I've got one last batch cookin' too. My usual cut off date is the end of July, but I remember last year I had wished I'd done one more batch or so after that. I'd been looking for a good choice for my last batch, but I've let my breeder queen colonies get large and honey'd up and don't like to disturb them this late in the summer.
This graft/grid placement date was 8-3-14. due to hatch 8-15-14.
Velbert sent me a nice juicy Pol-line from his breeder and I couldn't resist getting some daughters locally mated with my stock & overwinter. I came across her, still in a small colony and it was a great opportunity to get some larva. I was impressed by her pattern and her looks as a new young queen. Those potential superstars always have a superior work force right from the start, even in a mating nuc. The organization and effeciency is very noticable.
The issue isn't so much getting them to rear up the cells, It is where are you going to place them when they are done? What are you going to do with your cell builder when it is done? If it's queenless it will need time to build up before fall. Or you'll have to distribute frames to other hives.
And this time of year, time is running out.
I brushed more young bees into my queenless cell builder before this last batch. As soon as the cells are capped they will go into the incubator to free up this colony to receive a mated queen ASAP.
Cells about day 4-5. Well started and well fed. (I actually got two additional single bar frames started as well, for a total of about 58 good starts.) Although I found the marked queen before I brushed the new cell builder bees, this time of year there can easily be a second queen, a daughter also residing in the hive in addition to the older queen. Glad to see they started the cells and no young queen accidently got through. I ran them through an excluder just to be sure, But you are not
really sure until you see cells successfully started and tended.
Disrupting a donor hive for fresh young bees to freshen the starter colony is also a consideration this late in the summer.
Queenless nucs are targets for robbing this time of year. A queenless nuc that is being
fed is really a target.
My established mating nucs hanging on the fence are strong enough to ward off robbing. I still have a call for mated queens locally-so the current queens will be sold and these pol-line virgins installed. With no time to build back up due to too many broodless periods, I will combine these nucs with the divided deeps you see on the benches. I may end up with extra queens, but I'll deal with that if necessary.
I guess what I am saying is, iI will likely have to sacrifice being able to overwinter any nucs I rear late queens in, due to no time to build numbers of young bees back up before fall.
I also still have fairly good mature drone populations. Although not as many as early spring, by feeding my larger hives protein, they continue to rear drones.
2 colonies in a divided single box really need to be equalized before late fall. By combining the frames from the fence nucs I will have the resources to do that.
I successfully overwintered some really small mating nucs last year with
very cold temps. I use a fortified sugar block on all colonies in a single deep and insulate the hive more throughly than larger hives.