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Introductionhat kind of success have you hadin requeening? How would youlike to improve your chances to100% every time? Read on. While

foolproof requeening may be more labor in-tensive than what you‘re currently doing, itis not only possible, I guarantee it! Andsince the queen carries all the genetic ma-terial for the entire hive (and you probablyspent a lot of money on her), why takechances? In this article I’ll review some im-portant honey bee biology to help you un-derstand the process of requeening. Then,I’ll go over a few pieces of requeeningequipment I like to use, tips on removingattendant bees and how to find your oldqueen, and then give you two methods ofrequeening. Finally I’ll discuss a way thatyou can merge the two methods to make re-queening more colonies more efficient. Butfirst, just a little information about queensthemselves.

Queen BasicsOf all the decisions you make on behalf

of your honey bee colonies, choosing agood queen is probably the most critical.First, do you need to requeen? Some bee-keepers requeen every year. But in mostcolonies that aren’t over-stressed (by chem-

ical treatments or lots of travel for pollina-tion contracts), well-bred queens should lasttwo or even three years. And if you haveenough quality drones within a 4 or 5 mileradius from your apiary, why not just let thecolony supersede its queen after the honeyflow? Many times, a home-grown queenwill outperform a purchased one. If you dowish to purchase a queen, be a discerningconsumer. Does your queen breeder offerqueens that have been raised in a chemical-free zone? Do they offer genetic diversity?Or have they inbred the same stock yearafter year? Personally, I use 4 - 6 purchasedqueens of different races from three differ-ent local suppliers along with 2 - 4 “sur-vivor” queens (from long-standing feralcolonies) and about 4 queens I have rearedmyself in my small-scale operation of 12hives.

In addition, the timing of replacing yourqueens is an important consideration. I liketo requeen in late summer, which is after thelast honey flow and before the fallbroodnest expansion that begins in mid Au-gust. That broodnest expansion is ab-solutely critical to the over-winter survivalof your colony. Thus, an advantage of laterequeening is that it provides a vigorousyoung queen the following spring, which isvery unlikely to swarm, and yet build up

quickly enough to provide a lot of foragersfor an early honey flow. Queens can bemore available in the late summer than dur-ing the early spring “rush” too. The disad-vantages of late requeening are thatcolonies are stronger and more defensive(and robbing is more common) and theprocess isn’t quite as easy or as much fun.There are a lot more bees to search through,the workers aren’t nearly as accepting of anew queen, and their temperament isn’tnearly as nice as during that light earlyspring flow. Regarding acceptance, the“hurdle” you must overcome when re-queening is balling.

Requeening BiologyRequeening is probably the most serious

colony manipulation you will ever per-form. There is a lot more to it than just re-moving one queen and adding another 24hours later. After a direct release, workerbees will frequently ball a foreign queen,much like they do another insect intruder.Figure 1 shows guard bees balling a bum-ble bee on the entrance board of a hive.When balling, hundreds of workers grabonto appendages, biting and stinging theintruder, but more effectively kill the vic-tim by overheating it.

Remember that honey bees live in thedark and are highly dependent on smell todirect their behavior. They learn the smellof the hive and their own queen’s particu-lar mix of pheromones as young nursebees and become much more discriminat-ing to foreign smells as they becomeguards and foragers. Guards hang out atthe front entrance and foragers live outsidethe broodnest when they aren’t in the field.These older bees that are solely responsi-ble for balling new queens are rarely al-lowed in the broodnest. The young nursebees that stay in the broodnest are muchmore accepting of new queens than theirolder sisters. Therefore, requeening astrong hive without nurse bees is destinedto fail. The most extreme example of this- the laying worker hive - is covered as aseparate topic in the sidebar. When re-queening, two simple things will markedlyimprove your success: 1) Place your newqueen smack dab in the middle of thebroodnest, and 2) Get rid of as many for-agers as possible beforehand. I’ve evenseen guard bees ball their very own queen

Figure 1. Honey bees balling a bumblebee intruder on the entrance board

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when she was removed from the broodnest and immediately placed onto the en-trance board (I don’t suggest you repeatthis experiment)!

