(I'll get to queens in a moment, but first let me apologise for somehow
sending my note to Eric to the whole list.  I was somewhat shocked to see
it come back marked BEE-L.
 
FWIW, it was about a website I am building about spring management and
splitting.  All are welcome, but it was not my intent to command all to
"Read this First".
 
Of course all are welcome to visit it and comments will be appreciated.
Specifically, I am a bit concerned about it's sheer size -- and worry
about loading time for all the photos).
---
 
> All of this can be avoided by simply releasing the queen directly into
> the newly installed package.  This might not work with a package
> freshly shaken, but normally bees have been in the cage with the queen
> for, at least a couple of days.
 
That's our normal method of installation, however last year we had a lot
of trouble with some Haines packages from new Zealand.  We installed in
the morning since they were looking pretty travelled, expecting a cool
rainy day, but it turned hot and we had twenty pound swarms in the the
trees.  We installed the rest in the evening with the queens caged for
manual release the next day.
 
The queens of which I spoke recently are those used as replacement and
splitting queens installed with the candy hole pierced with a nail.
 
> In 16 years I have never had a problem with this (except once when the
> queen flew away, but she came back quickly) method.
 
When queens fly during manual release, they do come back, but with 24
hives to chose from, we can never be sure where she will go.  It's about
50/50 or less whether she goes to the right place.
 
Yesterday was a great day and we were out for 11 hours, working through
hives, splitting, reversing where necessary.  In our work, we found two
beautiful hives; they were full of young bees in two standard boxes, but
totally queenless.  They had no brood whatsoever.
 
In each case, I simply released a caged queen (from Trevor Weatherhead -
Hi Trevor - beautiful queens!) on a frame, watched for a few minutes (a
good excuse for a break) and reassembled the hive. The bees were glad to
see the queens and immediately accepted them with no sign of hostility.
 
BTW, list members, Gus called me the other night from Kona in Hawaii to
say that they have lots of queens available and have dropped their
prices.  They had previously had buyers of queens on quota, but apparently
things are going much better than they expected and they have removed the
limits.
 
Allen
 
(Who is glad to finally get out and get splitting)!