Queen introduction

The method with the highest success rate:

1. Remove the old queen from be colony or create a new queenless unit – new bee colony or nuc.
2. After no more than 8 days remove all emergency queen cells from bee colony. This will ensure that  only capped brood remains and it will not be possible for the colony to make new emergency queen cells.
3. Place the new queen in plastic cage on top of the colony’s frames and leave it there for 1 day. Before placing the cage, you can confuse bee colony with smoke or spray it with sugar water/honey water or a diluted alcohol solution.
4. After 1 day, check the behaviour of the bee colony towards the new queen. If the worker bees are calm with no signs of aggressiveness towards new queen, open the cage and allow the queen to enter the colony, or tear open the side of the plastic cage and allow the worker bees to eat sugar candy and let the queen into the colony.
5. If virgin queen is added to the bee colony, don’t disturb the colony for at least a week. The bee colony will take care of the new queen, she will go on a "wedding" flight and then start laying.
6. If a matted queen is added to the bee colony, don’t disturb the bee colony for at least 3 days. The bee colony will take care of the new queen and she will resume laying within 3 days. The longer the queen will be in the cage, the longer it will take for her to resume laying eggs.

Additional factors:

• Upon receiving the queen with worker bees, immediately give them 1-2 drops of water.
• If it is not possible to immediately introduce the queen to the colony, then it is possible to store it in a cage for a few days in any colony, above a covering blanket (so that unfamiliar worker bees do not reach the cage), under a pillow or in a warm place at home between pillows. Of course, the sooner you add a queen to the colony, the better.
• If there is no nectar in nature, the day before the introduction of the new queen stimulate the bee colony by giving 0.2 - 0.5 kg of sugar syrup (1:1) every day or sugar candy, and continue this after introduction until the new queen starts laying.
• If no aggression towards queen is observed after placing the new queen's cage over the frames after a couple of hours, that is, the worker bees are feeding the queen and are calm, then the queen can be introduced to the bee colony without waiting 1 day.
• Sometimes worker bees may not release the queen from the cage, so it is advisable to make sure that the queen is released during the following day. If queen is not released but there is a calm behaviour in the colony, then the beekeeper should release the queen from the cage.
• If aggressive behaviour of the worker bees towards the queen is observed after the new queen has been placed on the top of the frames, check again whether the bee colony has any emergency queen cells or a queen that has already been born. Aggression towards the queen can be expressed as follows: the cage is covered with bees or only one or a few worker bees show aggression, they try to sting the companions and the queen, they are much louder, it is difficult to wipe these aggressive bees from the cage.
• It’s much easier to introduce new queen to smaller bee colony than a larger one.