> Releasing the attendants is made more difficult with these
> JZ/BZ plastic cages
> Does anyone have any great ideas on how to release attendants
> from these JZ/BZ cages with style and panache, without releasing
> the queen in error,

Well, I throw style and panache to the wind with JZ/BZ cages.  I open the
escape hatch (which is hinged to one side) and the I pop the top open (which
is hinged to the opposite side).  Then I "spill" all the bees, queen
included, out of the cage.  Then I recapture the queen, mark her, and put
her back into the JZ/BZ and close it up.  I do this in a small room in my
house with a low ceiling and only one window.  Of course the bees go to the
light, so it is fairly easy to keep them all in check.  I stopped doing the
in my truck the time that a queen walked down into the defroster vents.

AND, the best way around the whole problem is to have your queens shipped in
a battery box, with the attendants on the outside of the queen cages.

I've had more queens shipped in the 3-hole wooden cages (actually they have
5-holes, but were developed in an era when beekeepers could only count to 3)
and must confess that I have a preference for the wooden cages because
that's what I learned on.  But the JZ/BZ cages fit better between frames on
introduction.  I have also experienced cases when the queens were attempted
to be introduced to splits that already had queens (pulled the queen from
the donor hive without noticing).  With the wooden cages you know if/when
this happens because you'll find the new queen dead in the wooden cage.  I
have seen at least three times where the new queen was alive and well in the
JZ/BZ cage where I am sure she'd have been dead in the wooden cage.

So, the more I use the JZ/BZ cages I guess the more I like them.  Would that
the old habits died easier.

Aaron Morris - wondering what JZ/BZ stands for!

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