Introduction Cage
Lexikon
An introduction cage is a small cage made of mesh or plastic in which an unrelated queen is hung into a colony.
An introduction cage is a small cage made of mesh or plastic in which an unrelated queen is hung into a colony. It protects her from being stung to death immediately and gives the colony time to accept her scent.
The exit of the cage is sealed with fondant. The bees eat it free from the outside, which takes one to several days. Through the thickness of the seal, the beekeeper thus controls the acclimation time. An alternative is the push-in release cage, from which the queen becomes free following the same principle.
For this to succeed, the sequence must be right. First the old queen is removed, then queenless agitation is allowed to set in, and only after that does the new queen go in. Anyone who hangs a queen into a colony that still has one of its own, or that has already started its own queen cells, will almost certainly lose her.
Common mistakes are a cage opened too early, introduction into a colony already showing laying workers, and adding attendant bees from an unrelated colony. Often safer than introducing a single queen is uniting the whole mating unit with the colony.