To maintain a healthy, productive colony, it’s essential to requeen your beehive. Whether your queen is aging, failing, or missing altogether, replacing her can give your hive a fresh start. With this helpful guide, you’ll learn five steps to requeen your beehive so you can help your bees thrive and ensure a strong brood.
Why Requeening Matters
A queen bee impacts your hive’s survival by producing eggs, determining the colony’s temperament, and influencing honey production. However, the queen’s ability to lay eggs declines with time, or sometimes, she might get lost during swarming.
Requeening improves colony health, keeps populations steady, and secures honey yields. Luckily, The B Farm has plenty of honey queen bees for sale to get you started on this important process today.
Step 1: Identify the Need to Requeen
Before you begin the process, you must confirm whether requeening is necessary. Check for these signs to see if it’s time to requeen:
- Decreased brood production: Fewer larvae or patchy brood patterns.
- Aggressive behavior: A more defensive and temperamental hive.
- Old queen: Queens generally remain productive for up to two years. After this, it’s usually time to requeen.
Step 2: Choose the Replacement Queen
Not all queens are suited for your unique goals, so select one that aligns with what you want to accomplish. For example, if you’re looking to combat pests in your hive, choose mite-resistant strains like Varroa sensitive hygiene (VSH) bees.
Do you want to make your hive calmer and more manageable? Opt for gentle stock bees like Cordovan, Carniolan, or Italian honeybees. Remember to order from a trusted supplier like The B Farm to guarantee your queen arrives alive and healthy.
Step 3: Remove the Old Queen
To avoid conflict, locate the existing queen by calmly opening the hive while using a smoker to distract the other bees. Once you find her, use your fingers or a queen catcher to gently remove her from the hive. If you cannot find her after a thorough check, she might already be gone.
Step 4: Introduce the New Queen
Place your new queen in a shipping cage with her attendants, then position her in the hive and allow the workers to grow familiar with her pheromones. In a day or two, worker bees will chew through the candy plug to release her. To improve colony acceptance, never rush this process.
Step 5: Monitor the Colony
After a week, inspect the hive to see if the new queen is laying eggs and has been accepted. Aggressive worker bees or dead queens could indicate rejection, so intervene and repeat the process if this occurs.
Requeening might seem daunting, but it’s a straightforward way to ensure a strong brood. With these five steps to requeen your beehive, you’ll keep your hive thriving, productive, and healthy for as long as possible.