At 07:43 PM 5/26/1999 +0200, you wrote: The push in cage shown in the web page picture is nice. However, a similar cage can be made from stiff screen (in the U.S. this screening is called hardware cloth). You want a mesh size small enough to keep the bees out and the queen in, but large enough so that the bees can interact with the queen through the mesh. Common window screening is too flexible, soft, and the holes are too small, which is why we use hardware cloth. Just cut out a rectangle and fold the wire to form sides that can be pressed into the comb. Be careful to make neat corners that close tightly and don't leave sharp ends of wire that the queen could encounter and injure herself. Make the sides long enough to give the queen some head space + enough additional to push the wire mesh solidly into the comb. Leave enough space above the queen so that she can avoid any worker that might try to sting her, but don't leave any more than necessary. The size of the rectangle is not important, but it should be large enough to cover a number of open cells so that she can lay eggs. I like to include a corner of cells with nectar or honey - but that is my own personal bias. I know that queens can feed themselves, despite claims to the contrary. I speculate that it might be useful for her to be able to do this. Also, if the queen is really attractive to the bees, they may "pull" the push in cage out of the comb. The weight of the bees causes it to begin to slide out. For insurance, we run a fine wire through the top mesh and around the frame and twist it tight. In rare occassions, I have seen colonies tearing away comb to get to the queen. In this case, they usually kill the queen when they reach her. We have large commercial bee operations running 1200 or more hives that have used this approach for several decades - so the plastic cage may be new, but the concept has been around for a long time. >> I have heard that there is a new type of queen cage that presses into a >> frame of comb