On Sunday, 4 days ago we shook the bees from the white hive, hoping to remove the laying workers and introduced a new queen via push-in cage method.

If I would have thought about it sooner, I could have cut a hole in the push in cage and stuck in a marshmallow so the worker bees could eat through it and let the queen out whenever they were ready.

Instead, she had to stay in there an extra day since it as pouring rain yesterday, the day I wanted to let her out.

Today I checked on her, she's still alive doing well in the cage. There were about 5-6 bees walking over her cage, but none of them seemed aggressive to her.

I opened the cage, and she walked right out.


I looked in the area of the push-in cage, and found she had laid some eggs , and in some of the cells, two eggs. See the three arrows on the bottom of the picture.



When I was given the queen in the nuc, she wasn't laying. I don't know why. Maybe because of the stress of being robbed the prior week? Maybe there weren't enough food stores (none at all) for her to eat and stay healthy?

I've read somewhere that queens that stop and re-start laying can occasionally lay more than one egg in a cell for a day or two until she get's straightened back out.

I don't know if this is true or not, and the only way I'll know for sure if the shakeout and re-introduction of a new queen was successful is to check on them again in a week.