Six reasons to replace your queen

Every reason is drawn from real experience managing hundreds of colonies across multiple apiaries.

Requeening is one of the most powerful tools available to any beekeeper. Done at the right time and for the right reason, it can transform a struggling colony into one of your best. The six reasons below cover the situations where it makes the biggest difference.

1. Your bees have a bad temperament

This is probably the most important reason to requeen, and if you’ve dealt with genuinely difficult bees, you’ll know exactly why. Working with an aggressive colony is miserable. You get stung repeatedly, you dread inspection day, and that dread starts to affect how often you actually go near the hive.

In the early days, Laurence worked with some truly horrible colonies. Hundreds of stings on his arms, taking antihistamines just to get through the day, arms throbbing for hours afterwards. It puts you off the whole hobby.

The good news is that temperament can be changed remarkably quickly. Replace the queen with a mated queen of known origin, one bred specifically for calm behaviour, and you’ll see a real difference within six to eight weeks as the new queen’s workers emerge. Give it a full six months and colonies that were once rated one out of ten for temperament can become completely calm.

One important point: use a mated queen, not a virgin queen, a queen cell, or a locally raised queen. If you let the colony raise their own replacement or introduce a virgin, she’ll mate with whatever drones are flying in your area. If local drones carry genes for bad temperament, your problem won’t go away.

A mated queen reared and mated in a controlled environment gives you real certainty about what you’re getting. Browse our Queens range if you’re looking for calm, productive queens bred for UK conditions. Our Signature Queens are the choice most of our customers return to year after year.

Looking for a calm queen

All our queens, regardless of line, are rated 10 out of 10 for beginner beekeepers. Calmness and temperament are our top priority across every variety.

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2. Your colony has a persistent disease problem

Some diseases are strongly influenced by genetics. Chalk brood is the clearest example. Some colonies are consistently susceptible to it, while others in the same apiary barely show a trace.

If you’ve got a colony that gets chalk brood year after year and you’ve already tried moving them to a sunnier spot and reducing moisture in the hive, requeening is a logical next step. European Foulbrood (EFB) is another area where queen genetics play a role. Research suggests some queen lines are more resilient to EFB than others.

Requeening won’t fix a severe, active disease outbreak on its own. But as part of a broader management plan, replacing a queen that has been producing disease-prone workers can make a meaningful difference across the following season.

3. Your queen is getting old

We requeen our colonies every two years. Not because the queens are necessarily failing at that point, but because it’s good practice and it pays off consistently.

Queens don’t suddenly stop working well on their second birthday. Some keep laying strongly for three or four years. But performance tends to dip as they age, and older queens are more likely to fail unexpectedly during winter. Losing a colony in February because the queen ran out of steam is far more painful than the cost and effort of a planned requeening in August.

Think of it as an insurance policy. Replacing a queen every two years keeps your colonies young, productive, and less likely to spring an unpleasant surprise when the weather turns.

We also find that colonies with younger queens build up faster in spring, produce more honey in season, and overwinter more reliably. The results are consistent enough across our apiaries that we’ve made it a fixed part of our annual management cycle.

4. Your queen is failing

This one is more obvious. Sometimes queens simply stop performing. Maybe she was a virgin that didn’t mate properly. Maybe she’s used up her stored sperm. Maybe she was damaged during an inspection. Whatever the reason, a colony with a failing queen needs attention.

Signs of a failing queen include a patchy laying pattern, a colony that isn’t building up when it should be, or a queen that has turned into a drone layer, producing only unfertilised eggs. In some cases the colony will try to supersede her themselves. If you’re happy with their temperament and disease history, you can let them get on with it. But if you have concerns about either, it’s worth stepping in with a mated queen of your choosing.

5. Your queen isn’t suited to your environment

This is a slightly more advanced consideration, but it’s worth thinking about as your beekeeping develops. Different queen lines have been bred for different traits, and not every queen is ideal for every location or management style.

If your colonies are consistently slow to build up in spring and you’re surrounded by oilseed rape, you might benefit from a line known for rapid spring development, such as Buckfast. If you’re moving your bees to heather late in the season, you’re delaying your Varroa treatment window. That makes a queen line with strong Varroa tolerance more valuable.

The question to ask yourself is: what are you asking your bees to do, and does your current queen line actually match that? Requeening to a more suitable line won’t fix every challenge, but it’s another useful option.

For beekeepers who want strong Varroa tolerance, our VSH Queens are bred specifically for Varroa Sensitive Hygiene, so the bees actively detect and remove mite-infested brood. Our UK Queens are bred and mated in the UK and fully acclimatised to British weather.

6. You want to make increase and raise new queens

The final reason isn’t traditional requeening, but it’s closely connected. Making splits and introducing new queens to those splits is one of the most common reasons for sourcing queens, and it’s one of the most rewarding parts of beekeeping.

If you want to expand your apiary, splitting strong colonies and introducing a mated queen to each split is a reliable, cost-effective way to do it. You’re making use of your best genetic stock while managing population growth and reducing swarm pressure at the same time.

And if you haven’t tried queen rearing yet, it’s worth putting on your list. Grafting larvae, feeding up the cells, watching your queens emerge and settle into a new colony – there’s very little in beekeeping that’s more satisfying. Having a small bank of spare queens available means you’re always ready when a colony needs a quick intervention.

Which queen should you choose?

When you do decide to requeen, the type of queen you use matters. Here’s a quick guide:

• Bad temperament or persistent disease? You need a mated queen of known origin from a breeder who can tell you exactly which lines they’ve been working with.
• Varroa management is your priority? Our VSH Queens are bred for bees that actively detect and remove mite-infested brood.
• You want locally adapted stock? Our UK Queens are bred and mated in the UK, fully acclimatised to British conditions.
• You want proven reliability and calm temperament? Our Signature Queens are the queens most of our customers choose and come back for year after year.
• You want cooler-flying bees with plenty of propolis? Our Obsidian Queens are our darkest line, lovely and calm to work, and a brilliant pick for an apitherapy setup.

All our queens are F1 Buckfast mated queens, rated 10 out of 10 for temperament. Calmness is our highest priority, regardless of which line you choose.

Browse our full Queens range, or if you’re thinking about your first colony, take a look at our Starter Colonies. Each one comes with a quality mated queen already in place.

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