I've raised several batches of 3-6 queens this spring, both from emergency cells from splits and supersedure cells from a failing queen that I successfully seperated into mating nucs.
It's pretty easy to make emergency queens, but from what I have seen, the results in terms of size and consistency of results are very variable.
The supersedure queens have been consistetly good and large, but from my experience, suprsedure queens are only opportunstic and hard to plan for.
All that background to explain why I have decided to try using the Nicot System to breed 5-10 queens from some long-term feral stock that I want to propogate (and the fact that the Nicot system has become less expensive this spring didn't hurt either
).
I've done a lot of reading about the Nicot System and while I know it is apparenly 'easy' to graft, my eyes are not very good (I can never see eggs and only can see open brood when it practically fills the bottom of the cell) and I am going to be doing this infrequently enough that I think the Nicot System is right for me (5-10 queens bred once in the spring and once in the fall).
I am looking for advice from anyone who has used the Nicot sytem for things to avoid or to be particularly careful about. I've moved 'natural' queen cells from drawn foundationless frames and pressed them into frames of fresh comb before, but I don't quite understand the best way to introduce a queen cell from the Nicot System into a mating hive - suspend the 'hair-roller' between two frames, or is there a better way?
I plan to use a cloak board with a strong double-deep hive for starting and finishing the cells and I will be using a feral swarm that is still nuc-sized for the donor queen to build the 'graft' using the Nicot System.
Does it matter if the Nicot cage is on drawn comb or not? I've been using foundationless frames, so the easiest thing for me to do is to mount the Nicot cage in the middle of the top bar on a new foundationless frame - the bees may or may not draw fresh comb around the cage while they are acclimating to it and the queen is later contained within. I could chop a section out of a frame of drawn comb, but all of my drawn frames have either brood or stores in them (no empty drawn frames).
Does it matter if the nicot cage is mounted against the top bar, against the bottom bar, or in the middle of the frame?
I am sure I will have more questions as this adventue unfolds, but this is probably a good enough list to start.
Thanks for anyone who can give me the benefit of their experience and wisdom in this exciting new chapter in my beekeeping/beebreeding education...
-fafrd
It's pretty easy to make emergency queens, but from what I have seen, the results in terms of size and consistency of results are very variable.
The supersedure queens have been consistetly good and large, but from my experience, suprsedure queens are only opportunstic and hard to plan for.
All that background to explain why I have decided to try using the Nicot System to breed 5-10 queens from some long-term feral stock that I want to propogate (and the fact that the Nicot system has become less expensive this spring didn't hurt either
I've done a lot of reading about the Nicot System and while I know it is apparenly 'easy' to graft, my eyes are not very good (I can never see eggs and only can see open brood when it practically fills the bottom of the cell) and I am going to be doing this infrequently enough that I think the Nicot System is right for me (5-10 queens bred once in the spring and once in the fall).
I am looking for advice from anyone who has used the Nicot sytem for things to avoid or to be particularly careful about. I've moved 'natural' queen cells from drawn foundationless frames and pressed them into frames of fresh comb before, but I don't quite understand the best way to introduce a queen cell from the Nicot System into a mating hive - suspend the 'hair-roller' between two frames, or is there a better way?
I plan to use a cloak board with a strong double-deep hive for starting and finishing the cells and I will be using a feral swarm that is still nuc-sized for the donor queen to build the 'graft' using the Nicot System.
Does it matter if the Nicot cage is on drawn comb or not? I've been using foundationless frames, so the easiest thing for me to do is to mount the Nicot cage in the middle of the top bar on a new foundationless frame - the bees may or may not draw fresh comb around the cage while they are acclimating to it and the queen is later contained within. I could chop a section out of a frame of drawn comb, but all of my drawn frames have either brood or stores in them (no empty drawn frames).
Does it matter if the nicot cage is mounted against the top bar, against the bottom bar, or in the middle of the frame?
I am sure I will have more questions as this adventue unfolds, but this is probably a good enough list to start.
Thanks for anyone who can give me the benefit of their experience and wisdom in this exciting new chapter in my beekeeping/beebreeding education...
-fafrd