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Requeening Colonies: Why & HowRequeening is a skill beekeepers need to keep their hives in good shape. You may be trying to introduce a young queen with good characteristics who can take your apiary from okay to amazing. You may need to introduce a queen into a hive that has gone queenless. Or, you may need to introduce a gentle queen in place of one that has gone five-alarm spicy. Introducing caged, mated queens the traditional way is only one of many methods to get queens into hives, but it is not the most reliable. We will explore options that can be easier and more reliable to get your new queen accepted and thriving, as well as diving into other reasons to requeen.
Leigh Wilkerson has spent the last 16 years keeping a self-sustaining hobby apiary, first in the Ozarks and now in the Southern Appalachian Blue Ridge Mountains. She runs 12 to 20 hives (a beekeeper’s dozen!) for honey, raising queens and making a small number of nucs to sell.. After a decade and a half of maintaining fully treatment-free hives, Leigh now practices a hybrid approach that blends Varroa-resistant genetics with organic tools for thriving bees and minimal use of treatments, all with the goal of selecting for better queens. She enjoys sharing strategies with bee clubs across the country via Zoom, speaking on specialty splits (so you never have to buy a package again), simple frame-based queen rearing, requeening approaches, and ways to increase VSH genetics in your own backyard. Leigh’s podcast, Beekeeping at Five Apple Farm, offers talk, tips, and how-to's on sustainable beekeeping, and it is available free online or in podcast apps.
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Wildwood Environmental Academy, 1628 Henthorne Dr, Maumee, OH 43537-1395, United States
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