A queen for a queen...

Today was nice weather, so I couldn't stand it any longer and had to see what was going on. The queen has been released and I even saw her when I was changing position of a frame that wasn't in Housel position. The nuc that they were transfered out of was holding the one frame I needed to remove to put in the queen cage in the 10 frame.

Usually when bees are installed you leave the package or nuc box sitting near and they join their hive with in hours. The last two days I kept seeing bees in the nuc, so I thought it was just them eating the nectar that the nuc frame had. Today I took a good look at the bees in the nuc and low and behold was a unmarked queen. I knew something had to be keeping them there.

The supplier told me that the nuc came w/ a marked mated queen. I'm not sure if that was the case. It seems to me they came w/ two queen cells, I put the unmarked queen in a package cage with some attendant bees and some honey. Not sure what to do w/ her. She didn't look to be in great shape. Slow moving kind of out of it. Maybe she lost the fight of the two queen cells, maybe she won, but was hurt anyways. Maybe, just maybe the supplier was right and the marked queen took off and left the virgin queen.

Since I belive that they have eccepted the new queen I think I will make swarm lure out of her.*

* Swarm lure made from unwanted queens... This method came from Dee Lusby and was developed from an idea of Butler.

Dee's method... is to take unwanted queens, not old ones that are about to expire, but viable young or virgin specimens and steep them in a jar of alcohol. Dee comments "The alcohol really takes on a good color if left for years with queens submerged within. Also, we get more scouting bees with virgin queen lure and more drones in swarms that are eventually hived."

To use this "ticture of virgin queen" as a lure, it is dabbed on woodwork of bait hives... Three or four drops from an eye dropper when the bait hive is made up and a few more drops after six weeks.