Re-queening

[Jon]

- maybe, as you say, the size of the cage itself reduces the risk of balling

A queen occasionally gets stung (see gammy leg thread) but they are usually killed by balling and the cage prevents this.
I always use attendants from the colony the queen is taken from.
Loads of times I have seen a queen attacked by a couple of bees from another colony so I would rate that a bit risky.
If you put in newly emerged bees they will be happy with the first queen they encounter but as mentioned above, I don't know how well they feed the queen.
I think grooming is also important and you don't get grooming without attendants. I have seen the odd dead queen stuck in a piece of fondant or covered in honey.

[fatshark]

Here's another method from "Breeding Queens" by Gilles Fert (who also recommends the Nicot cage).

Introduction in a bag made of newspaper gives excellent results. Place 35 to 50 bees in a bag 20 x 15 cm in size, and shake briskly for 30 seconds. This makes this micro-colony buzz like an orphan colony. Then put the queen in with them and close the bag, placing it between two frames. The bees will nibble away the paper, freeing the prisoners, and the queen, within a few hours.

Has anyone tried this?

Fert also recommends removing the accompanying bees when using an introduction cage ... It is also possible to use the transit cage to introduce a queen. In this case, remove the escort bees and the cork stopper on the candy side.

I found this while searching for an English copy of the book ... if anyone knows where it's available (it's not from Gilles Fert directly) please PM me.

[Jimbo]

I have heard of the paper bag method. One of our older and experienced beekeepers in our association uses this method all the time. He uses a variation. He makes a large paper bag held together with staples. He finds the queeen he wants to introduce and insets the whole frame with the queen and all the bees on that frame. He then places the frame inside the strong hive after stapling the bag to close it.
Last year I gave him a mated queen still in an apidea. He just lifted all the mini frames from the apidea with the new queen and placed them in the paper bag and inserted into a queenless hive. He reported back that the introduction went OK

[Mellifera Crofter]

Thanks for all the interesting replies to my question. I've learned new things: that the queen can, in fact, feed herself; about hyopharyngeal glands; about the importance of grooming; and about a lot of other methods of requeening.

It's helped me to decide that, when the time comes, I'll follow Jon's lead and cage a new queen with a couple of helpers from her own colony. That makes sense to me. I suppose that by the time the queen is accepted by the new colony and released, her helpers will also have been accepted.

Kitta