Queen Rearing

[divebee]

I am using one of the queen cages to confine the queen and have her to lay in the cell cups. I have left this in with the breeder queen for several days, and after a couple days initially, she began to lay and laid a box full of eggs in this thing. A few more days 4-5 passed and some of them turned into larva. Other eggs seem to not develop or I am not sure why there are not more larva, but I took 20-30 out of 110 which looked good and the larva was in a bed of royal jelly, then put them in a swarm box and they seemed to do well and then placed them in a queenless hive to finish. They accepted some and the queen cells were capped. I placed hairroller cages on then and waited out the time for them to emerge. This time no luck, so I opened them and found the queen/s didnt develop. Any suggestions..??

[peggjam]

You may have waited too long to transfer the cell cups to the cell bar. Once confined to the cage, it shouldn't take her only 1-2 days to lay it full of eggs, then you need to transfer the cells at day 4 (the day the egg hatches). The younger the larva the better, just remember you can't transfer eggs, it has to be a larva. One other thing, make sure you don't shake the cell bar once the cells are transfered to it, this will kill/damage the developing queen. If you need to remove the bees to insert hairroller cages, use a turkey feather (or other large feather) to dislodge the bees.

[Branman]

sounds like the queen cells might have gotten chilled or knocked around?

[Hook]

I agree with Branman. I was thinking that you probably jarred the cell too hard, and it detatched from the food, and died. It happens if you hanle them too much, especially when they are first capped.

[divebee]

Thanks for the replys... Looking at the little larva it looks like you all are right, I think the critters got detached from the food source and died.

[Michael Bush]

>I am using one of the queen cages to confine the queen and have her to lay in the cell cups.

I assume this is one of the grafless systems? And they are not queen cups she is laying in?

> I have left this in with the breeder queen for several days

I put the box in several days before and leave the queen in for 24 hours. No more, unless there are NO eggs, then I might go another 24.

> and after a couple days initially, she began to lay and laid a box full of eggs in this thing. A few more days 4-5 passed and some of them turned into larva.

I go exactly four days from when the queen was confined. If there are eggs that haven't hatched you can check again the next day, but any larvae older than that is too old.

> Other eggs seem to not develop or I am not sure why there are not more larva

It needs to be in the center of the brood nest with lots of bees to take care of the larvae.

> but I took 20-30 out of 110 which looked good and the larva was in a bed of royal jelly, then put them in a swarm box and they seemed to do well and then placed them in a queenless hive to finish.

If they were no more than 24 hous since they hatched this should work fine.

> They accepted some and the queen cells were capped. I placed hairroller cages on then and waited out the time for them to emerge. This time no luck, so I opened them and found the queen/s didnt develop. Any suggestions..??

I'm still not sure what I think of the hair culer cages. Maybe they didn't keep them warm enough, since they couldn't get on the cells?

Then there are all the issues brought out above.

[L.Jacobsen]

i find that from the time from the cells are capped untill two days before emergence the lavae is very sensitive. I have lost many queens because of cold weather when i thought i ought to give them a look.
:rolleyes:
Best thing is to put them in the finisher as soon as they are accepted and dont touch or put on cage untill two days before emergence (if you can make that time sceadule). Otherwise work them gently and watch for cooling when you do.