The PseudoQueen concept was pioneered in Dr. Mark Winston’s laboratory at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. Contech has offered this product to beekeepers for over 20 years, with consistently excellent results. A summary of uses and product characteristics follows.
- PseudoQueens are typically used to keep a colony in a queenright state in the absence of a viable queen (e.g. during shipping of queenless packages), to inhibit swarming for short periods, and to supplement or temporarily replace a failing queen while a replacement is sought.
- PseudoQueens are also used to improve the performance of SwarmCatch in capturing and retaining straggler bees.
- PseudoQueens are suspended between the frames on a plastic tie tacked onto a frame.
- In nature, QMP induces a retinue of workers around the queen. The pheromone is picked up by the workers and distributed throughout the colony, resulting in it being queenright.
- One PseudoQueen consists of a QMP-laden plastic core inside a short PVC tube.
- PseudoQueens are suspended between the frames on a plastic tie tacked onto a frame.
- QMP exudes very slowly through the PVC walls of the tube. Attending workers pick it up by contact, and distribute it around the colony, just as they would with a living queen.
- The synthetic QMP in PseudoQueens precisely mimics the natural pheromone and is completely safe to both bees and people.