I wanted to try raising a few queens this year, so I bought a book on small scale queen rearing. The book says to remove the queen with a few frames of brood and wait a week to go in to the hive to make splits (or cull the cells down to two).
I thought it would be nice to have a chart of the queens progress, so I went and found one online, where you put in your graft date and it makes a chart for you. The chart lists several days as sensitive development phase, where you don't want to move the cells, and even to be extra careful when opening the top.
The problem that I see is that if I wait a week and make splits/cull cells, the one week mark is smack dab in the middle of the sensitive phase window. Unfortunately I have already been to the hive, so at this point I am wondering if anyone has any experience with just how sensitive the cells are during this time. I am very gentle anyway, but the frames were moved around, one was transferred to a nuc, and several were destroyed (on purpose, there were about 12 total).
Now I am wondering if I should have waited a few more days.
Another thing... The bees would be able to make cells over about a 5 day period or so, so no matter what there are cells of different stages if your not going to graft, is there a way to tell which ones are sensitive, and which ones can be moved?
Thank you
I thought it would be nice to have a chart of the queens progress, so I went and found one online, where you put in your graft date and it makes a chart for you. The chart lists several days as sensitive development phase, where you don't want to move the cells, and even to be extra careful when opening the top.
The problem that I see is that if I wait a week and make splits/cull cells, the one week mark is smack dab in the middle of the sensitive phase window. Unfortunately I have already been to the hive, so at this point I am wondering if anyone has any experience with just how sensitive the cells are during this time. I am very gentle anyway, but the frames were moved around, one was transferred to a nuc, and several were destroyed (on purpose, there were about 12 total).
Now I am wondering if I should have waited a few more days.
Another thing... The bees would be able to make cells over about a 5 day period or so, so no matter what there are cells of different stages if your not going to graft, is there a way to tell which ones are sensitive, and which ones can be moved?
Thank you