When a colony becomes queenless, as dur-ing the requeening process, it will frequentlyprefer to rear its own replacement rather thanaccept the new queen you’ve purchased. Re-call that fertilized eggs hatch into larvae onday 3 (assuming they were laid on day 0). Ondays 4 and 5, juvenile hormone levels sky-rocket in those very early larvae that are des-tined to become new queens. This hormone- and the subsequent influence it exerts onqueen development - is entirely dependent onlarval nutrition (royal jelly). Once a larva ispast day 5 (that is, over 2 days as a larva), itis too old to be reared into a good qualityqueen. Its nutrition has basically destined itto become a worker by that point. This is therationale behind the 5-day delay in release ofthe new queen in the requeening techniquesthat follow.

Requeening Equipment, etc. There are two commonly used queen

cages in which your queen can arrive. Eachhas a loading hole which is closed by eithera plastic flap (plastic JzBz cage - Figure 2)or cork (wooden Benton cage – Figure 3),and each has a queen candy plug which al-lows the bees access to the queen (by wayof eating through the candy). You can pre-vent this access to the queen via the candyplug by temporarily closing it with a plasticcap, cork, or a piece of duct tape. Sincequeens can’t feed themselves, your newqueen will come with a few attendant beesin the queen cage with her. Sometimes oneor two of the attendants have died. That isokay as long as the queen is still healthy.

Another useful piece of requeeningequipment is a push-in introduction cage.Plastic versions can be purchased (Figure4), but I much prefer the home-made 1/8”wire mesh type (Figure 5). The wire seemsto penetrate the comb better than the plastic

and allow slower access by the bees chew-ing a tunnel underneath it. The dimensionsof my home-made wire-mesh types are 4”x 6” x ¾”. A block of wood that is 4” x 6”x 1” and wire snips facilitate the foldingand corner crimping that is necessary tomake your own from a flat rectangularpiece of 1/8” wire mesh that starts out 6” x8”. Either of these push-in cages is bestused on plastic-backed foundation as theycan destroy comb that is only wax-based ifyou aren’t careful about the way it’splaced. Frequently, a frame will need to beremoved in order to make enough space forthe introduction cage.

A queening rim is a ¾'' x ¾'' rectangularrim made to the dimensions of your hivethat adds space inside the broodnest for thequeen cage. A queening rim facilitates re-queening, but hanging or wedging thequeen cage between frames works welltoo. Remember, whether you use a push-inintroduction cage or a queening rim or you

(l) Figure 2. JzBz queen cage and plastic cap (r) Figure 3. Benton queen cage with side view of candy cork removed

(l) Figure 4. Plastic push-in queen introduction cage (r) Figure 5. Edge of wire-mesh push-in queen introduction cagewith queen inside

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wedge or hang the queen cage betweenframes, the new queen goes inside the verycenter of the broodnest! Not on top ofcapped honey (where the foragers hangout)! If you do chose to hang or wedge thecage, place the candy end up so that anydead attendants don’t block the queen’segress.

A Snelgrove double screen board is an-other necessary piece of equipment forfoolproof or double-brood requeening. Itis a fairly thin board with two screens thatare separated by a large enough space(3/8”) to prevent the bees on one sidefrom communicating with the bees on theother. The screens allow the transferenceof smells between the two portions of thehive it separates, however. A doublescreen board also has multiple small en-trances to either the top side or bottomside of the screens that can be individuallyopened or closed (Figure 6).

If there isn’t a nectar flow, I like to feedcolonies that are being requeened lightsugar syrup during the process, but I maynot in the late summer because of the riskof inciting robbing behavior. I also signif-icantly minimize the amount of smoke Iuse once the new queen has been intro-duced. Some smoke may be needed beforeshe’s been accepted, but I don’t use anysmoke for a few weeks after she’s been

accepted. Before we discuss how to findyour unmarked old queen and the two re-queening techniques, there’s just onemore optional technique that will increaseyour queen acceptance rate a little.

