A regularly requeening is something I found nessesary. In order to keep a
reasonable uniformity between hives there have to be bees of similar behaviour
in most hives. Otherwise I will have too much work treating each hive
individually.
 
I start out as a beekeeper working through a hive frame by frame. As the
number of hives increase I have to rationalize and start treating the hives
box by box. Next step is to work hive by hive, then site by site until I
finally (hopefully) manage to work my hives "by the run". To have the hives
so equally developing that most of the time consuming checking for problems
and differences is eliminated. The summer is short and lots of things need
to be done during those few months of good weather on lat 60.
 
To get there I need to concentrate on getting the "right" bees in my hives. The
time spent on requeening this year is returned many times next year.
 
For some years I have tested a system of requeening with ripe cells. A short
description; We normally have a short and intense main honeyflow in july where
I live, so the management is developed to fit that. I have a large number of
ripe cells ready at the time of honeyflow. By then all the bees that are
going to
give me my crop have been produced in the hives. My hives have no excluders,
so I simply put one cell in each top box. I belive somewhere around 60% of
the cells
end up in a laying queen. For those few hives where I really need to get rid
of the
old queen I have to remove her first. In maybe 20% of the hives the old queen
is killed by the virgin, then the bees for some reason choose to make their own
from a grub rather than exept my queen.
 
Of course there are some hives that are queenless in autumn and unable to get
through winter, but I find it easier to make a few more splits in spring when I
have the time than checking hives in the busy harvesting period.
 
To get best possible mating I have one full frame of drone brood in each hive
all year. To flood the area with the "right" drones is essential to get good
mating.
 
A commersial beekeepers organization here in Sweden which I belong to is
looking into the possibility to find a management system that combines
requeening with swarm prevention. We are presently trying to find ways to
introduce cells/virgins into a hive without having to remove the old queen
first. Can't say we
got so far yet, and I'm looking forward to exchanging information here.
 
Regards
 
P-O Gustafsson