Cloake Board Question

[timgoodin]

Please pardon if this has already been addressed. This is my first time this year to graft and only second time ever. I made a cloake board, isolated the queen from the nurse bees and grafted about 25 cells. It's been two days, there are 18 nice cells started so today I removed the floor on the cloake board to reunite the colony (queen excluder is still in place) and make it queenright again. Was this a mistake? I read somewhere where a queenright colony can be used as a finisher colony but my worry is have I just set my best hive up for swarming. I have a laying queen and 18 additional queen cells seperated by the excluder, will the queen sense this and make swarm preparations? I'm planning to remove the cells and put them in nucs at the proper time.

Tim

[Broke-T]

Welcome to Queen rearing. You did it right.

Before you make up nucs check back into the finisher and count the cells. Sometimes they will tear down a cpl that are capped. You don't want to make up nucs and then find you are short a cpl of cells.

Johnny

[jdpro5010]

Sounds like you did good! I have only done this a few times myself but that is how I have done it. I also agree with broke-t about checking before you make the nuc's.

[timgoodin]

Thanks, I was just worried and astounded that that many took.

Thanks again

Tim

[EastCarolinaBee]

Tim, when you first set up your cloak board did you turn the hive back around after you closed the hive? I was in the process of doing this when a neighbor had way to many queen cells that i could use ! I'm also getting ready to start grafting using the cloak board this week.