In this instructional video Laurence Edwards demonstrates a detailed protocol for requeening a hostile or “angry” honeybee colony using the “8‑Day Rule.” He explains that day 0 begins when the existing queen is removed, and by day 8 all emergency queen cells must be located and destroyed, leaving the hive hopelessly queenless. A mated queen in a sealed cage can be introduced at any time between day 0 and day 8, but the cage tab should not be opened until after day 8 and after a further 24–48 hours (typically day 10). Edwards walks through the inspection process—shaking bees off each frame, scrutinising every nook for open brood or queen cells, and ensuring no open cells remain before opening the cage. He stresses patience, precise timing, and avoiding interference, noting that nurse bees will feed any queen in a cage regardless of origin. After opening the cage, he recommends waiting a week before the next inspection, at which point the queen should be accepted in 99 % of cases. Throughout, he highlights common mistakes such as rushing the process, missing a single emergency cell, or opening the cage too early, and provides practical tips on handling queen cages, recognizing capped brood, and assessing hive health.
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We're going to go back in now, check for emergency cells, take down all the emergency cells, and add in a mated queen in a sealed cage. We'll leave it for 48 hours, we'll then pop the tab, and it's as easy as that. Requeening a colony really is that easy. Make sure you follow the steps, make sure you follow the timings. Don't try and rush things, that's when they go wrong. One thing I want to add into this video just for clarity is that when you take the queen out, that's day 0, And then on day 8, that's when you take down the emergency cells. That's the timings that I use anyway. In terms of when you add your mated queen into the colony, you can add that mated queen in any day from day 0, when you immediately kill that queen, all the way up to day 8, when you take down the emergency cells. Doesn't matter when you actually put that queen in. And if you want to know the way that I normally do it, I normally put it in on day 0. Seems a little bit strange because you think, well, the colony's not used to that queen yet. But the nurse bees don't know that. You'll get some bees that wanna kill the queen, but they can't because she's secure in a cage. But the nurse bees, all they wanna do is they wanna feed a queen. They don't care whether it's their queen or anybody else's queen. That's the reason that queen banks work so well. You just put the right age of bee in with a queen and they will feed it. So don't get too caught up on when you add that queen. Any point between day 0 to day 8, you can put the queen in the cage in the hive as long as it's sealed. And then on day 8, you take down the emergency cells, give it 24 hours or 48 hours, at least give it a few hours before you pop the cage open. And then what I find works really well after that is to not look for 7 days. They've probably released her within a matter of hours, but I just find on a 7-day cycle, not going back in, when you go back in after 7 days, 99 times out of 100, the queen has been accepted. Don't worry about them getting through the fondant. Don't worry about anything like that. Any assistance that you can give is actually a hindrance and can cause issues. Let the bees get on with it. They know what they're doing. They don't want to be queenless, and you need to give the introduction every single chance to succeed. So I'll get my hood up. Let's go and take a look at the angry bees, see if they've made emergency cells, and let's give them a mated queen. So remember, with this colony, there was eggs and brood both in the supers, even though we put that queen excluder in, and down in the brood box. We need to go through every single frame. Whenever you're requeening a colony, if you miss just one emergency cell, and they can sometimes be difficult to find, then you will almost certainly have a failed introduction. Best way to do it, shake off every single frame. You don't want bees on there. Study every single nook and cranny. Anything that looks like an emergency cell, take it down. Don't leave any chances. So as you can see on this one here, we've got brood on here, lots of worker brood. So I'm going to start at the front, Work my way to the back, shake off all the bees, angry bees, get down all of those queen cells. So we're a couple of days early on this one. We're about day 5 or day 6, and as you can see, they're drawing out emergency cells on this frame. If you're rushing it like I am here and you're doing this on day 6, you're still leaving some open brood. I purposely come in a little bit early just to show you what can happen if you rush. This is day 6. I'm going to take down all of the emergency cells, every single one, and I'm going to come back on day 9 and I'm going to show you that they still had the resources to create new queen cells because of the timings. Timing is everything here. That's what they look like on day 6. When you get to day 8, what you should see is all of those emergency cells are fully capped and you should not be able to see any open brood. No eggs, no small larva, no big larva, No open queen cells. All you should be able to see is capped brood, capped cells, and empty cells. It's at that point that once you've taken down all of the emergency cells, then you know you are hopelessly queenless, and that's how you'll get the good introduction. I'll keep on working through, pulling down the cells. I'll show you a couple more, but don't rush things. Make sure you get to day 8. So there's a little close-up for you. This is what they look like on day 6, and as you can see next to it, we've still got a little bit of open brood. Whether that's viable or not for them to make another queen cell out of, probably a little bit past it. Will they have a go? Almost certainly. Just take your time when you're doing it though, try and follow the dates. So I showed you that first bit on day 6. We're now back here on day 8, and all of those emergency cells are fully capped over. There's no open brood left whatsoever, and the bees now are hopelessly queenless, or at least they will be once I've taken down the final emergency cells. I know I'm laboring the point a little bit, but if you want to make sure that you get a Successful introduction, because you want to requeen your grumpy bees, you need to make sure they're hopelessly queenless and they have no hope of creating their own queen. So the introduction of the queen that you're adding in has to be successful. Really important. Make sure you get them to this stage and then you can move forward. So this is what you should be seeing now. Capped brood, nothing down there in those cells, no eggs, no larva, nothing like that. Probably going to start backfilling it with nectar like they've done here. And then your capped emergency cell should look like that. Until you've got them to this point and you've taken down all of these emergency cells, don't open the tab. You can add the queen in at any time from day 0 to day 8, but you can't open the tab until they're hopelessly queenless. So I'm just going to go through the rest of the frames now, double-check, shake them off again, make sure there's no open brood, make sure there's no emergency cells, and then we can add our queen in. Whenever we get a batch, we get, say, like 400 or 500 queens come through. And there's always a couple that look a little bit worse for wear. You can see this one here, loads of dead attendants, probably one live attendant still in there, but the queen's absolutely fine. And as soon as you put the queen into a hive like this, they'll keep her warm, they'll feed her, they'll keep her in tip-top condition. And I'm confident when we come back to release her, she'll still be in tip-top condition. So what you want to do is take your cage and you need to look for where the tabs are on the cage. They need to remain shut, and all you're going to do is just take that and just place that in between 2 frames of brood. And as I said, you can do that step at any point after you've killed the queen, up until day 8 when you're going to come back and take down all of the emergency queen cells. This colony here is now day 8. There's no emergency queen cells because you've taken them all down. There's no open brood. The colony is hopelessly queenless, so they have no choice other than to However, if you were just to open the tab now, they're still a little bit iffy about it. So you want to give them 24 or 48 hours. I like to go 48 hours before you come back and pop open that tab. That will be day 10. We'll come back in day 10. I'll show you how well that queen's looking. We'll pop the tab and then we'll leave the bees to— and then we'll leave the bees to do a second inspection. Safe introduction. And then we'll leave the bees to do a slow introduction. So that's the difficult bit out of the way. You've gone through all of the difficulty of getting them hopelessly queenless, adding the queen back in there. Just practice some patience now. It really isn't that much longer, 48 hours. We'll pop the tab and then we'll leave them for a week, and then we'll be well on our way to turning this angry, grumpy hive into a really nice calm hive of Buckfast bees.
