"Installing the package into a hive with one frame of open brood (Brood
treatment) resulted in 86.7% acceptance of the original queen, whereas the
BEP and Control treatments resulted in 53.3% and 33.3% acceptance,
respectively.(...)
To conclude, establishing new packages into hives with at least one frame
of open brood clearly helps to hedge against colonies wanting to reject the
queen immediately after installation"
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00218839.2020.1867336 (January
2021)

Interesting paper with application relevance. While I do not use packages,
I do artificial swarms, swarm removal and broodbreaks and I would think
similar rules apply there.
They also note that supersedure strongly correlated with a low
openbrood/worker ratio 21d prior.


Not discussed in the paper but as I like to speculate and theorize: as open
brood is an inhibitor to development of laying worker physiology I suspect
that is the underlying reason package bees treat those queens differently.
Maybe also this increase in % of laying workers is part of the triggers of
supersedure or queen rearing in general.

(https://doi.org/10.1080/0005772X.1929.11092804)
[image: image.png]

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