Guys, I am a farm boy. I grew up on a farm raising cows, hay and most every creature God ever made. I am one of those people who make everything.
I digress. I am about to have anxiety attacks over splitting a hive of bees! I don't know what the problem is, I think I have watched every video on youtube about making splits and making queens. I am somewhat OCD and I typically try to read as much as possible and ask as many questions as I can before I screw up something.
Here is what I think I want to do. I think I am going to make one of those 3 horizontal bar frames. I am going to pull a frame of fresh eggs and cut cells and glue them to the bars with melted wax. Destroy eggs to create skips so the queen cells can be formed well.
So now to my questions, does that sound like a good plan for small scale queen rearing? I've read that I need to create a strong queenless nuc to start the queen cells and need to put them in a queenright hive, above a queen excluder for them to be finished. Why not just open the strong nuc and leave them in it? I guess that's where I get lost.
If I want to create 2 or 3 frame nucs to make as many hives as I can from one hive and put 2 queen cells in each. What day after capping, or what day after placing the cells with eggs would I need to put the queen cells in? I watched a video that said to put 2 cells in each hive to increase success of having a queen, is that the general consensus? If I make nucs with 2 frames of bees, and feed the heck out of them is that an accepted practice or is it stupid to dilute my bees so weakly?
Sorry for all the questions, but I am on the verge of doing this, IF the weather will ever hold. Looks like we've got another cold front coming in next week with lows around freezing. Do I need to wait until that passes to start creating queen cells?
I digress. I am about to have anxiety attacks over splitting a hive of bees! I don't know what the problem is, I think I have watched every video on youtube about making splits and making queens. I am somewhat OCD and I typically try to read as much as possible and ask as many questions as I can before I screw up something.
Here is what I think I want to do. I think I am going to make one of those 3 horizontal bar frames. I am going to pull a frame of fresh eggs and cut cells and glue them to the bars with melted wax. Destroy eggs to create skips so the queen cells can be formed well.
So now to my questions, does that sound like a good plan for small scale queen rearing? I've read that I need to create a strong queenless nuc to start the queen cells and need to put them in a queenright hive, above a queen excluder for them to be finished. Why not just open the strong nuc and leave them in it? I guess that's where I get lost.
If I want to create 2 or 3 frame nucs to make as many hives as I can from one hive and put 2 queen cells in each. What day after capping, or what day after placing the cells with eggs would I need to put the queen cells in? I watched a video that said to put 2 cells in each hive to increase success of having a queen, is that the general consensus? If I make nucs with 2 frames of bees, and feed the heck out of them is that an accepted practice or is it stupid to dilute my bees so weakly?
Sorry for all the questions, but I am on the verge of doing this, IF the weather will ever hold. Looks like we've got another cold front coming in next week with lows around freezing. Do I need to wait until that passes to start creating queen cells?