top of page
reasons to requeen your beehive Large.jpeg
If your queen isn't performing it's time to requeen your colony of bees. On this page, I show you how to requeen your beehive with a mated queen.

How to requeen a beehive

Our mated queen bees are bred from the healthiest and most productive colonies, ensuring strong and thriving hives within your apiary. We prioritise calmness throughout the breeding process, resulting in exceptionally calm colonies of bees. 

High quality mated queen bees for sale. Buy queen bees today.

Step-by-Step Process for Requeening a Beehive - Essential Beekeeping Skills

Day 0: This is generally the hardest part of requeening a beehive you MUST find the queen. If you do not find the queen and you go and ahead and introduce a mated queen, the original queen will just kill her. 

If you cant find her, take a look at this video to help track her down - FIND A QUEEN.

1. FIND QUEEN
Guide to Successfully Requeening a Beehive - Bee Colony Management

Day 0: It's never nice to kill a living creature but in order to successfully requeen a beehive, you must first dispatch the original queen.

Once you have found the queen, pick her up and squish her between your fingers. This is the most humane method to kill a queen as it's as quick as it can possibly be. 

2. KILL QUEEN
Requeening a Beehive: Techniques and Tips for Beekeepers

Day 0: Once the queen has been killed, close the hive back and leave the bees alone for 8 days.

Day 8: After 8 days, go through every single frame and shake the bees off. Identify all emergency cells and remove then. Double check - you need to remove ALL the cells. 

3. REMOVE CELLS
Mastering the Art of Requeening a Beehive - Ensuring Hive Health

Day 8: Immediately after destroying ALL the emergency cells, the colony is now hopelessly queenless. They have no queen and no resources (eggs or larvae) to create one.

Add a mated queen, in a sealed queen cage and place between two frames of brood. Do not remove the tab covering the fondant. 

4. ADD CAGED QUEEN
Essential Steps for Requeening a Beehive - Beekeeper's Tutorial

Day 10: Leave the sealed cage in between the brood frames for 48 hrs. This allows the bees to get used to the smell of their new queen. 

After 48 hrs, you can remove the plastic tab to expose the fondant. Place the cage back between the frames of brood and the bees will slowly release the queen. 

5. REMOVE FONDANT TAB
How to Requeen a Beehive - A Comprehensive Approach for Healthy Colonies

Day 17: After 1 week, we go back and check for eggs to see if the queen has been successfully introduced. If you see eggs, then there is no need to see the queen.

If you dont see eggs, try and locate the queen. It can take 2-3 weeks for mated queens to come back into lay following being caged.

6. CHECK FOR EGGS
Practical Advice on Requeening a Beehive - Maintaining Hive Balance

The video below shows you how to make splits in the same apiary but the process is exactly the same for requeening a beehive. Instead of removing frames of bees from a donor colony, you just have to find and kill the queen and then complete all of the steps on the original donor hive. Good luck!

How to requeen a colony of bees in your beehive

ORDER F1 BUCKFAST QUEENS FOR NEXT DAY DELIVERY

Our queens are bred from the healthiest and most productive colonies, ensuring strong and thriving hives. Experience the benefits of our premium mated queens and take your beekeeping to the next level.

Exceptionally calm and placid. 

Mated queen bees for sale. 

We do our best to make things as simple as possible. From fast checkouts to Apple/Google Pay. We have you covered.

Our ordering process is simple

Our website is backed by WIX so it's super-fast and secure. We support fast checkouts with Google/Apple Pay to make ordering as simple as possible. We take all major credit/debit cards.

Easy Ordering

We work as hard as the bees to get your orders to you ASAP. Queens/Nucs are sent via Royal Mail’s Special Tracked Next Day Delivery and all other orders are sent via a Tracked 48hr service.

Fast Delivery

We don’t just deliver your bees and abandon you. We produce a wide range of videos to help you become a better beekeeper. We are always contactable by phone, email or WhatsApp.

Customer Service

Whether you want to buy queen bees or you are looking for nucs for sale, quality is everything to us. We don't cut corners! When you buy from BMH, you get the very best bees money can buy. 

Quality Products

View our FAQs

Discover Our Blog Articles

bottom of page