making my own queen cups

i'm gonna try to do a bit of grafting in a week or so... gonna make some queen cups the fbm way..

however... if i make the cups, and attach them to a bar, i'm sure i can cut them off the frame with a knife, but do the bees make the base of the cell broad enough so that it can be hung between to frames or do i need to have some kind of base? For some reason i thought of attaching a bunch of quarters on a frame and putting a cup on each, that way i could pop off the quarter and then it should be easy to hold a cell upside down and be broad enough not to slip into the space in-between.

but then i don't know if the cells would be too far apart. I have 'Queen rearing essentials" and there was a photo in it with 2 frames of cells.. one had them close together and one had them further apart,, and the book said the closer ones were the correct ones.

or am i doing it in a weird way?

I've seen that some queen rearing operations, coat their cell bars with about an 1/8" thick layer of beeswax, then they attach their beeswax cell cups. Once the cells are ripe, they shave that layer of beeswax off the bar, with the cells attached. That would provide a beeswax plate, attached to the base of the cell.

I believe this would provide you what you are describing.

Spacing between the cells is only wrong when/if it causes some of the cells to be neglected and poorly raised.

k... just wasn't' sure what was going to hold the cell to the bars... that makes sense...

d

However, there are alternate ways of positioning cultured cells into hives/mating nucs. One, is to cut the all beeswax cell from its attachment to the cell bar, being careful that the cell is not cut open, then simply make a depression in the receiving hives comb, large enough to accommodate the cell, then gently push the cell into this depression until it is held in place by the beeswax of the comb. I often do it this way, myself.

These days I mostly use JZsBZs plastic cell cups. They're quicker, and strong enough I don't need to worry about crushing the cell bases.

I have seen were they use a toothpick to fasten the cell to the comb.