Hello Ron & All,

 > When I manually released my new carniolan queen into the hive (of
Italians) they balled the queen.

I can only add a few suggestions:

Introductions of a different race queen into a different race hive can at
times be problamatic. Wait a couple days longer would be a suggestion before
releasing.

>  Prior   to placing the caged queen in the hive I dispatched the old,
marked, queen and transferred the new queen (attendants removed) to an
introduction cage which has mesh on all four sides.  I then placed the caged
queen in the middle of the brood nest.

Over about to emerge brood I hope and not eggs & larva..

>  Yesterday (three days later) I manually released
her onto a frame and watched the situation for about five minutes.

Why did you not simply remove the screened cage and leave her with the newly
emerged bees or am I misunderstanding?


>Everything seemed OK,   Then after a short while - a couple of
minutes - some bees ganged up on her and started trying to sting her.

I know a chance of getting a sting on fingers is real but right then you
need to enter the picture and recage the queen. Never use gloves when
handling a queen bee *in my opinion*.

.>The ball with her in the middle fell to the bottom board, by the time I
got enough frames removed to get to the ball and get the bees off her the
damage was done.

I personally have never lost a queen by balling while watching. Books say
balling death takes around thirty minutes (estimate).
I have never seen over up to say 15-20 worker bees involved. Brush the bees
away from her with the finger nail side of your fingers and then pick up the
queen. Practice picking up drones as you would a queen before attempting
picking up queens. Once you get adept at reaching in and picking up a drone
then picking up a queen becomes very easy.


> Just as a note, just prior to the bees balling the queen, I noticed some
of the workers attempting to sting each other.

My guess would be some of the bees had accepted her and some were rejecting
her.

>  I am sure that there was no other queen in the hive.

The only way to be sure is a frame by frame search before introduction as
two queens in a hive happens. Also the requeening of an established hive is
not easy.  I always leave the hive queenless for at least three hours (if
possible) before the queen cage is put in. Overnight is better but you
really need to look for queen cells the bees have started when leaving
queenless for long as plenty of eggs to raise a new queen are available
usually when you dispatch the old queen . Hives will at times honor the
queen cells and try to kill a new queen until the bees realize the queen
cells have been destroyed and they are out of larva to start new queen
cells.

Good luck with the next queen! Maybe the things I have said will help. We
all lose a few queens during introduction!

Sincerely,
Bob Harrison

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