Joseph Clemens
05-06-2009, 10:22 PM
This afternoon I received a small shipment of four queens.
My plan for introducing them is to nab a comb of emerging brood, one of honey/pollen, and an empty comb. I place the three frames together in a 5-frame nuc box, put an empty nuc box on top, place the queen cage on edge across the three top bars and a quart feeder, inverted at the opposite end, also on the top bars. By tomorrow morning any older foragers will have returned to their parent hive, if any nuc appears to have too low a population I will add an additional frame of nurse/house bees, shaken in. After the entire frame of brood finishes emerging I will add two more plastic foundation/frames (PF120), placing them between the three frames already in place.
Where the amazing honeyflow comes in, is three days ago I did an inspection of most of my strongest full-size colonies, those most capable of donating the brood and honey frames I am using to introduce my new queens. They all had several foundationless empty frames and several frames with empty comb, yet today all combs were built-out, the new combs were filled with nectar/pollen and all empty combs were likewise filled. Tomorrow morning I do believe I will be needing to add many more supers of new PF120 frames. Aren't honeyflows amazing!
My plan for introducing them is to nab a comb of emerging brood, one of honey/pollen, and an empty comb. I place the three frames together in a 5-frame nuc box, put an empty nuc box on top, place the queen cage on edge across the three top bars and a quart feeder, inverted at the opposite end, also on the top bars. By tomorrow morning any older foragers will have returned to their parent hive, if any nuc appears to have too low a population I will add an additional frame of nurse/house bees, shaken in. After the entire frame of brood finishes emerging I will add two more plastic foundation/frames (PF120), placing them between the three frames already in place.
Where the amazing honeyflow comes in, is three days ago I did an inspection of most of my strongest full-size colonies, those most capable of donating the brood and honey frames I am using to introduce my new queens. They all had several foundationless empty frames and several frames with empty comb, yet today all combs were built-out, the new combs were filled with nectar/pollen and all empty combs were likewise filled. Tomorrow morning I do believe I will be needing to add many more supers of new PF120 frames. Aren't honeyflows amazing!