Queen Confinement

For brood breaks and healthy hive management.

As varroa mites become resistant to miticides, and varroa re-invasion issues become more severe, beekeepers all over the world are desperately searching for alternative treatments.

Brood breaks in conjunction with Oxalic Acid (OA) vaporization is extremely effective and low cost and is becoming a very popular option.

The purpose-built cages are made from food-grade Polypropylene.
They have a sliding door on both sides.
The side openings in the grill are 4.2mm, same as a queen excluder.
Nurse bees can go in and out to care for the queen.
To release the queen, slide open a door on the cage and she will come out as soon as the hive is closed back up.
The cage is large enough to allow plenty of pheromone distribution, so the bees don’t try to supersede her.

Outside dimensions:- 240mm x 29mm x 34mm high.

Packed 100 per carton.

It is recommended to cut a window out of a brood frame and fit the cage into the window. See photos.
The bees will secure it in place.
The frame can live permanently in the hive. Position it as an outer frame in the brood box when it has no queen enclosed.
When the queen is inside, keep it near the middle of the brood box so she keeps warm and fed.

It is recommended to use a ¾ depth frame in a full depth brood box.
The bees will build drone comb underneath it.
If there are any mites in the hive, they will tend to go to these drone cells.
When they are all capped, they can be easily scraped from the bottom of the frame and disposed of, mites and all. (Chooks go crazy on them!)

Some beekeepers fit the cage between 2 frames in horizontal position instead of vertical.
See photo with plastic frames. The comb is scraped back to the foundation.
There is a question whether this way allows enough pheromone to be released but it seems to be okay.

There are many applications for this cage.

1. Varroa control by creating a brood break then vaporizing with Oxalic Acid. (OA)
2. Swarm Control
3. To maximise a honey crop.
4. When requeening with cells.
5. For overwintering.

 1. Varroa Control.
From mid-Spring to mid-Summer, 75% of the varroa mites in a hive can be breeding inside the capped brood cells and are protected from most varroa treatments.

By creating a brood break, all the varroa mites are exposed and can be killed with 1 – 3 cents worth of Oxalic Acid by Vaporization.

The InstantVap Vaporizer is very quick and efficient for this application.

Procedure: -

• Cage the queen for 18 days.
• Release her and wait 6 days.
• Then you will have 2 days where there will be no capped brood.
• Vaporize the beehive with OA and kill almost every varroa mite inside.

Most commercial queen breeders will mark queens for no extra charge. That makes them very easy to find to allow for quick caging and very low cost varroa control.

 2. Swarm Control.
Cage the queen in Spring to control swarming and varroa mite populations.
There are 3 stages that usually precede swarming.

1. Build excess amounts of drone brood.
2. Build queen cell cups.
3. Add eggs to cell cups to produce new queens.

The procedure is best performed during the first or second stage.

• Cage the queen for 18 days.
• Release her and wait 6 days.
• Then you will have 2 days where there will be no capped brood. Vaporize the beehive with OA and kill almost every varroa mite inside.
• 18 days with no eggs makes the bees forget about swarming for a while.

It is important to time this procedure to maximise field bee numbers at the start of the honey flow.

 3. To maximise a honey crop.
Some honey flows can be very valuable but occur for an intense & brief period of only 2 or 3 weeks.

To maximise the crop, cage the queen 2 or 3 days before the start of the expected honey flow. This allows for the following: -

• The queen excluder can be removed.
• 8 days after caging, there will be no brood to feed.
• More bees get involved in field duties to maximise the crop.
• Less food and pollen required in the brood nest.
• Very few foragers collect pollen. They focus on the honey crop.
• No chance of getting brood in the honey supers.

The honey crop can then be removed, queen released, and the hive can be vaporized with OA to kill virtually all the varroa mites in the hive.

 4. Requeening with cells.
Put old queen into the cage when adding a queen cell. Check hive 24 days later to see if there is a new laying queen. If not, the old queen can be let out to continue laying. If there is a good new queen, the old queen can be removed. There is likely to be no capped brood so the hive can be vaporized with Oxalic Acid to kill virtually every varroa mite in the hive.

 5. Over Winter.
Beehives in good condition in Autumn will greatly benefit with a brood break in the winter.

If you have hives in a location where this doesn’t happen, you can do it with an isolation cage.

The bees that hatch out after you cage the queen will live happily till the next batch of brood arrives several months later, after the brood break period.

This is all conditional to the bees being healthy and having enough of them at the time of caging.

The queen can be caged for 3 to 4 months without any detrimental effects to her health or performance.

24 days after caging, there will be no capped brood and the hive can be vaporized with OA.

If done with the correct technique, it will kill virtually every varroa mite in the beehive. (There is no capped brood for them to shelter in.)

Another treatment one week later is recommended to wipe out any possible varroa mite remnants.

Varroa mites can potentially turn up from stray bees from other colonies, but they cannot breed when there is no brood.

