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I posted a few weeks ago about using separate starter and finisher colonies as opposed to a single hive with a queen below the excluder. After putting my grafted cells in and waiting a day I checked to see how many the bees took to. It looked like they would raise well over 50%. I checked a week later and there were about this many capped queen cells. They were almost all small. Yesterday I was going to put these in splits. I went through the bars and only had 3 cells with decent looking Queens. The rest were dead inside the capped cells. The pupae spun a cocoon but didn't grow much more and we're dead when I opened these cells. What should I look at that went wrong with what I did? I am going to try again this week and will use the separate starter colony with plenty of well fed nurse bees. I will then transplant them into a strong queen right hive for finishing. There is a good flow on now which should help a lot. I am thinking I will use a 5 frame unc for a starter. Will this be OK for 45 cells? Also a single finisher for all?
Thanks
Thanks