Natural Beekeeping International Forum

[Ukrainian beekeeper]

Hello everyone! We are beekeepers from Ukraine. We have 70 bee colonies in the apiary. We have been engaged in beekeeping for 15 years.
I whant to tell you how to install a new queen bee in a safe way. This method is good for important queen bee. For example it can be a tribal queen. Here is a video about it.
https://youtu.be/ENlSWRXBm2g

Need to know that bees try to preserve their genetics. If there are no brood in hive a new bee queen will not be killed because without the queen bee and eggs, bees will not survive, without new queen, bees will die. Bees understand it. So bees will accept a new queen bee. But all the same, we need to install a new queen bee in a cage. After shaking, flying bees can get into the hive. The flying bees can remember the old bee queen. There is a possibility that flying bees will kill a new bee queen.That why we use the cell (better Gaidar`s cell). During the day young bees will release her, and flying bees will fly out from this hive to their hive.
Also we put frames with the syrup in the hive (but better put the feed frames without brood, you must be sure that there is no brood on the feed frames). Put 2 feed frames and 2 frames with empty combs in the hive. Frames with empty combs can be sprinkled with syrup, bees will quicker occupy them.
Then find and isolate queen in the colony of bees. Take frames with bees without queen (better frames with open brood, there are more young bees). Shake off the bees from frames on the board near the entrance to the hive. You need to shake in 1,5-2 times more frames with bees from the donor's hive than you have the frames in your hive that you are strengthening. For example, we were puted 4 frames in the hive, and then we need to shake off at least 6 frames with bees from the donor's hive, because flying bees will fly back to the donor's hive, and young bees will stay in the new hive with a new queen. It is better to shake bees from frames with brood. There are more young bees in the frames with brood. So we had install a new important for us queen (For example it can be a tribal queen). After 7-10 days mated queen bee have to begin lay eggs. Virgin queen bee will lay eggs later.
The Queen is laying eggs, bees are working. Now we need to strengthen this colony of bees. Put at least two (better 3-4) frames with a sealed brood. Use a sealed brood because we need different ages of bees. The first, shake off bees from our bees colony on the board in front of the entrance in hive (watch out for the queen, she have to stay in the hive). The second shake off bees from frames from donor`s hive on the board in front of the entrance in hive. We need to shake off bees from 4 frames if we want to put 2 frames with sealed brood in our hive, and we put back in the donor`s hive remaining 2 frames. Bees were mixed during the shaking, so there will be no fighting between bees. Queen is under protection, the flying bees will not kill her if they will enter the hive.
That's all, thank you, subscribe to our channel!

[AndyC]

Our expert just pops the Queen into a little pot of fresh honey taken from the destination hive then puts her on the top frame bar.

The girls soon crowd round and clean her up by which time she is accepted.

I haven't tried it yet but he says 100 percent success is normal.