Queen Isolation Cage 240 | Beequip

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) vapourization are extremely effective and low-cost and is becoming a very popular option.

• The purpose-built cages are made from food-grade Polypropylene.
• Sliding door on both sides.
• The side openings in the grill are 4.2mm, the same as a queen excluder.
  
• Outside dimensions:- 240mm x 29mm x 34mm high.

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.

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 medium frame in a deep 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.

Some beekeepers fit the cage between 2 frames in a horizontal position instead of vertically. See the 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 vapourizing with Oxalic Acid. (OA)
2. Swarm Control
3. To maximize 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 vapourization.

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
• Vapourize the beehive with OA and kill almost every varroa mite inside

 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 the 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. Vapourize 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 maximize field bee numbers at the start of the honey flow.

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

To maximize 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 maximize the crop.
• Less food and pollen are 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, the queen released, and the hive can be vapourized with OA to kill virtually all the varroa mites in the hive.

 4. Requeening with cells.
Put the old queen into the cage when adding a queen cell. Check the 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 vapourized with Oxalic Acid to kill virtually every varroa mite in the hive.

 5. Over Winter.
Beehives in good condition in the Fall will greatly benefit from 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 until the next batch of brood arrives several months later, after the brood break period.

This is all conditional on 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 vapourized 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 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 is required in the winter.
2. A lot less pollen is required.
3. The worker bees and the queen live longer because they have little work to do.
4. There is less condensation in the beehive.
5. The timber stays drier 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 the first week of April and releasing them in the last week of July worked very well on some trial beehives in the Nelson region of New Zealand in 2023.
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 vapourized with OA so that if there are any varroa mites present, they are virtually all killed.

NZ Instructions PDF