yesterday's enthusiast

angeldrake3:

speciesofleastconcern:

esiderius:

A funny thing about introducing a new queen into a hive that has lost its queen (or one that you’ve killed because her brood was too fighty). 

You have to introduce the new queen into the hive with these special queen cages that are stopped up with candy, and are open enough to let the hive smell the new queen, but not open enough that they can get in there and kill her.

Because they will kill her. 

When you first put the new queen in she smells like an intruder, but by the time it takes the bees to eat through the candy and free the queen, the queen’s pheromones will have had time to work and the hive will have gotten used to her.

From the outside this kinda seems like: 

“Yeh, we were all going to murder you to death before, but we’re full of candy now, so we’re cool. Oh yeh, and how about you be the new queen and stuff. Yeh, that’s cool too.” 

beekeeping is really weird

Listen, strange bee queens lyin’ in cages distributin’ candy is no basis for a system of government.