How to take care of Queens

The main things to having producing colonies is to always have
vigorous queens in disease- and mite-free colonies. Young
queens are productive egg laying capacity and are much less likely
to swarm tendency. It’s a good idea to check all of your hives at least every 10 days, but you should at least check them
during dearth periods, like early spring, just after harvest when
treating for mites, and before winter season. You have to make sure
there are eggs and a good laying pattern — lots of brood in
the combs, not a scattered brood pattern in the colony. Re-queening once a
year will insure that you always have young queens. Many
of beekeepers leave the queen in for two seasons if she is still
laying good brood pattern the second season, but they run
the risk that she will begin to fail during the colder months. It
is good idea to have marked queens so that you will have an idea
of how old she is and from where she came.

If you are having a super-cedure queens, you can mark these yourself
with easy by just a little practice. (Super-cedure – replacement of a
reigning queen by her workers) You can catch the queen as she walks
on the comb by grabbing her wings easily. Pick her against your
clothes and hold gently on either side of the
thorax between your thumb and forefinger. You have a bottle of enamel paint and an open queen
cage. You can use the stem of a grass blade to put a small spot
of paint on thorax, rubbing it into the hairs. But be careful
not to use too much or to get paint on other parts of her body,
like the eyes and antennae. An easier way is to use enamel
paint marking pens, which can found on hobby stores or in
certain bee supply catalogs.

Now the queen dry off for about
five minutes in queen cage before releasing her again into
the colony so the workers don’t remove the paint from queen. Clip
off half of one of her front wings also is an option that beekeepers some time use to prevent her from flying away with
a swarm. That’s the way, if the colony swarms, the queen may be
lost in grass, but the bees will return to hive where
they will have a new queen in the colony. How ever, they may still swarm
again with virgin queen if you do not have relieve the crowding
of the brood-nest. Warning: To make sure she is a mated queen
before you clip her wing! If you clip a virgin queen’s wing,
she cannot fly out and mate with the drone.
13 Young queens are more readily accepted by bees than
older queen in the hive. And also, queens are more likely to be accepted
in small colonies and it’s easier to find the old queen to
remove in to small hive than it is in a hive with lots of
bees in the colony. Therefore, it is easier to re-queen in the spring because
that is when the colony population is lowest that time.

But there are
several advantages to re-queening during the summer in
to northern states. Northern-bred queens might be better adapted
to your condition, and these queens are available in the
summer. For example, someone raising their own queens in
the Midwest may be able to have new queens by about the Second of June. At that time, it is more likely that there will be
good weather for mating with queens than earlier times. There should
be more drones available for the queens to mate with as the strong
colonies prepare for swarming.

Introducing new queens
during the summer can also insure that you have young
queens that are likely to start laying eggs earlier in the year
the spring. And also, young queens are less likely to
swarm or be super-ceded than old queens in the colonies. And if you are trying to
maximize honey production, then you may have to wait until just
after the honey harvest to re-queen, or you may want to do it
gradually over the summer season.