On the Spot Queen Rearing

[Scottsman]

Anyone using the MDA Splitter method as described at MDASPLITTER.COM ?

[Capricorn]

I've thought about it. :P I had a hard time understanding what he was describing until I saw a picture. And then it wasn't what I thought it was.. Oh well.. I need to see more pictures of it I think.. I'm thinking a lot about the method of cutting strips of comb with the right aged larva, squishing 2 leaving 1 down the strip, and suspending that in a cell raising frame. I built a queen castle though, so I'm hoping to raise at least one batch of queens this year.

[jdpro5010]

This has been brought up before on here the last several years. It seems that alot of people like the idea of it and try it but not many seem to stick with it. I personally have no experience with it.

[GeeBee]

I plan to try it this year with two of my hives. I've met Mel before and he seems pretty knowledgable. Several people in the class he taught have reported good results over several seasons, so I'm interested in trying it.

[Capricorn]

Does anyone know where there are more pictures available of the bottom cell wall being removed properly for OTS? The PDF that Mel has, has a couple grainy black and white pictures, but that is the only one I've found. I thought from my first few readings, that you would knock down the bottom of 1 cell, but then in his picture, he is knocking down a solid inch and a half or two inches of cell walls..

[jmgi]

If you go to Youtube and punch in Mel Disselkoen, it will give you a video to watch where he talks about notching the comb with a hive tool to tear down the bottom of the cell wall. I am very interested in trying this method out myself. John

[jmgi]

I think that Mel's method would be less work rather than using the Fatbeeman's method where you cut strips of cells and attach them to the cell bars with wax. The only difference that might make a difference in the queen quality would be that queen cells that hang completely vertical may nourish the queen better and the cells may be larger, otherwise why would so many queen rearing methods be based around the vertical cells instead of being built off the side of the comb like Mel's method. John

[fish_stix]

You simply need to kill the larva around the cell you want to grow. A couple/few cells in each direction is plenty. Use the head of a large finish nail or grind the tip flat on a 12 or 16D common nail. Then just pull down the bottom cell wall with the nail (don't kill the larva!) to trick the bees into thinking they have a queen cell started. You still need to be able to gauge the age of the larva and use the youngest available. When I use this method with a queenless hive I try to give them a nice yellow, fresh comb that's soft and easy for them to build the wax out. I also select 5-6 cells to work on; sometimes they'll draw out all of them but usually you'll end up with maybe 3 out of 6. What works best for me, however, is to graft a larva into a plastic cell cup and push them into an open brood frame pointed down. Again, I do 5-6 cell cups but I have a much better success rate. I only use either method when I'm at an outyard and find a queenless hive with no cells available.

[Adrian Quiney WI]

Fishy, do you then go back later, and kill the emergency cells that you have not done the OTS intervention on? Also, how many OTS cells do you leave in one hive/nuc?

[GeeBee]

When Mel was teaching his class here, he basically said he takes his hive tool and inserts it straight into the comb at a 90 degree angle, being careful not to touch the larva. Then he presses the wax below the larva flat, basically removing the 'floor' of the cell and simultaneously killing the larva below it. Don't destroy more than one row of cells below the row you want the bees to raise queens in though. In all his publications, he says he goes all the way in to the midrib. As near as I can tell, that means to press in until you've reached the foundation (but not through it). If you're using plastic foundation, it should be easy. He likes to do 5-6 cells in a row, about the width of the hive tool to give the bees plenty of options to choose from. He also said he likes to notch several places on one side of a frame. He'll do this on several frames in his hive, but usually only on one side of the frame. Then he'll use each frame as the basis for a nuc, allowing all the queen cells on that particular frame to ripen and allow the queens to fight it out themselves.

This would be a good way to get the bees to make royal jelly too, if you get several cells on one frame, you can cut out all but one and harvest the jelly if you want, or just let the queens duke it out for supremacy. I also want to try grafting this year, but have no jelly to prime my cups with, so I plan to use OTS to get some to kickstart my grafting.

