|
Home  Technical Information QUEENS MANAGEMENT Transportation Cages
QUEENS MANAGEMENT
Transportation Cages
For years I have hear different managements for queens introductions, but you have to take care to do it correctly, and to do it correctly you must to observe a lot of different details, like are the bee, the location and the time of the year.
Every beekeeper has his own way. And it works, that is important, but these conditions change year to year and then they are impossible to repeate the same management all the time.
A friend of me, who is a beekeeper, comments me the way he did his introductions last year giving excellent results; this year was a really mistake, for that you have to take care of your management, and don’t do the same every year, you have to check up the new conditions and prepare yourself for them.
In this opportunity we will talk about details of the cage, they are normally for transport and introduction.
For a good cage the important isn’t if it’s a wood or plastic cage but must have some special conditions
a)It has to have a protection space, for the queen. That way the queen has space where she can protect herself and stand out of the reach of the bees, special taking care of the last segment of her foot, where the queen has a pheromone, with this pheromone for example the bees can identify the queen age. In another opportunity we will talk of the behaviour of the hive in front of a situation of a new queen and will talk more about this
b)When you prepare candy you never should use honey because this way you can transfer disease. You can use fructose (corn syrup) and with power sugar
c)In the cage the place for the candy should let us check up the candy if its necessary to fill up again
.
The space that the cage bring for the candy makes a slow escape that way it helps for the acceptance of the queen
The question is how much candy the bees and the queen eat in the trip, or just the time they are in the cage.
*The answer depends if the bees that are in the cage with the queen are recollecting nectar and if its in the morning or in the afternoon when we are caging
This condition can make the bees eat faster the candy because the maw is empty. What does this mean?
*That the bees let free the queen in less of 24 hours with the possibility of the failure of the introduction of the queen
|
Not all the hives or the nucs are not the same, the group of cage have bees with the maw full, and another one empty
This produces that some queen will be free very fast
Making more difficult the acceptance of the queens |
Both of the tubs were putting in the cage in the same day.
The white one is from a hive of bees with empty maw the yellow one is from bees with maw full. After 2 days we can see that the white tube ate more that the yellow one.
|
At less candy in the cage faster they free the queen, situation that usually we don’t take care; Some beekeepers thinks that who send the queen take charge of this problem, and is not the way it works most of the time the queen has one or two days in the cage plus we add the transport; Now we re talking about 3 or 4 days in the cage, before it gets to the hands of the beekeeper and all this time the bees are eating
It’s important to try that the bees feel queen less; this feeling gets to the highest point in the third day. This is since the moment they get queen less of the old queen in to they get the new one
This doesn’t mean if you put in the moment that they won’t accept the new queen but when we introduce a new queen it is to be accepted not to try that they accepted
So we have to take care all the details necessary for the accepting
REMEMBER
Don’t forget when we receive the new queen it’s a good idea give it a drop of water, to give the humidity necessary for the candy.
In high humidity clime you can give this drop after the third day the queen has been caged, and after this every two days
I n dry climes like is Chile that in summer time we have humidity 20 % in the day, after the first day we should give a drop of water every day to avoid the dry up of the candy
.
Vincent Toledo
Apícola Martínez http://www.apicolamartinez.cl
Chile
abejas@apicolamartinez.cl |
