queen cells

[larrymn]

was wondering how you can do this and if you can think so. Say you have a hive with queens cells (from a great queen) can you cut them out and put them in nucs? or other hives that you want to requeen? If so at about what time/day of seeing the queen cells with larva in them do you move them? do you wait til they are capped over i'm sure you do, and how fragial are they?

[psfred]

You most certainly can cut them out and put them in nuc or other hives.

They will emerge in 16 days from when the egg was laid, so you want to move them shortly before they emerge.

The cells themselves are fairly robust, but the content are NOT. Never shake a frame with queen cells, do not drop them and never invert them, you will damage the queen inside. The closer to emerging the queen is, the less fragile, but take great care in moving them.

I would not move an uncapped cell, in all likelyhood you will simply shake the queen out along with the royal jelly while attempting to cut it out. Cells in a queen cell rack are less of a problem, but even then, be careful not to shake or jostle roughly.

Peter

[johng]

I normally move my queen cells on day 10 after grafting. The only problem you may have is your not exactly sure when the queen cells where started. I have to ask though why does your hive have queen cells? If they are swarm cells you need to make a split with the queen. But, the extra queen cells can be used as you described above.

If you search youtube for fatbeeman he has a vidieo on cutting out and using queen cells.

[Michael Bush]

If you have wax foundations with few wires you can often cut them out. If you have no wires, you can almost always cut them out. If you have plastic foundation, you can use the whole frame but I've never been able to get queen cells off of them. If you wait until they are papery on the tips they will be almost ready to emerge and they will be much less prone to damage.