Attendant RemovalIf you feel confident enough, remove

the queen’s attendant bees from the queencage just before you introduce her (notwhen she first arrives). I do this in an en-closed room with a window or light forthe queen to fly to in case she escapes.The simplest way to remove the atten-dants is to temporarily remove the cork orplastic flap from the loading or non-candyhole, put your finger over the hole, and letthe attendants fly up and out, one by one,replacing your finger every time the queencomes up toward the hole. Then replacethe cork or plastic flap.

Finding the Old QueenIn a typical broodnest inspection, you

do not need to find the queen. If you havesingly-laid eggs at the bottoms of individ-ual cells in the broodnest, you have one!You must find her to replace her, however.And if she isn’t marked, finding her canbe challenging.

When looking for the queen, patternrecognition skills come in handy. She is

most likely in the broodnest. Have anempty hive body or frame perch to put thefirst few already-scanned frames in andstart scanning the upper brood chamber.Remove one frame at a time starting at theedge farthest from the broodnest. Scanboth sides of each frame twice and thenput it into the empty hive body. Read onfor scanning techniques. Once three orfour frames have been removed, you mayjust scoot the frames over to the emptyside of the chamber once they’ve beenscanned, leaving a big space between al-ready-scanned and yet-to-be scannedframes. Once the entire chamber has beenscanned, replace the previously removedframes in the same orientation they werein, and go down to the next brood cham-ber.

Scan frames full of honey very quickly,and concentrate most of your time onthose frames with eggs and emergingcapped brood or empty cells within thebroodnest. The first frame scan (on eachside) should only take about 3 – 4 sec-onds. Do it in an almost ‘out of focus’fashion – quickly from one side to theother. Then flip it over and repeat it on theother side. With this first scan, you aremerely looking for something different;don’t look at each individual bee. The sec-ond scan (again on each side, and thistime making sure to look at the bottomand edges too) is much more thorough,and may take 20 – 30 seconds.

The queen looks and acts differentlyfrom the other bees. She has a longpointed abdomen, which she may drag onthe comb. She holds her wings foldedover her back, not out slightly like work-ers do. Her wings appear shorter becauseher abdomen is longer. Her legs arelonger, and she walks (or runs) on thecomb; she doesn’t fly or even vibrate/fanher wings. She has a bald, dark thoraxwith no hair. She is not fat like drones anddoesn’t have big eyes like they do. Herretinue nurse bees may surround her, allfacing her in a circle, licking her and feed-ing her. The workers will typically part(like the Red Sea for Moses) as she walksalong. She doesn’t like light, so she willquickly go to the side of the frame thatyou aren’t looking at! And she may haveher abdomen down in a cell laying an eggwhen you first scan for her. This is thereason for two scans.

Once you find her, scoop her up with aqueen catcher or gently set that frame tothe side, outside the hive (so she can’tmove to another frame). You can deter-mine her fate later, depending on the re-queening method you are using. Onceyou’re sure you no longer need her, squishher thorax.

After looking through all the chambersthoroughly, if you still haven’t found thequeen, place a queen excluder betweeneach brood chamber and come back in 4days. She’ll be in the only one with eggs.Coming back another day seems to helptoo, if not with your success, at least with

Laying Worker Coloniesand Their Management

When a colony survives a queen loss for many weeks and does not suc-cessfully replace the queen, queen mandibular pheromone (QMP or queensubstance) production and brood pheromone levels are both low. This al-lows the ovaries of many of the larger (infertile) workers to develop andthese workers begin laying eggs. There will be multiple eggs on the sidewalls of each cell because the laying worker’s abdomens aren’t longenough to reach the bottoms of the cells and they also can’t detect that anegg has already been laid there. Their unfertilized eggs will develop intodrones only, despite the fact that they are developing in worker-sized cells.The combined QMP output from all the laying workers is sufficient to foolthe colony into believing that they have a queen. Finding all of the layingworkers is impossible. Simple requeening of a laying worker hive will con-sistently fail, because: 1. There are no young accepting nurse bees present(only old, unaccepting foragers), and 2. The colony thinks they have aqueen.

