Garrett:

Let me tell you my experience with them and how I solved the introduction
problem.
Lets start at the begining: the pheramone of the Russian Queen is not
different it's "a lot different".
I got a bunch of this queens to try last year but I was already awared of
the fact that they were harder to introduce, so this is what I did:
the queens arrived in the plastic type of cages that have the sugar plug at
the bottom and it's part of the cage, I removed about 3/8 of an inch of
sugar from the shaft and I stuck a little stick in there that would fit real
tight so that the bees cannot remove it. Then I put all the cages in the
hive to be requeened (already took the original queens out) and left them
there for 4 days, then I came back and released each queen from my fingers
to the top of the frames full of bees to observe them and be able to grab
the queen if she got attacked, non of them did. I came back 2 weeks later
and they were all OK and laying eggs. They didn't start laying right away
like all the other races I have tried and used, some of the queens took a
week before they started to lay. 2 weeks later they were all doing good and
4 weeks later they all had black bees in the hive, meaning non of them got
killed and the eggs that were hatching were in fact the Russian babies.
This year when I was splitting, last year's queens were still there, I know
because they all had the wings cut (I cut them myself before releasing
them).
I did this in late May last year the hive were strong and full of working
adults and I did not loose any of the Russian queens from introduction.

Good luck

Maurice
Utah, USA

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