> 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 ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ******************************************************