Er, now what.. 2 queens flew away

[potomacjoe]

Well, we installed our first hives today, my husband has five and I have five.  It was such a blast! Now, for the foibles.  Every piece of bee literature that we have read said that when we get our bees, the queen will be in a separate cage; remove the cork, and there will be hard candy underneath. Well, much to our surprise, there was no candy coating and two of our queens flew away!     We managed to get eight put away all safe and sound.  But now what?  Do we see if we can get two new queens at the supplier?  Just chalk it up to a learning experience?  Any insight would be greatly appreciated.  ~Potomacjoe

[Jerrymac]

I have never installed package bees, but I hear there are two corks in the queen cage. One goes directly to the queen and the other to the candy. Did you pull the right one? Or was there only one?

[potomacjoe]

yes, there was only one cork. One end had the tab and the other end had the cork.

[Lesli]

Well, now you buy two queens, or pull a couple of  frames of eggs from other colonies... I'd buy, if you can do it quickly.

[Chad S]

Looking at the cage there is no candy on one end?  Pkg.'s I recieved the candy end was underneath the metal tab that secured the queen cage in the pkg.

[Michael Bush]

The packages I've gotten the last three years there was no candy.  They were California style cages, not the three hole cages.  They are smaller and there is no candy.

[Jerrymac]

Can't keep a girl without candy

[potomacjoe]

The packages I've gotten the last three years there was no candy.  They were California style cages, not the three hole cages.  They are smaller and there is no candy.

Michael, Did you put some candy in the empty hole or did you just let the queen out?

[Jay]

If you don't want to direct release, you can plug the hole with a marshmallow.

[Finsky]

Queen returns

When queen rise on her wings, she will return to same place. You just wait. It will take a couple of minutes. If only one  hive is open, usually queen launch there. But if all is open, queen easily goes to wrong hive and it will be killed. You se that when you find extra dead queen in front of hive.

Queen flyes around and is very carefull where it goes. Mostly I have got them back when they return.

[Michael Bush]

>Michael, Did you put some candy in the empty hole or did you just let the queen out?

I did direct release.  Unfortunately several have flown on me over those years also.  So I started to clip them this year.  I take the cage in the bathroom where they can fly to the window and catch, mark and clip them and then take them back and put them in the hive.

[Finsky]

Clipping queen´s wing causes "quiet queen changes". When I clipped at after mating flight, bees missed many queens at winter. I read from Australian reassech that bees renewed 20% of their clipped queens.

So I started to clip wing at spring before swarming. I have see many years that bees change quite often  last year queen if it is clipped.

[FordGuy]

Clipping queen´s wing causes "quiet queen changes". When I clipped at after mating flight, bees missed many queens at winter. I read from Australian reassech that bees renewed 20% of their clipped queens.

So I started to clip wing at spring before swarming. I have see many years that bees change quite often  last year queen if it is clipped.

If  when swarming, the swarming bees rush the old queen to the entrance - she is the last to know:  And if she cannot fly since her wings have been clipped, don't you have a ball of bees about a foot from the enrance?

[latebee]

A piece of soft marsmallow candy placed  in the hole of the queen cage will allow the colony to chew through it slowly enough to help with queen acceptance. I learned something here,because I have never received a mail order queen without the candy in the plug. Going to have to pay close attention from now on.