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. ------------------------------------- Nick Wallingford Bay of Plenty Polytechnic (East coast, N Island, New Zealand) Internet [log in to unmask] -------------------------------------