Advice please - winter losses

[jeff33]

@NickM , you can say goodbye to your new queen in the bottom box. Introducing a new queen to an older angry workforce is a guaranteed death sentence regardless of the frame of emerging brood.

Personally I would cage the queen with a push in cage and in 5 days when there is no more viable larvae to raise a new queen, split them or do a vertical split with a 2 sided board.

If you split you can put a nuc where the hive was and add the frame with the queen (leave her caged). The rest is split in 2 nucs but leave them near the original site. Put a new queen in each, leave the tab on so they can't be released. This will give time for the flyers to go back to the original hive. Remove the tab after 36h.

The nuc with the old queen can either be dispatched or the queen killed and let them die off. In my apiary I would have killed the queen and shake the b#st#rds out but as it's in your garden, not an option.

I would go through this lengthy process because you are trying to introduce buckies which have not been laying for several days to feisty mongrels which have a habit to kill anything you give them!

 

[hemo]

One could try the honey dunk intro and make sure the new Queen is is slathered in honey and placed on the top bars, the bees will clean her up and then may accept her.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

you can say goodbye to your new queen in the bottom box. Introducing a new queen to an older angry workforce is a guaranteed death sentence regardless of the frame of emerging brood

you are dumping a new (alien) queen into a box of confused older foragers which are the most agressive component of a bee colony, I'd follow Jeff's advice and make up a nuc to introduce the queen to.

 

[NickM]

you are dumping a new (alien) queen into a box of confused older foragers which are the mpost agressive component of a bee colony, Id fo;;oe Jeff's advice and make up a nuc to introduce the queen to.

Thanks very much Jeff and JBM; I shall do just that.