Improved technique for introducing four-day old virgin queens to mating 
hives that uses artificial and natural queen cells for introduction.
 
Juan Antonio Perez-Sato,William O H Hughes, Margaret J Couvillon, Francis 
L W Ratnieks

2007 Journal of Apicultural Research 46(1): 28-33
 
Abstract
We compared the acceptance of 4-day old virgin queens introduced into 
mating nucleus hives using natural and artificial queen cells versus a 
wooden 3-hole mailing cage, a standard introduction method. The queen cell 
methods gave high acceptance (95% and 93% for natural and artificial, 
respectively) even though the queen was released from the queen cell 
approximately 10 minutes after being introduced into the mating hive. By 
contrast, success using mailing cages was significantly lower (47% and 
73%) when the queen was released from her cage after 1 hour or 48 hours, 
respectively. The equal success rates of the reused and artificial queen 
cells suggests that high success is not due to chemicals present in 
natural queen cells transferring to the queens. To further investigate why 
queen cells give higher introduction success than cages, we introduced 
virgin queens into queenless observation hives.Workers attacked only 1 of 
12 queens leaving a queen cell whereas 5 out of 6 queens leaving a cage 
were attacked.
 

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