The best way to manage this situation is to combine this colony with aqueenright colony using the newspaper method. Move the laying workerhive to the strong one’s location, and place the STRONG, queen-rightcolony ON TOP of the laying worker colony with 2 sheets of newspaperin between them. Make sure the newly combined hive is located where thestrong hive used to be. Provide the combined hive with only a lower en-trance so that the upper foragers have to traverse the lower weak hive afterthey chew away the newspaper. The queen will move down and take overthe old lower broodnest in time. A few weeks later, after the queen hasmoved down into the old broodnest, you can split out a portion of the com-bined colony to “recreate” your old colony just as if you were creating anuc in the double brood method. You can then either have the nuc raisetheir own queen or provide them with a purchased queen.

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your attitude! When requeening multiplehives, I like to use the delayed releasetechnique with a push-in introductioncage in those colonies in which I find thequeen easily and the double brood tech-nique in those in which I can’t.

Delayed Release RequeeningWhile the delayed release technique

isn’t foolproof, it is much more success-ful than simply putting the cage into a de-queened hive and letting the bees releaseher (and possibly ball her) within a day orso. It’s easier than the double brood tech-nique, but it interrupts the brood cycle,which sometimes creates another prob-lem, which we’ll discuss later.

On the day the new queen arrives, findand remove the old queen from the hive.Place a small drop of water on the screenof the queen cage, and store the newqueen in a cool dark place overnight. Thenext day, introduce the new queen with aqueening rim, ensuring that the candy endof the queen cage is closed (see Requeen-ing Equipment) for 5 - 7 days. Return tothe colony after 5 - 7 days and determinethe bee’s reaction to her. Are there a lotof bees completely covering the cagewith some of them aggressively biting ortrying to sting the cage (Figure 7)? Or arethere fewer bees walking across the cagein a more relaxed manner with a few ofthem licking her and trying to feed herthrough the screen? If the bees have notaccepted her, shake the clinging bees offof every frame, one by one, carefully in-specting for and removing all the queencells that have developed. Now that 6days have passed, the remaining larvaeare too old for the bees to rear their ownreplacement queen (see Requeening Biol-ogy). Return again in about 5 more days,leaving the new queen caged the wholetime. If the bees have accepted her, devel-oping queen cells are unlikely, but I stilllook for them, just in case, and removeany that I see. Once she’s been accepted,remove the plug over the candy end of thequeen cage. You may also spritz thecolony and the queen cage with lightsugar syrup containing a hint of vanillaextract if you wish. Once you’ve allowedaccess to the candy, you may reinspectand ensure her release after 2 more days.She’ll start laying eggs within 3 days ofher release. Recheck the colony withoutsmoke for eggs and supersedure cells inabout a week. This is the problem I al-luded to earlier. Sometimes the brood nestinterruption caused by the delay makesthe bees a little nervous about the queen’segg-laying ability and they will try to su-persede her once she‘s laid some eggs(what I call provisional acceptance). Justcutting those cells out once and givingtime for more brood pheromone produc-tion (from her own brood) will typicallyallow her to be accepted long-term.

A good alternative to using the queencage and cutting out queen cells is to re-lease the new queen underneath a push-in

introduction cage. The day that you findand remove the old queen, find a frame(preferably with plastic foundation) witha large area of only emerging, cappedbrood and empty cells (no open brood oreggs!). Gently remove as many nursebees as possible from that area and pushthe cage firmly onto it so that about ¼”of the wire penetrates the comb (Figure8) and replace the frame in the middle ofthe broodnest. You may need to removean outside honey frame to make space forthe cage. When you return 24 hours later,remove all the remaining bees fromwithin the cage before releasing the newqueen underneath the push-in introduc-tion cage. Return in another week. Oncethe brood has emerged from within thepush-in cage, the new queen will havebeen accepted by those newly emergednurse bees, and laid eggs into the emptycells. Ensure there is not a lot of clingingand biting at the cage. If not, you may re-move the cage again and let her out (if thebees haven’t already dug a tunnel to herunder the wax).

