Velcro Test: Will the Bees Accept a New Queen?

When a beekeeper wants to requeen due to a queen's poor performance or plans to create multiple small colonies from a few large ones, the new queens are ordered and arrive by the mail. This simple, quick test will help you predict whether a caged queen will be accepted by a colony. While not foolproof, it will help you avoid installing a queen if the signs say they already have a queen or queen cells present. This will save you time, effort, and money.
Products featured in this video:
Northern, Carniolan, and Italian Queen Bees: www.betterbee.com/live-honey-...
This video was edited using Wondershare Filmora.

[@johnmorris3941]

Nice job. I'll be posting this on our Club's FB page.

[@sharonc.2207]

This happened to me today. I had two queenless hives and brought in 2 new caged queens. My first hive LOVED the new queen and they tasted the cage and circled it and fanned her phermones and becane calm and relieved. Amazing. Second hive hated their queen. Agitated, tried to ball and made stinging lurching motions with their abdomens. I took her away and will be returning her to the supplier as soon as they open after the weekend is over.

[@kirkwattles9360]

It's a good demonstration of the velcro or 'finger' test. Thanks. I'm wondering, when a colony has been queenless for a day or two, will they immediately 'love' a new queen and accept her when she's released directly into the hive? Shouldn't the queen be left in there, in the cage, for a day or two and they'll grow to love her? And then she can be released. In other words, the velcro test isn't strictly a test of whether or not there's already a queen in the hive.

[@annefrey8732]

Kirk, when queenless for a day, I'd expect them to accept her in her cage, MAYBE accept her even if she's directly released from the cage. If it's a really great nectar flow right then, and field bees are all out, there's a stronger likelihood she'll be accepted. I do prefer to have them release her, but if they haven't finished in 3-4 days, I let her out. BUT, if queenless 2 days... cage, or no cage, they may have already begun queen cells, and there is a strong likelihood they WON'T accept her. The velcro test is a good ( but not infallible) guide of whether they "miss" having a queen, meaning they have no queen in the colony.

[@fanatamon]

Best thing is to have confusion. More organised the bees are more chance they will reject. I get bees from two different hives and shake a few other frames onto the nuc so bunch of different smells confuses everyone and they adopt a bit of a post swarm mentality and don’t have the wear with all to sit around trying to kill the new queen as there is to much other stuff going on and they seem to look for a queen as safety instead of a threat. But I still let them eat out the candy plug for couple days and let them let her out. Bearing in mind this has worked for me a few times now and I generally don’t ever put a new queen with the nuc bees coming all from the same hive. I like to think of it Like kind of ridding the new colony of its old smells and habits and cleaning the slate for a new start.

[@lesliemiller5947]

How do you get the Velcro bees off of the queen cage? Do they just shake off?

[@betterbee1979]

Hi Leslie! These bees are determined to kill the queen inside the cage, so you can't just shake them off. We recommend smoking them and continuously brushing them off as you walk away from the hive. Repeat this until they are all off the cage. Hope this is helpful!