Ciro Invernizzi, Jorge Harriet, Santiago Carvalho. EVALUATION OF DIFFERENT QUEEN INTRODUCTION METHODS IN HONEYBEE COLONIES IN URUGUAY. APIACTA 41 (2006)

Four methods for introducing queens in productive honeybee colonies were evaluated: mated queens (MQ), virgin queens (VQ) and queen cells (QC) in dequeened colonies, and protected queen cells (PQC) in colonies with queens. Two requeening tests were done at the beginning of the spring and two at the end of the summer. 

Among the introduction methods used in dequeened colonies none of them oustanded consistently according to the number of accepted queens. Even so, method MQ was significantly more efficient in the spring requeenings when both requeening periods were analized together. 

On the contrary, the PQC method had almost no success, only replacing the queen in one out of 54 colonies in which it was employed. The maximum acceptance was of 80,8% and the minimum of 48,9%, both corresponding to the end of summer requeenings. The number of queenless colonies at the end of the evaluation was between 11,5% and 23,7%.

The failure of queen acceptance was not that the queens did not emerge (method QC) or that the queens were not released (methods VQ and MQ) as these situations had a low occurrence. So, the failure of the different methods was mainly because the workers directly rejected the new queens or due to the loss of these during mating flights.

https://www.apimondia.com/apiacta/articles/2006/inver_1.pdf

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