Double Brood (Foolproof) Requeening Place a small drop of water on the

screen, and store the new queen in a cooldark place for 2 nights. The day she ar-rives, generate a temporary ‘nuc’ usingthe upper brood chamber of the hive to berequeened by arranging at least 3 framesof (mostly emerging, capped) brood inthe center, then empty drawn comb out-side them, then a frame of nectar and apollen-laden frame on either end. Whileyou’re making this up, shake all the adultbees (including the queen, which does notneed to be located yet) off each frameinto the bottom brood chamber. Whenyou reconstruct the hive, put a queen ex-cluder on top of the bottom brood cham-ber and the nurse bees will crawl up intothe upper nuc overnight, but the queenwill be incarcerated in the lower chamber.The next day, place the upper nuc onto anentrance-reduced double screen board

(which serves as a temporary bottomboard), and supply it with a queening rim,another inner cover and another top.Move the nuc to a new location near theparent hive. Open only a single back orside upper entrance on the double screenboard and consider feeding the nuc lightsugar syrup (if it’s not robbing season).

Remove the queen excluder from theparent hive and replace its inner coverand top. Any transferred foragers will flyout of the nuc and back into the parenthive, leaving your nuc with nothing butnice young nurse bees. Introduce the newqueen (without a cork or cover over thecandy end this time) to the nuc after 24more hours and watch the bees’ reaction.Recheck the nuc in 3 – 5 days with nosmoke and ensure her release. Eventhough she should have been accepted, ittakes a weak nuc much longer than astrong hive to chew through the candy, soyou may need to let her out yourself. Re-move the queening rim and place the nucback on top of the parent hive with thedouble screen board between them for 4– 7 more days. At that time, close the pre-viously open upper rear or side entranceon the double screen board and insteadopen the front entrances to both the upperand lower chambers on it (Figure 6). Thisallows a few foragers to traverse betweenthe two colonies and the parent colony toget used to the new queen’s smell.

Once you are sure the new queen is lay-ing, remove the old queen from the lowerchamber. Remove the double screen boardand replace it with two sheets of newspa-per 24 hours after removing the old queen.The new queen will march down and takeover the old queen’s brood nest. Obvi-ously, if at any point the requeening fails,you still have your old queen. This is whatmakes it foolproof. The other advantage tothis technique is that rather than a broodcycle interruption, you have two queenslaying eggs simultaneously for one or twoweeks, right during the fall broodnest ex-pansion.

Figure 6. Edge of double screen board with upper and lower entrances open

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Merging the Two TechniquesFinally, merging the two techniques

lends some efficiency to larger scale re-queening efforts. Just take queen exclud-ers and push-in introduction cages to theapiary the day your queens arrive. Lookfor old queens in every hive to be re-queened. If the old queen is easily found,remove her and place a push-in cage oversome emerging capped brood (I alsomark the frame and the outside of thebrood chamber with a thumbtack so it’seasy to find) and begin the delayed intro-duction the following day. If she’s notfound, proceed to the double brood tech-nique by rearranging frames, shakingbees, and inserting the queen excluder.Remember how many of each typeyou’ve prepared so you’ll know howmany double screen boards and queeningrims, extra inner covers and tops to bringwith your queens in a day or two. Bymerging the two techniques, the oldqueens of the double brood method canstill be used as ‘backups’ should either ofthe methods fail, so you shouldn’t haveany queenless colonies before winter!

Figure 7. Workers rejecting a newqueen in a JzBz cage with plasticcap still on

Figure 8. Wire-Mesh push-in queen introduction cage on section of cappedbrood