Early Spring Queen Replacement

[karen]

This may need to be another topic because it isn't raising queens - I am getting emails and calls from people looking for queens now. We have had some days in the low 60's but the usual is low 50's, I am not sure why they think they need a queen. Possibly they opened their hive or may be they're going by cluster size or activity. My question to the group is when your hive comes out of winter and you suspect it needs a new queen how early would you requeen? The first pollen is just coming in but it is not reliable because of the weather. I doubt a new queen would be excepted for many reasons - no nectar flow, very little pollen, not a lot of brood in the hive, the temperature, the hive is weak. I know they could feed and give pollen patties but it is not the same as the bees being active. What do you all think?

I try not to let my hives go through the winter with iffy queens. I know better and lost a hive this winter because I did it. I have never even considered requeening this early in the season. Wyatt Mangum spoke at the SABA meeting I attended in NY about queen acceptance and had videos of how the bees react to the new caged queen. I think most of the videos was during the best of times not the worst of times for requeening and the bees where pretty rough on the queens even with her being protected in the cage.

I am not sure what to say to these people. I do not have queens right now but another seller does, they are asking me before they purchase. My thought is no hold off until more reliable weather, in two more weeks we will see dandelions.

[Countryboy]

My question to the group is when your hive comes out of winter and you suspect it needs a new queen how early would you requeen?

Suspecting it needs a new queen isn't the same as knowing I need a new queen. Personally, I don't pull many brood frames when the weather is crappy. I may put on patties, but I don't dig into the hive unless we have a nice day. You can generally tell if you have a dud queen by cluster size. However, as I have been breeding my own queens from best localized stock, I find that some of the clusters are smaller, and some of the queens delay building up until we get reliable pollen coming in. (Even if I put on patties, some queens don't really take off until real pollen is coming in.) I look at the brood pattern to determine if the queen needs replaced. If the sealed brood is solid, but only the size of a silver dollar, I will wait to see if the queen is just slow on building up. If the brood is a shotgun pattern, I'll be more inclined to replace her.

But for me, I would requeen as soon as I knew the queen needed replaced and I had another queen available. For me, early in the season, this means pinching the dud queen, pulling unused brood frames, and putting in an overwintered nuc. That way the bees aren't wasted.

Or, I pinch the queen and stack the box on top of a strong hive. That way I can split them later. And to be honest I do this more often than using overwintered nucs. I keep all my overwintered nucs at one yard. If I am at another yard, I'm not going to go back and get a nuc. I just stack the boxes and plan on splitting later. But if I am in the yard with the nucs, I will use a nuc.

I helped a commercial guy in 2010. We installed 600+ packages the last week of March. If we found a dead queen (only a couple) we immediately gave the package bees a new queen.

One of the big things when requeening is to feed the bees. Queen acceptance will be much better. But bees won't take much syrup below 55 degrees, so it is hard to simulate a flow at temps lower than this when requeening. I guess you could use that for a rule of thumb...don't requeen below 55 or 60 degrees.

My recommendation would be that if people have two hives, to combine the hives now, and then split in a few weeks when the weather was more favorable. And if they only have one hive, it's likely they don't know if their hive needs requeened. Make sure they aren't comparing their hives to hives in YouTube videos. They may think their Maine hive should be as strong as the hive in Georgia right now in mid-April. (Not to mention that we YouTube video producers are more likely to show the strongest hives for the videos, and not use dinks or average hives if possible.) Or they may be comparing their hive to a hive which has been fed patties and syrup to build it up. Things like this can give hobbyists unrealistic expectations of what hives should look like right now.

Right now I am dealing with hives being pollen bound. We have had several days in the 60's, and a few days in the 70's. I'm seeing strong single deep hives with 3 frames packed full of pollen and queens running out of room to lay. If I put up a video on my current conditions, your Maine beekeepers might think their hives should look like mine right now. I suspect that local weather conditions will play a larger part of hive performance in early spring than queen performance, and I suspect many hobbyist beekeepers have unrealistic expectations of how their hive should be performing right now by comparing their hive to hives in incomparable situations.

[Allen Dick]

My recommendation would be that if people have two hives, to combine the hives now, and then split in a few weeks when the weather was more favorable. And if they only have one hive, it's likely they don't know if their hive needs requeened.

I agree. Unless the wintered hive has just gone queenless, odds are the bees are too old to do much, even with a new queen, assuming she is accepted.

I also get emails from wanting to get into bees and wanting to buy "a queen".

[karen]

The first few inquiries I did not ask people why they wanted a queen this early I just said I do not have queens. I have had about 6 inquires in the past two weeks so it got me wondering what is going on and why they want to replace a queen this early in the season. I hadn't thought they may be watching GA youtube videos. I just sent an email to someone that inquired this morning asking why they think they need to requeen this early in the season.

I agree with combining with another hive with the intention of splitting in the future. Our average day temperature is in the high 40's and low 50's F. right now and I wouldn't go digging through a hive to find the old queen to combine and would not want to risk losing the good queen. I would probably opt for feeding them and waiting another week or two.

I have only lifted the lids on hives to put on patties and Apivar I have not pulled frames.

[Allen Dick]

I agree with combining with another hive with the intentions of splitting in the future. Our average day temperature is in the high 40's and low 50's F. right now and I wouldn't go digging through a hive to find the old queen for combining. I would probably opt for feeding them and waiting another week or two.

I have only lifted the lids on hives to put on patties and Apivar I have not pulled frames.

I don't worry about the thermometer much if there is sun and no wind. If I am comfortable in just a bee suit with a tee shirt under, then I will work through a hive if I suspect a problem requiring remediation.

In my big hives, I need to find the brood to insert Apivar and to place patties. Sometimes I have to lift off a box or even two to find the brood ball. If the brood fames are not obvious, I carefully pull a centre frame first -- if the frames come out freely -- or an outside frame and work to the middle if not, and look for signs of a queen. If I see what I need to see, that is it and I insert the Apivar and put on patties, do some beekeeping if indicated and close the hive.

I don't keep occupied frames out long, but do not worry about the unoccupied ones and sometimes switch them for better frames or feed.

When combining, I usually don't find and kill queens. Too disruptive. I figure the bees know best and will take care of business, and they do as far as I can tell.