On 19 Jan 97 at 23:36, Brian Tassey wrote: Re: open feeding & requeening
palle
> Dean,
>
> If you're still out there could you comment on requeening hives that are on
> pallets using cells during the fall honeyflow.  I remember you mentioning
> that you requeened this way with a success rate of about 75-80%.  I don't
> know if you're on pallets or not but I was thinking about giving this method
> a test this fall.  I'm wondering if there is going to be a high % queen loss
> just due to drifting, coming back from mating flights because of the pallets.
>  Any thoughts, anyone?
 
If Dean is not around (haven't heard from him for some time) I can help
with this one. I re-queen production hives by adding cells. Our hives are
not on pallets but it does work for us. I would suggest marking the hives
in some way to differentiate between them. A spray can and circles or
crosses on the fronts would suffice.
        We use cell protectors (that's vital) and place the cell as far down as
possible, below a queen excluder, obviously, the virgin emerges and
subject to good mating will take over the main hive. If the queen to be
replaced is marked then you can find out if it was succesful, if not you
have no way of knowing until the hive is in decline.
        Don't try this without cell protectors, as the bees will more often than
not just break the cell down. If the hive is ready to superscede ie an old
queen, then you might get away without a cell protector. To be honest the
present price of cell protectors it's not worth trying to save the cost!!
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