> Having worked with commercial beekeepers in New Zealand, I find
> requeening quite different to what I can do here in Sweden on lat 60.
> If I was to kill a queen and introduce a new queen in a cage straight
> away, I would not have much success...  This should  be tru in America
> too, southern beekeepers will have easier than canadians.
> Allen, any  comments? You should see this too.

Well, I have also found caged queen introductions to be an unpredictable
thing, except in splits where spome of the older bees are allowed to drift
out and we have over 90% success.  Maybe it is the effect that you mention
that makes it unpredictable.

I *have* been able to kill queens and add a new queen on one visit, but my
management has tended to move away from using pre-packaged queens, except at
splitting time, and even there we are moving away from them again.  I guess
there is a real art to introducing caged queens and the conditions have to
be right.  I have good luck, but find requeening troublesome.

I guess I have to admit that so much of what I do when I work the bees is so
unconscious that until I sit down to write, I don't really know what I do
and have done.  When I am in the beeyard, I just do what the bees tell me to
do without much thought.  As a result, I likely would not do something that
would get me into real trouble.  But when I tell someone else what I do, he
may not read the signs and signals that are so plain to me, and might have
very different results.  I gather you are pretty good at knowing what you
can and cannot do at any given time, so you probably know what I mean.

I guess my luck with salvage operations (requeening) has been such that my
management has evolved to one where we make ample increase in the spring and
then subsequently combine down any weaklings thereafter -- rather than one
where we try to requeen losers.

The fact that we are at about 55 degrees north is definitely a factor.  We
get one kick at the can, then the game goes on.  If we don't hit each window
of opportunity as it comes by -- and it comes fast in season -- we miss it
entirely.  That's it for the year.

I think the bees 'know' this too.

allen