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Bl##dy British weather ...
Right now I have a large number of newly-emerged virgins waiting to go into nucs - only the heavens opened-up yesterday and I couldn't get out into the apiary. Those virgins which have emerged are in roller-cages which have been sitting on a desk in a relatively cold room. Cold - in July ? Yes, it's our version of summer ...
So although there were still a handful of ripe queen-cells inside the incubator - which is running at 34C(93F) - late last night I decided to cut my losses and look after the much larger number already out, and so wound the incubator temp down to 25C(77F) and put all the roller-cages back in.
The emerged virgins are looking far happier this morning, and have been joined by 4 more which emerged overnight. In view of the lowering of temperature, I've already checked the wings of those 4, which look fine. The weather this morning looks promising, so hopefully I can get all these girls installed in their new homes during the day. So that's it for my 2019 queen-rearing season - which turned out to be brilliant towards the end.
I now think there's a case for having a second 'incubator' on hand, running at a lower temperature for the purposes of temporary (weather-related) banking. Thoughts ?
LJ
Right now I have a large number of newly-emerged virgins waiting to go into nucs - only the heavens opened-up yesterday and I couldn't get out into the apiary. Those virgins which have emerged are in roller-cages which have been sitting on a desk in a relatively cold room. Cold - in July ? Yes, it's our version of summer ...
So although there were still a handful of ripe queen-cells inside the incubator - which is running at 34C(93F) - late last night I decided to cut my losses and look after the much larger number already out, and so wound the incubator temp down to 25C(77F) and put all the roller-cages back in.
The emerged virgins are looking far happier this morning, and have been joined by 4 more which emerged overnight. In view of the lowering of temperature, I've already checked the wings of those 4, which look fine. The weather this morning looks promising, so hopefully I can get all these girls installed in their new homes during the day. So that's it for my 2019 queen-rearing season - which turned out to be brilliant towards the end.
I now think there's a case for having a second 'incubator' on hand, running at a lower temperature for the purposes of temporary (weather-related) banking. Thoughts ?
LJ