HOMEMADE QUEEN CAGES IN
SULAWESI, INDONESIA
by Gard W Otis!, Soesilawati Hadisoesilo2, and Gordon Wardell3 1University of Guelph, Canada 2Pusat Litbang Hutanan, Konservasi Alam, Bogor, Indonesia 3Carl Hayden Bee Research Center, Tucson, USA
Successful beekeeping often requires some degree of queen management. For example, the transfer of a wild colony to a hive, or the capture of swarm often fails unless the queen can be caged and placed directly in the new hive. a
the queen is seen during inspection of a hive, one can prevent her accidental injury by caging her until the end If
of the inspection. And of course, requeening a colony requires a new queen to be caged for several days to
ensure she is accepted. From
1995-1998 we assisted
a beekeeping development
project designed to improve the incomes of villagers living near Lore Lindu National Park, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. Part of the project involved beekeeping with Apis cerana and the recently rediscovered species Apis nigrocincta. We were
impressed by the queen cages the beekeepers invented to provide control over queens in their hives.
WHAT CRITERIA MUST A QUEEN CAGE MEET? Bee biology determines what makes an effective cage. Worker bees will kill a foreign queen unless they have been given several days to learn and accept her scent, therefore they must be abie to lick the queen to obtain her chemical pheromones. With this in mind, a queen cage: @ Must have openings large enough to allow workers
outside the cage to feed and lick the queen, but not so large as to allow the workers to enter the cage or chew on the queen’s feet.
@ Should be large enough to accommodate the queen
and 5-10 attendant workers. @ Should be easy to open and close so bees can be
efficiently caged and released.
Figure
€) Beekeeping & Development 56
1
- A hollow stick can be made into a simple queen cage
