Requeening procedure? (Pinching old queen)

[Hemlock]

One beek says to pinch the existing queen 5 days before requeening.  Another beek says 2 days are all that is required.  I thought the bees knew in 24 hours that they were queenless.

How many days do your bees go queenless?

[fish_stix]

The hive knows within minutes to a couple hours that they're queenless. Some old beeks pinch the queen and drop her on top of the frames. The bees will immediately find her and gang up around her but I don't know if it helps or not. If you're using candy plug cages or JZ BZ cages with candy then put the cage in after 4-24 hours queenless. Let the bees release her by eating the candy plug. We're dealing with bugs here; they don't reason about queenlessness. They know from the lack of queen pheremones that there's no queen so they're ready to get a new one. I've found that leaving them queenless for more than 24 hours is inviting disaster because once they start building cells they will kill a newly introduced queen.

[Hemlock]

Thanks Fish.  I pinched the queens on Sunday and put the new queens in tomorrow morning. 

[wd]

I saw your post yesterday and waited for others to answer. I think it only takes a few hours.

If you have it, a push in queen cage on empty drawn comb left in place for the same amount time may help with the pheromone as she fill the cells. I've found that if they get into the queen cell building mode, they won't accept the new queen.

If that happens, I do my best to get out of the way, wait and watch. It's worked out, so far.

[Michael Bush]

Ideally, overnight.  Minimum 2 hours. preferably not more than 24 hours.