Im considering following Michael Bush's advice on raising a few good queens for the hobbiest, that he has on his website. I have a few questions which Im hoping someone with more experience can answer easily enough.
1. Once I remove the queen cells (after the colony has been queenless for about 10 days), can I simply replace the old queen? Or does she need to be re-acclimated to the colony?
2. I would like to set up a typical 10-frame lang into four 2-frame mating nucs using follower boards. But I am unfamiliar with using follower boards in a lang, so are they exactly the same size as the frames, or do they extend all the way to the bottom board?
3. If they are the same size as the frames, couldnt the bees just go under (or above for that matter) into the next nuc? And wouldnt the queens possibly cross over and kill eachother?
4. Im planning on setting up a bunch of nucs to try to overwinter (as has been suggested by Michael Palmer in previous posts). Does anyone know if this is an appropriate time to start making queens for this purpose? I figure if I start in the next week or so, the new queens should be laying by mid to late July (this is in southern NY).
I know this is a long post, but I figured I get in all my questions at once.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
1. Once I remove the queen cells (after the colony has been queenless for about 10 days), can I simply replace the old queen? Or does she need to be re-acclimated to the colony?
2. I would like to set up a typical 10-frame lang into four 2-frame mating nucs using follower boards. But I am unfamiliar with using follower boards in a lang, so are they exactly the same size as the frames, or do they extend all the way to the bottom board?
3. If they are the same size as the frames, couldnt the bees just go under (or above for that matter) into the next nuc? And wouldnt the queens possibly cross over and kill eachother?
4. Im planning on setting up a bunch of nucs to try to overwinter (as has been suggested by Michael Palmer in previous posts). Does anyone know if this is an appropriate time to start making queens for this purpose? I figure if I start in the next week or so, the new queens should be laying by mid to late July (this is in southern NY).
I know this is a long post, but I figured I get in all my questions at once.
Thanks in advance for any advice.