At 07:43 PM 5/26/1999 +0200, you wrote:

The push in cage shown in the web page picture is nice.  However, a similar
cage can be made from stiff screen (in the U.S. this screening is called
hardware cloth).  You want a mesh size small enough to keep the bees out
and the queen in, but large enough so that the bees can interact with the
queen through the mesh.  Common window screening is too flexible, soft, and
the holes are too small, which is why we use hardware cloth.

Just cut out a rectangle and fold the wire to form sides that can be
pressed into the comb. Be careful to make neat corners that close tightly
and don't leave sharp ends of wire that the queen could encounter and
injure herself. Make the sides long enough to give the queen some head
space + enough additional to push the wire mesh solidly into the comb.

Leave enough space above the queen so that she can avoid any worker that
might try to sting her, but don't leave any more than necessary.  The size
of the rectangle is not important, but it should be large enough to cover a
number of open cells so that she can lay eggs.  I like to include a corner
of cells with nectar or honey - but that is my own personal bias.  I know
that queens can feed themselves, despite claims to the contrary.  I
speculate that it might be useful for her to be able to do this.

Also, if the queen is really attractive to the bees, they may "pull" the
push in cage out of the comb.  The weight of the bees causes it to begin to
slide out.  For insurance, we run a fine wire through the top mesh and
around the frame and twist it tight.  In rare occassions, I have seen
colonies tearing away comb to get to the queen.  In this case, they usually
kill the queen when they reach her.

We have large commercial bee operations running 1200 or more hives that
have used this approach for several decades - so the plastic cage may be
new, but the concept has been around for a long time.



>> I have heard that there is a new type of queen cage that presses into a
>> frame of comb