Queens

[dgl1948]

This is our first try at queen rearing. I have found the information on this subject in this forum to be like a bible. I took the time frame for queen rearing posting that Michael Bush put on this site and made a copy and pasted it into a word document. This way I could change, day -1 to Monday May 22, day 0 to Tuesday May 23, and so on, so our schedule was easier for us to follow. Jon McFadden's posts were followed with great interest. We used a nicot system to make the grafting easy. We had a mild winter here and one of our hives came through very strong, so that was the queen we wanted for a breeder. The bigest problem that I had, was with a early and warm spring this hive had expanded so it was in three deeps. Thats a lot of bees to look through to find a queen. Last week we took 19 day old cells out of the nicot cage and put them on a cell bar. When I checked yesterday there were 14 queens cells. Today is the day we start our nucs and tomorrow the queen cells will go in them. So far so good. Just follow the advice posted by MB and JM and it will work.

[Velbert]

>19 day old cells out of the nicot cage< won't work to old. Hope you meant 19 hrs old larvea's

[Branman]

he meant, he took out 19 (1)day-old cells

[dgl1948]

The cells are in the nucs. Will post results once queens are laying.

[dgl1948]

We seem to have a problem. Day 18 of the rearing cycle I opened the nucs tor move the nicot cells out. The first cell showed no sign of the queen leaving so I opened the end and there was a fully devoloped queen and she was still alive but not looking great?? I let her go in the nuc. The next couple of cells showed no sign of release as well so when they were opened there were queens in them but no sign of life. They had not fully matured and were white in color. In total only four cells had released queens. I do not think I damaged them when I put them in the nucs, as I did not have enough nucs for all the cells, I put hair roller cages over three of them and put them back in the hive and I lost them as well. Anyone have any ides as to what went wrong with these?

[jean-marc]

Sounds like you ran into a spell of cooler weather and it slowed down their development. Nothing went wrong, seeing as they were alive. They just needed another day or two to fully mature then hatch out.

Jean-Marc

[dgl1948]

The temps here were mid to high 20's and the nights were quite warm as well but that may have been the problem. I am not sure how warm it needs to be. Still the ones I left in the hive should have had good temps?? We are into a cool wet spell now but that was two days after they should have emerged.

[jean-marc]

Sometimes if the nucs are weak and the cells are placed between the top bars intead of on or very near the brood, then cells can get chilled or cooled enough to slow down devepolment. If the pupae are white they are still viable.

How do you know the 3 that were in the hair rollers were lost?

Jean-Marc

[dgl1948]

I opened one of the three and it showed no signs of life. My mistake may have been not placing the cells in with the brood. I placed them between the top bars. The three that I put back in the hive were not put back in the brood nest but moved to the top box. It may well be that they did not have enough heat. The three frame nucs had queens emerge and the five frames did not. Maybe not warm enough again. If they were not getting enough heat and it slows them down any idea as to how long they may be delayed and still survive?

[Michael Bush]

Pretty much everything from the queen confinment cage with the queen, the queen confinement cage with the eggs, the cell bars, the cells in the mating nucs, all need to be next to brood in order for things to work well.

[dgl1948]

We wound up with two queens that are now laying. We had a super queen that made it through the winter and she is filling the frames with brood. We had her in the nicot on the weekend and she filled the cells with eggs. This time, when it comes to putting the cells in the nucs I will stick them in the middle of the brood, not between the top bars and see if things work better.