MB, once again thanks for being such a valuable resource to this website.
I have a quick question. When making a split, you say to take a frame of capped brood, a frame of open brood and larvae & a frame of eggs. I'm assuming that the capped brood and open brood are to ensure a constant source of hatching bees. Then you say to destroy the first queen cells because they are made with larvae that are too old and could make for poor queens.
How about this? Why not first put only one frame of eggs & three frames of honey & pollen for the first few days therefore ensuring that the queencells are going to be from eggs or newborn larvae? Then you can switch out two honey frames with capped brood/open brood frames in a few days, therefore still ensuring a constant supply of new bees. This way you're getting a new queen a couple days earlier, and the nurse bees have more honey & pollen to feed the new queens w/o missing out on the fresh supplies of new bees once you switch the frames. Just a thought
Also, do you see a decrease in the quality of queen if you use syrup in a feeder or syrup placed in a frame vs honey frames or honey in a feeder?
I have a quick question. When making a split, you say to take a frame of capped brood, a frame of open brood and larvae & a frame of eggs. I'm assuming that the capped brood and open brood are to ensure a constant source of hatching bees. Then you say to destroy the first queen cells because they are made with larvae that are too old and could make for poor queens.
How about this? Why not first put only one frame of eggs & three frames of honey & pollen for the first few days therefore ensuring that the queencells are going to be from eggs or newborn larvae? Then you can switch out two honey frames with capped brood/open brood frames in a few days, therefore still ensuring a constant supply of new bees. This way you're getting a new queen a couple days earlier, and the nurse bees have more honey & pollen to feed the new queens w/o missing out on the fresh supplies of new bees once you switch the frames. Just a thought
Also, do you see a decrease in the quality of queen if you use syrup in a feeder or syrup placed in a frame vs honey frames or honey in a feeder?