> I would like to know if anyone has ever put a italian queen
> cell in with a russian hive.Would they except the hatching queen or 
kill her.

This time of year is not easy for re-queening or cell introduction 
because the colony worker numbers are peaking.  Your attempt is 
likely to succeed if you deny the bees any alternatives though.  I'd 
make the hive queenless and go through it a week later to remove any 
emergency queen cells.  

You can introduce the cell with a cell protector.  It will stop the 
bees from destroying it if they are bent on it at first.  When the 
virgin emerges, I would not free her from the protector for about 3 
days (she'll need about 5 days to mature somewhat before taking a 
mating flight anyway).  By then, hopefully, her pheromones will have 
spread through the colony and will have 'mesmorized' the bees to the 
point where they will not kill her.

Cell acceptance is often better than virgin queen acceptance.  A 
virgin introduced in a cage will not starve to death because some 
good Samaritan bees will feed her through the screen.  But a few bees 
may be determined to kill her and may do so when she's finally 
released.   

Laying queen introduction may be the most successful when the colony 
is denied all other options.

I had an interesting experience this year.  In an unlimited broodnest 
(3 deeps and 5 medium supers), I removed the old queen and in the 2nd 
top super inserted a caged, young laying queen.  [I put the cage in 
the 2nd top super because I wanted to avoid lifting those heavy boxes 
underneath.]  I released the young queen 3 days later.

I checked the colony a week later.  The young queen was laying a 
little in the top, mostly honey bound deep and there were several 
queen cells in the middle deep.  It seemed as though the colony was 
determined to raise a queen with their genetics [and kept the new 
queen out of the lower deeps] yet the new queen's pheromones were 
strong enough to keep her alive.  I removed all the queen cells and 
closed up to hive to leave the new queen as the only option for the 
bees.

In big hives with huge worker populations and screened tops/bottoms, 
queen pheromones are distributed rather slowly.  When a 'band' of 
mature bees from a far corner of the hives stumbles upon a new queen, 
they may well want to eliminate her.

Waldemar

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