The temperature in the cluster will drop from 34°C to around 22°C to 28°C. With the lower temperature and no brood, there are significant advantages such as: -

1. A lot less honey required in the winter.
2. A lot less pollen is required.
3. The worker bees and the queen live a lot longer because they have very little work to do.
4. There is less condensation in the beehive.
5. The timber stays dryer and lasts longer.
6. Only one box of bees is required over winter.
7. Easier to keep secure in case of storms or floods.

No varroa strips will be required in the beehive unless you have massive varroa mite re-invasion issues from nearby colonies.
Caging the queens in first week of April and releasing in last week of July worked very well on some trial beehives in the Nelson region in 2023. (NZ)
The queens went crazy and laid a lot of eggs very fast. A month later, there were lots of beautiful big frames of very healthy brood!
When the queens are released, the hive can be vaporized with OA so that if there are any varroa mites present, they are virtually all killed.

Another Queen Isolation Cage option is the Technoset Queen Cage Frame.
It takes the place of a frame and works on all the same principles that are listed above.

For efficient Varroa Mite control in beehives when using Oxalic Acid for treatment.

Check out our Blog Post on Brood Breaks in Hives

For full depth brood boxes. 

Oxalic acid treatments do not usually kill the mites that are inside capped brood cells. There is now a very efficient and effective solution!

Lock the queen in this cage to create a brood break period. Treat the hive with Oxalic Acid while there is no capped brood and achieve a very high Varroa kill rate.

See Data Sheet of testing done on this

Oxalic acid can be applied by vaporization, fogging or by the dribble method.

Check this link for more info:-

http://scientificbeekeeping.com/oxalic-acid-questions-answers-and-more-questions-part-1-of-2-parts/

Due to its large size the bees don't feel queenless and are less likely to build queen cells. It has queen excluder sides so that nurse bees can still enter the cage and care for the queen.

There is a large opening under the top cap to release the bees when required. Only 25mm wide at the top and will fit in a standard brood box along with 10 frames with 33mm end bars. The main body of the frame is only 16mm wide so as not to interfere with brood emerging alongside.

The bottom edge is curved on the full depth cage to match the typical shape of the winter cluster.

There are many other applications.

In warmer locations, the queen can be locked up over winter to stop her laying eggs to conserve stores and to stop the Varroa mites from breeding.

Can also be used to bank an extra queen over winter when running 2 queen colonies and the bees are already familiar with 2 queens in the hive.

We recommend that clients add a small piece of wood as shown, if using the cage over winter. The wood is naturally the warmest material for the queen to rest on, while being surrounded by nurse bees.

The suggested wood dimensions as shown, are 20mm x 10mm x 110mm long.
(Tip: - The bottom bar on a beehive frame is often 20mm x 10mm section.)
Wood at 10mm thick is a firm fit, but we still recommend that one or 2 screws are fitted to keep it secure and in the best place. The top cap unclips to allow easy access for the strip of wood.

The top bar is 480mm long. Cage height is 228mm for full depth brood boxes and 175mm high for 3/4 depth.

Top quality product made in Europe from food grade polypropylene.

Stock supplied may be a different colour to what is shown in the photos.

Crafted from premium 304 grade stainless steel, our queen isolation cage sets the new standard for durability and corrosion resistance in beekeeping equipment. 

Fits one full depth frame with either 33mm or 35mm end bars.

Applications:

1. Queen Breeding: Perfect for queen breeders to ensure optimal larvae age for grafting, facilitating superior queen production.
2. Winter use in warmer climates: Ideal for limiting brood production during winter months, effectively reducing varroa mite reproduction. Reduces the colonies food requirements due to less brood.
3. Swarm control in Spring: The speed of colony growth can be controlled with the use of the cage at specific times to enable the colony to reach peak hive numbers at the start of the honey flow without swarming first.
4. Varroa Control: See the procedure below:-

A. Introduce a clean empty brood frame to the cage.
B. Find the queen and enclose in the cage.
C. Position the cage into the middle of the brood nest.
D. A good queen will lay in virtually every cell within 2 days.
E. After 26-28 days, there will be virtually no capped brood and all mites will be exposed to treatment. Can be 23 – 25 days if there is no drone brood.
F. Vaporize with Oxalic Acid for virtually complete mite elimination.
G. Whenever desired, the frame of brood with queen can be removed from cage and added back to brood nest.
H. The cage can be removed from the hive or left at the side of the brood box with a food frame enclosed until needed.

Specifications.

• 40mm inside width, 48mm outside width.
• 459mm long x 242mm high.
• The top cap is 484mm long.
• The air gap in the mesh is 4.3mm. Bees can take pollen through successfully.
• Has a clip-on cap which is held firmly down when the next box or hive mat is added above it.

Internal hive dimensions must be the Langstroth standard to ensure the cage fits properly and there are no gaps for the queen to escape.

Many beekeepers ensure their queens are marked so they are easy to find for caging when required. The labour cost for this procedure is negligible when compared to the cost of resurrecting colonies killed by varroa mites!

Three-frame cage available here.

As we see more and more varroa resistance to the synthetic miticide strips, beekeepers are turning to organic acids for successful varroa control. There is no evidence worldwide of the mites getting resistant to them. The stainless steel cages are very resilient in an acid environment and will not oxidise and deteriorate like galvanised steel products.

It pays to get quality!