Giving My New Queen Bee A “Good Home”

The Queen Bee Man called me back.  He had a spare Queen and he just wanted her to have a “Good Home”.  Crikey, what a responsibility.

The words “Good Home” were ringing in my ears as I drove to near Bath to collect this Queen.

We had a chat and then headed towards his hives.  He had 2 here and 8 others dotted around.  It seems that having 10 hives in a variety of locations is not good for ones sanity.  Here was another beekeeper with 20 years experience whose hobby had become a bit too much.  He was doing beekeeping stuff every day.  It seems that having 3-4 hives in a nearby allotment will be about the right level.

As we approached his 2 hives plus nucleus he showed me his wasp trap.  There was an enormous European hornet in it like the one in the photo below.

British hornet

He opened the nuc with bare hands and within seconds he found the Queen, marked and clipped her.  The instructional video clip below is pretty much what happened, except he used scissors rather than clippers.

He gave me the Queen inside a Queen cage.  I popped her in my shirt pocket and off we went.

I wanted to treat her well and give her a “Good Home”, so I started by turning down the volume of Sunday Love Songs (Radio 2).  She was suffering enough disruption for one day.

When we got to my hive I popped some grass into the end of the Queen cage – apparently it will take the bees about 4 days to get through the grass and in the meantime they will get used to her pheromones.

I carefully placed the Queen cage in the centre of the hive and closed up.

Hopefully she won’t get bullied, beaten-up or killed by my worker bees.  Hopefully, they will accept her.  Hopefully, they are all getting on just fine and singing “Home, Sweet Home”.  I’ll check in a couple of weeks on a warm day.

PS.  They have now eaten all 12Kg of sugar and I have just given them another 2Kg (in a sugar syrup).  Can you feed bees too much?  Will they leave room for the Queen to lay eggs?

Post script: if you want to know how the Queen fared, please read Regaining My Sanity Without Bees.

Author: Roger

regaining my sanity through beekeeping

3 thoughts on “Giving My New Queen Bee A “Good Home””

  1. Great stuff! Don’t worry about feeding too much, bees are sensible creatures and the queen’s egg laying is naturally reduced at this time of year.

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