Introducing Her Royal Highness

摘要

There are at least two instances where a beekeeper may need to introduce a new queen to a colony. When a colony has been split and a queen is being introduced into the split or nucleus colony rather than let the colony raise a queen on their own fromeggs or queen cells, or the hive may have become queenless for one reason or another and a new queen is being introduced into the colony before the workers, in the absence of a queen and developing brood, begin to lay the unfertilized eggs that will turninto drones. (I am not going to go into why I believe that for most beekeepers, the act of re-queening by purposely killing a hive's current queen and replacing her is foolhardy. However if you're curious you can peruse my article "To Requeen, or Not" in the December 2009 issue of Bee Culture).