Introducing a new queen (or ripe cell for that matter) into a
small unit made up on top of the main hive:
 
The disruption to brood rearing caused by requeening can be
minimised by making up a 'top' or 'split' (as they are called
here in NZ, anyway) and introducing the cell or queen into that.
Only after she is accepted and laying do you then unite the top
to the main colony.
 
A top is really nothing more than a nucleus colony in a full
sized box sitting on top of the main colony.  A division board
separates them, and a slot (say, 50mm/2 in wide) in the top rim
of the division board acts as an entrance for the (smaller) top
unit.  It doesn't seem to matter terribly whether this faces the
same way as the main hive entrance or not.
 
You can make up the top and put the new queen (in cage with
candy, naturally) directly in, or you can make it up a few days
before.  To make it up, you put two or three frames of brood,
in all stages of development, two more frames with extra bees and
two frames of honey from the main hive up into the box for the
top.  If you don't have enough honey, you'd be better to use the
honey in the top and feed sugar to the main hive.  Naturally, you
must avoid taking the old queen with the bees you raise up.
 
A neat trick to help?  Before lifting up the two/three frames of
brood, shake all the bees off them.  Ditto for the frames of
honey.  Then, rather than putting on top of the hive above the
division board, put it above a queen excluder.  After 30 minutes
or so, you can come back and replace the excluder with the
division board - nurse bees will have moved up to take care of
the brood, and you are guaranteed that the queen remains below.
 
Its a good idea to stuff some green grass or several thicknesses
of newspaper over the slot entrance of the new unit - it helps to
stabilise them so not so many of them drift back down to the main
colony.
 
Introduce the new queen by normal 'cage queen' techniques.  Give
the new unit 3 weeks or so to establish itself well.  Then go
through the main hive, kill off the old queen and newspaper the
two units together.
 
By introducing the new queen to a smaller unit in this way, you
(1) improve the % success of introducing her (2) minimise the
disruption to the buildup rate of the colony as a whole.
 
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          Nick Wallingford
      Bay of Plenty Polytechnic
 (East coast, N Island, New Zealand)
     Internet [log in to unmask]
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