Raising from cells

[sc-bee]

Before things heat up with the season--- a few more Rookie questions:

When raising queens from cells what have you found to be the best method?

1---Is it best to remove the queen to a nuc and let the parent hive raise the cell and move @ day 13?

2---Or is it better to move open brood to top and put a excluder and limit the queen to the bottom and will they then pull cells in the top above the excluder?

In case 1 do you re-combine the queen back (if wanted there) using the newspaper method?

In case two can you just remove the excluder to re-combine?

Please discuss pros---cons---pitfalls of the above and any other preferred method!!!

And yes I'm as dense as it sounds :D:). Guess I'm just hesitate about the mystic queen thing!!!

Steve

[Michael Bush]

The strong hive will do a better job of feeding and a better job of keeping her warm. I only move capped cells to a nuc. If I know how old they are, then, yes, I'd go for some that are only a couple of days from emergence. If I don't know, I'd just move them when they are capped.

[peggjam]

Not sure what you want for case two, but, if you don't remove the queen from the hive, they won't start any cells regardless of where you put open brood. One way of doing case two would be to place a board between the two hive bodys for 48 hours, and (you can do this two ways)then give them open brood that is of the correct age, or, make sure they have eggs in with them before you place the board. If you make sure that both bodies have eggs before putting in the board, you wouldn't have to know where the queen was. Then at the end of 48 hours, remove the board and replace with a queen excluder, they should finish the cells.

When doing this, you should make sure you remove the cells before they hatch, as this is a sure fired metheod of making a hive swarm;).

[sc-bee]

Thanks peg---I knew i was missing something!!! The cloake board etc.

And if you make the colony completely queenless you have to either cage her or use the newspaper method to re-combine---is that correct?

[REDTRACTOR1]

Sc bee,
If you come up this spring i will teach you about queen rearing. Not just one way but several ways. Looking forward to helping you.
Thanks Dwight

[peggjam]

"And if you make the colony completely queenless you have to either cage her or use the newspaper method to re-combine---is that correct?"

You could pull her out in a nuc, remove the finished cells, and then reintroduce her with the newspaper. Just depends on how long you keep her from the hive. I have placed queens back in after being out of the hive for 24 hours with no special reintroductions.:)

[Jon McFadden]

Hi Steve,
We leave the queen cell in the parent hive until it is capped. We then move the cell to a baby nuc with about 2 cups of bees.
Care must be taken to gather supercedure cells, not swarm cells. Always leave a nice cell in the original hive.
Here is a link to the baby nucs we make for $1 ea.
http://nordykebeefarm.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=46&PN=1
Jon