I did try to do OTS last year, but I did it on eggs instead of larva, and the bees just removed them, so definitely make sure you're picking 36hr old or younger larva, and stay away from the eggs.

[AramF]

I accidentally killed a queen last year, so when I realized it I quickly did he OTS. Got 3 really good queens that way, and 3 that were average. The method messes us the comb a little, but oh well. Very nice for making nuc splits. Each nuc gets a frame with 2-3 queen cells, a bit of natural selection.

[DonShackelford]

Glad to see this thread. I'm planning to try Mel's method of notching and rearing queen cells over an excluder in a queen-right hive.
I found two hives yesterday that appeared to have swarmed, probably virgin queens with no fresh brood. I used the "when in doubt" method of M Bush and gave them both a frame of eggs/young larva and notched them to ensure they had something to work with if the new queens didn't mate.

Mel has stated that OTS can be used on eggs as well as larva.
Adrian; He also states to leave two queen cells in each nuc

[Adrian Quiney WI]

I used Mel's method last year, but I'm embarrassed to say when I came back to the hives I had forgotten where I'd notched the cells and it took a lot of poking around to find which cells I wanted to leave. Next time I'm going to mark the frames.

[jmgi]

Mel has stated that OTS can be used on eggs as well as larva.
Adrian; He also states to leave two queen cells in each nuc[/QUOTE]


Someone earlier posted that they didn't have success notching under eggs, but Mel says you can, I was hoping to be able to do it under eggs so I wouldn't have to guess at which larvae are 36 hrs. old or under. John

[jmgi]

Adrian, thats why I like to use those little stick on labels, they come in a few different colors and sizes and work great for labeling specific frames for keeping track of things. I carry a sheet of them with me in my bee tool box all the time, also include a pen to write on them if you need to. John

[Adrian Quiney WI]

John, that is a good idea.

[fish_stix]

Adrian; I'm not a "Cell Buster!" If the bees draw out a queen cell it's staying in the hive and the bees can choose whichever one they want. I trust their judgement on this issue; they've been at it a lot longer than I have. As for doing OTS with eggs, I've never been able to get them to raise a queen from eggs. Do they raise a supersedure queen or emergency queen from eggs? No! They pick a right-age larva and build a cell around it. For finding larva the right age, just find a frame that has older larva or capped brood in the center. The larva will be younger and younger as you progress to the outside of the frame. On the perimeter of the brood will be eggs and the larva right next to or mixed in with eggs are the right age. The little larva will be difficult to see but will be laying in a tiny puddle of Royal Jelly. If you see RJ there's a larva in that cell; bees don't feed eggs, empty cells or store RJ in empty cells! Look at this smiley face. The right size larva will be about the size of the winking eye and will be shaped like the smile, not curled into a full "C" shape yet. So easy a caveman can do it!

[fieldbee]

Have used the OTS quite a bit in our operation, for example if we find a Queenless hive and have no available queens, get a frame of brood from another hive with eggs and just hatched lava and notch. A couple of things to note, if no honey flow happening at the time give a litre of sugar syrup, the bees will have something to work with, it does give a better result.
Have done splits by notching, different to Mels way, usualy at the end of honey production, split a box of brood in half, queen in top half facing back with split board between two boxes, notch the bottom queenless box have had good success with these splits. success rate about the same as spliting this way with a queen cell.
Have done splits by notching when I have been too busy for queen raising. Told a brother Beek (he been a beek 25 yrs) about OTS about a year ago, just found that is all he is using for queens for splitting in his 1600 operation.

[DonShackelford]

Fieldbee; What's a split board?

[jmgi]

fish stix,

The smiley face with the winking eye is the best description of how to find the right age larvae that I have ever seen, I was going to do the OTS by notching underneath eggs, but now I feel confident that I can pick the right larvae like the caveman does. I just need to go and get me a new pair of dollar store reading glasses with a slightly higher magnification than I currently have and I'll be ready to go. John