calkal said: Just a few more questions for you Michael. I have watched all of your national honey show lectures multiple times so I am quite familiar but I still have a few questions.
>When you harvest the brood and resources from the brood factories How do you know you don't have the Queen? Do you just look carefully and take a chance or do you use an excluder and shake all the bees off and then harvest the following day?
We look carefully, and rarely take a queen...but it does happen. We've setup 140 so far, and none have an old queen.
>Tomorrow will be my 4th Sunday in a row grafting into the cell builders, I've been making them up-and-doing it like you presented in the lectures. The 1st week I got 38/45 and then 48/50 in then 53/56.
Very good. You've got the grafting part down
>When you say your taking 2 brood from the brood factories to make up nucleus colonies are you talking one frame of cap brood and 1 frame of eggs and larva? That would make the most sense to me rather than 2 frames of capped brood.
One honey, one sealed brood, one with sealed and open brood, and one comb of something. Enough bees to cover the brood
>I placed my 1st cells on the 17th of June but I have not went in to check yet for laying queens because I thought it was too soon, it sounds like you go in pretty quick what is a good rule of thumb here?
You're correct, it is too soon. We catch on day 16 after giving 10 day cells. I wouldn't think of going any earlier. Yes, most of my queens seem to be laying an day 11 or 12 after giving cells, but occasionally some are just laying on day 16