[Broke-T]

Do ya'll have problems raising queens in heat of summer? I want to raise 20 to 30 queens for fall requeening, but queen breeders in MS say it gets to hot to raise queens here in summer.

Does anybody here raise queens in heat of summer? Do you do it different than in spring? I raised about a 100 this spring with no problems.

Johnny

 

[Joseph Clemens]

I raise them just fine here in Tucson. I raised queens through all of 2009 and am continuing non-stop until even now. The heat of Summer has just made my grafting window earlier in the morning and shorter -- I like to graft outside, within a few feet of both my source larva colony and my queen cell builder colony.

BTW it was 106.4F here this afternoon.

 

[Michael Bush]

I don't find heat so much a problem as dearth.

 

[Pugs]

Joseph,

Have the monsoons started yet? My mom lives just south of Green Valley and she told me that there was an inversion preventing them from starting.

I was there in the first half of April. I bought some of 'Larry's Honey' at a road side stand. It would have been nice to meet up and see you operation.

Pugs

 

[Joseph Clemens]

We were up on Mt. Lemmon today, fishing and there was a little rain as we were leaving, about 5PM. Cloudy over much of the city and some local rain, of limited quantity. Perhaps this weekend it may start (I'll sure be happy when we start getting some significant rainfall).

I have a nuc with three combs of honey and about a pound of nurse bees where I hold ripe queen cells (my queen cell "finisher"). There are three cells remaining there, on a bar. In the morning, I need to move them over to individual mating nucs.

I have two bars of six cells each in my queen cell builder, one bar is about five days ahead of the other. The older bar should all be sealed sometime tonight, then, in the morning, I'll move them to the cell "finisher" nuc, making room for another bar, this time with a set of ten fresh grafts which I'll also do in the morning.

My queen cell builder colony is presently housed in a deep, 5-frame nuc with 15/32" plywood walls and a screened bottom. I only use medium frames, so the extra space beneath the frames is a good place for extra nurse bees to cluster, and they do. I continuously feed the queen cell builder nuc with fresh pollen substitute patties and between flows, with a thin sugar syrup.