[krez]

Overview of Setup
Mid-michigan, moving toward sidelining.
Buying 10 nucs this spring.
Setting 20 traps.

Goals
1. Build bees (splitting and trapping)
2. Requeen trapped bees (using northern hardy genetics)
3. Modest honey harvest (mainly off of the 10 nucs)
4. Accumulate drawn frames

I'm looking for advice on the following wheeze to draw deep frames, modified from Brother Adam in BABA. As Follows:

Using a strong trapped colony, mid summer.

I. Move bees w/ queen into a box with one empty drawn frame and nine plastic foundations. Place original brood box over excluder, allow bees to cover brood. Separate queenless brood box to a separate bottom board, facing entrance in opposite direction.

II. Feed thin syrup to the comb-bereft colony, allow them to draw for twelve days.

III. On twelfth day, destroy queen cells in the queenless colony and recombine. Of course, there's opportunity here for splits or new queens or whatever.

I hope this to be a fast, aggressive way of increasing my drawn deep frame quantities.

I hope the one drawn frame will prevent a brood break.

Anyone spot any holes here?

Thanks for sticking with me.

 

[RayMarler]

12 days is to long to wait to kill queen cells. I would do it on day 9 or 10.

3 days as an egg and 2 more days for viable larva to make queen cells from is 5 days. 16 days +/- 1 day for cells to emerge. I would not wait longer than 10 days. Otherwise, sounds like a good plan to me.

 

[Jack Grimshaw]

" moving towards sidelining"
Why buy nucs? Use your cash to accumulate equipment.
Learn to graft and raise queens.
Make nucs and overwinter them.
Become self sustainable.

 

[AHudd]

By the statement, "Moving towards sidelining", I am assuming you have bees. If this is the case, I agree with Jack, I think money would be better spent on equipment rather than nucs.
I have been using a Snelgrove board to make Queens in conjunction with swarm control.
When I made my Boards I saved the cut out so that I could plug the hole to cut off any pheromones from below. I only screen off one side of the board so I can drop the plug in the hole. This keeps it from sliding around.
Sometimes they will make Queens in the top box without the plug, but it is hit or miss. They have always made Queens using the plug.
I have read that the more supers between the top and bottom box the more likely they are to makes Queens, but early in the year I don't like to give them that much room. We always seem to have a cold spell around Easter.

You can even take eggs from another colony if you please, just make sure they don't have eggs or appropriately aged larvae of their own.

 

[crofter]

The division board really should have double screens spaced at least 5/16" apart to prevent the bees from exchanging food containing pheremones; this is a source of queen presence pheremones as well as what wafts up through the screen. Supposedly a bit more positive promoter of cell starting. I have always put one honey super between the excluder and the snelgrove board and never had that fail to start cells above. I dont know how much lesser isolation you can get away with and still get cells started. One story is that Carnies are quicker to start cells and need less isolation than Italians do, but I dont have the experience with Italians to confirm.

Having the hole in just one side and being able to plug it, adds some interesting possibilities. If a person is willing to shake in a few extra nurse bees it should easily serve as a cell starter too for a few queen cells. Putting in a frame of eggs from another colony and tearing down the cells started on their own eggs give you some selection control.

We will never run out of games that you can play with bees!

 

[AHudd]

The division board really should have double screens spaced at least 5/16" apart to prevent the bees from exchanging food containing pheremones; this is a source of queen presence pheremones as well as what wafts up through the screen. Supposedly a bit more positive promoter of cell starting. I have always put one honey super between the excluder and the snelgrove board and never had that fail to start cells above. I dont know how much lesser isolation you can get away with and still get cells started. One story is that Carnies are quicker to start cells and need less isolation than Italians do, but I dont have the experience with Italians to confirm.

Having the hole in just one side and being able to plug it, adds some interesting possibilities. If a person is willing to shake in a few extra nurse bees it should easily serve as a cell starter too for a few queen cells. Putting in a frame of eggs from another colony and tearing down the cells started on their own eggs give you some selection control.

We will never run out of games that you can play with bees!

I know it isn't the very efficient means of raising Queens for a large scale operation, but I can keep new or two year old Queens in my hives, or even older if I have a particular one I like. I am going to build some 3 Frame nucs so I can make weaker nucs in the Spring so as not to take as many resources from the colonies.
An added bonus, and my favorite, is that it is so convenient. As I am adding the Snelgrove boards if it is a colony that is doing very well I can just drop the plug in and move on to the next.
I agree, we will never run out games to play with bees with Snelgrove Boards being much more than swarm control boards.

Alex