Laurence Edwards shows how to introduce a stubborn queen bee that won't leave her cage. Wet her wings for two seconds to keep her grounded, remove her attendants, then place her on the frames where she'll walk into the hive.
Have you ever introduced a queen to a colony and she will not exit the cage? You open up the cage and the queen flies off. Very, very frustrating. In this video, I'm going to show you a foolproof technique to stop that happening, make sure the queen doesn't fly off, and make sure you get a successful introduction. So inside this cage here, I'm coming back after about 4 or 5 days to make sure all the queens have got out the cages. I've got 12 that are successfully got out, and I've got one that will not exit. Even though you can quite clearly see there that the bees have tunneled in through that fondant, the queen is reluctant to leave. This is the simplest manipulation. All you need to do is open up that cage, pick up the queen, take her out, drop her into the colony. Easier said than done. You open that cage, I tell you what will happen, the queen will fly off. Now I know the queen can exit through those cages, as she has done on all of the other colonies in this apiary, But let's jump in, I'll show you exactly how to fix this. So here is my solution, 1 cup of water. All we're gonna do, shake off any bees. You don't need any bees on the outside of this. Get all of the bees off the outside. There we go. What we've got inside now is lots of dead attendants and 1 queen, big chubby queen moving around. And all I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna drop that straight into the water. And I know that sounds a bit horrific, but make sure the water goes in. Oh, that's so cool. And make sure that queen gets nice and wet. Now, once you're confident the queen is very wet through, you don't need to drown her here, but just make sure she's wet. All you're gonna do is let that queen come out. She's soaking wet, so she can't fly off. So you can see there, look, she's not flying off because she is soaking wet. Really simple technique for you there. I guarantee if she wasn't wet, she would be long gone now. So all I'm gonna do is just take that queen now, pop her into the colony, and the introduction is complete. As long as you've taken down all of the cells and the colony's hopelessly queenless, when you get to this stage here, you can just drop her on the top of the frames and she will wander off into the colony and your introduction is complete. Don't just open the cages, the queens will fly off. Dunk them in water, 2 seconds, wet the wings, open up the cages, and if you're not comfortable picking up the queen, you can just shake her onto the frames. But I find the best way, just pick her up, pop her on top of the frames, and that way you don't lose your mated queens when they will not leave the cage.
