Beginner queen rearing question here.
Really my motivation is swarm prevention, but I am trying to see if I can have any success rearing queens by taking frames of queen cells out while at the same time trying to prevent swarming in my production hives.
I took two deep frames out of a hive, each one with an uncapped queen cell and brood and put them into a Kelly mating nuc along with a frame of honey/pollen plus a jar of sugar syrup. I think these cells were still at larvae stage as they looked more like a white glob than a pupae.
Sort of like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Weiselzellen_68a.jpg
Is there any chance of success with this approach or do you always need to use more fully developed queen cells?
Really my motivation is swarm prevention, but I am trying to see if I can have any success rearing queens by taking frames of queen cells out while at the same time trying to prevent swarming in my production hives.
I took two deep frames out of a hive, each one with an uncapped queen cell and brood and put them into a Kelly mating nuc along with a frame of honey/pollen plus a jar of sugar syrup. I think these cells were still at larvae stage as they looked more like a white glob than a pupae.
Sort of like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Weiselzellen_68a.jpg
Is there any chance of success with this approach or do you always need to use more fully developed queen cells?