A rainy day here in New Haven...
I set up 10 new mini-mating nucs (the Mann Lake variety) yesterday with capped queen cells from larvae grafted one week ago. The usual--a cup of bees, 1:1 syrup in the feeder, and a capped queen cell, together with an artificial queen lure. Foundation starter strips for the bees to draw out while waiting for the queen to hatch.
I'm seeking guidance about when I should be anticipating needing to pull the mated queens out of these cute little units...I understand that they'll get ready to swarm pretty quickly once she starts to lay.
That question ties in with timing for getting another cell starter set up to raise another batch of queen cells to replace the queens from these mini-mating nucs. I want to count backwards from the window for queen pulling so that I can plan to pull frames of capped brood for the cell starter a week before grafting, and then, a week after grafting be ready to replace the laying queens with queen cells.
I'm a weekend-only beekeeper, so I've got to plan this all out so that I don't wind up unable to do things when they can get done...
BTW, I posted this on the Queen Rearing subforum earlier today, but didn't get any responses, so I'm reposting it in the main forum to try to get a new set of eyes looking at it. If nobody responds to a post, it disappears, as you know...
I set up 10 new mini-mating nucs (the Mann Lake variety) yesterday with capped queen cells from larvae grafted one week ago. The usual--a cup of bees, 1:1 syrup in the feeder, and a capped queen cell, together with an artificial queen lure. Foundation starter strips for the bees to draw out while waiting for the queen to hatch.
I'm seeking guidance about when I should be anticipating needing to pull the mated queens out of these cute little units...I understand that they'll get ready to swarm pretty quickly once she starts to lay.
That question ties in with timing for getting another cell starter set up to raise another batch of queen cells to replace the queens from these mini-mating nucs. I want to count backwards from the window for queen pulling so that I can plan to pull frames of capped brood for the cell starter a week before grafting, and then, a week after grafting be ready to replace the laying queens with queen cells.
I'm a weekend-only beekeeper, so I've got to plan this all out so that I don't wind up unable to do things when they can get done...
BTW, I posted this on the Queen Rearing subforum earlier today, but didn't get any responses, so I'm reposting it in the main forum to try to get a new set of eyes looking at it. If nobody responds to a post, it disappears, as you know...