood. Do not remove the tab covering the fondant.

5. REMOVE FONDANT TAB

Day 10: Leave the sealed cage in between the brood frames for 48 hrs. This allows the bees to get used to the smell of their new queen.

After 48 hrs, you can remove the plastic tab to expose the fondant. Place the cage back between the frames of brood and the bees will slowly release the queen.

6. CHECK FOR EGGS

Day 17: After 1 week, we go back and check for eggs to see if the queen has been successfully introduced. If you see eggs, then there is no need to see the queen.

If you dont see eggs, try and locate the queen. It can take 2-3 weeks for mated queens to come back into lay following being caged.

HOW TO REQUEEN A BEEHIVE

HOW TO REQUEEN A BEEHIVE WITH A MATED QUEEN

1. FIND QUEEN

2. KILL QUEEN

3. REMOVE CELLS

4. ADD CAGED QUEEN

5. REMOVE FONDANT TAB

6. CHECK FOR EGGS

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