Depends on your size and the strength of your starters. 10 starters to kick off 110 cups if you put roughly 15 cells per starter, or half that many starters if you put 30 cells in each.Thank you..no I have not seen thee book but will look for it.
I had wondered if one was to leave the front off the cage for it to get polished...now I have then answer..the workers fit in.
I guess the front will need to be lifted off to release the Queen.
How did you hang the Nicot cage in the super?
I also wonder why they have so many cups in the cage? Do you think folks actually can handle over 100 Queen cups at a time ?
How many do you hope to set up? Do you have lots of mating nucs set up? I don't have much extra brood, stores and drawn comb to give to a lot of nucs.
Please post how things go.
You don't confine the queen for 3-4 days. I released the queen after 14-18 hours. If I left the queen for 24 hours many cells would have double eggs. The strange thing was the both eggs would hatch and be lying on the jelly. I only used cells with one larva so I don't know when, or if, the bees would sort out the double larva.Four days confined with just 15-30 cups to lay in isn't great for the queen, I'd reckon.
You can but I usually just pulled the rest of them and washed them for use later. I didn't leave the frame in a hive permanently. I did do that for a year, but found that I had honey or pollen or some other substance in the cells when I wanted to use them again. So at the end (I graft now), I got the frame out of storage, inserted plugs, put the queen in the cage for 18 hours, released the queen and 3-4 days after the queen was added I would harvest larva. Then wash the remaining plugs and put the frame back in storage.I guess you will get capped workers from the cups you leave behind.