Jerry Scott wrote:
these crazy bee's were holding their tails real high and buzzing as hard as...

I recall taking a caged queen to a temporarily queenless colony once and having
there be a "hum of excitement" or so it seemed when the bees caught her scent.
It's probably not exactly the same thing Jerry experienced, but I suspect that
"their tails in the air" had to do with scenting with Nasavov glands to
announce "the queen is here".  The buzz was probably an "auditory" with the
same message.  As I was reminded by Chris Slade, bees respond instinctively to
stimuli, so there had to be a particular combination of factors that caused
them to act the way they did.  Another interesting concept is that different
colonies of bees with different parents and different genetics might have
acted differently in the same situation.  Bees are complex enough animals that
it would be difficult to determine what ALL the stimuli were to get them to
exhibit this response.  To express it in anthropomorphic terms, they were
probably announcing "the queen is here with us."

As far as corks go, those little bamboo skewer sticks with the pointed ends
have never failed me in prying corks out of queen cages.  I once had a drone
layer (queen) so I thought I didn't have a queen because I didn't see her in
the hive.  The bees, though, knew they had a queen, so when I introduced a new
one, they balled her and killed her.  A short time later, I found the drone
layer, removed her and introduced another queen, which the bees then accepted.
Apparently a queen with no stored semen is still a queen--especially if she is
young and vigorous (the drone layer also happened to be a queen from a queen
breeder that I had introduced earlier.  They graciously replaced her for me
after I explained to their satisfaction the symptoms I was seeing.)

Layne Westover
College Station, Texas