bees and beekeepingPast & Present:Queen Introduction: Part 3 Seeing into the Forbidden Time when the Queen will Live or Die

摘要

Honey bee management instructs beekeepers to leave the hive undisturbed after installing a new queen in a standard three-hole Benton shipping queen cage, provided with the familiar candy-release mechanism. The beekeepers usually wait for three days, maybe four. During that time, the hive becomes a black box, holding its secrets about how the colony typically transitions from queen rejection to collectively "deciding" on her fate — to accept her as their mother queen or kill her as a foreign intruder.