Hi All,
After several success with the Larry Connor method I tried the Cloake Board method for the first time. I had 21 out of 24 nice queen cells grafted for a 87% success rate. All looked well at day 6 but when I opened the hive on day ten I found all 21 queen cells destroyed. I am pretty careful to make sure I do no select larvae that's too old. The biggest queens are from the youngest larvae you can find. This is the first time this has happened to me.
Since most people learn by their mistakes I am trying to figure out the exact cause.
Possible causes
I did have robbing issue on many of my hives in the middle of this queen rearing. A friend asked me to make him a package for his TBH and I did. It set off a robbing frenzy in the bee yard. I had to put a robbing screens on the hives to protect them once I saw the problem. With the Cloake Board method the robber bees would have direct access to the upper box with the queen cells. In the Larry Conner method robbers would have to go through a bottom box and a queen excluder to get to the upper box where the queen cells reside, so there is a difference. I am not sure if robber bees would kill queen cells? I know robber bees will kill a live queen, I had that happen on a nuc a few years ago but would robber bees kill capped queen cells too?
It could be a stray virgin queen entered the hive and destroyed the cells?
or
It could be that I selected a larvae that was too old and it hatched early and killed the other cells but she would have to be very busy to kill 20 cells in one day.
I also made sure the Original marked queen was below the queen excluder in the hive and she was indeed. The marked queen was nice and plump, so it is unlikely she killed the cells. Plus in the Cloake Board method there is no brood at all in the upper box.
I guess my main question to the more experienced Beeks is .....
Will Robber bees kill Queen cells too?
Thanks,
Bee Happy!
Phil
After several success with the Larry Connor method I tried the Cloake Board method for the first time. I had 21 out of 24 nice queen cells grafted for a 87% success rate. All looked well at day 6 but when I opened the hive on day ten I found all 21 queen cells destroyed. I am pretty careful to make sure I do no select larvae that's too old. The biggest queens are from the youngest larvae you can find. This is the first time this has happened to me.
Since most people learn by their mistakes I am trying to figure out the exact cause.
Possible causes
I did have robbing issue on many of my hives in the middle of this queen rearing. A friend asked me to make him a package for his TBH and I did. It set off a robbing frenzy in the bee yard. I had to put a robbing screens on the hives to protect them once I saw the problem. With the Cloake Board method the robber bees would have direct access to the upper box with the queen cells. In the Larry Conner method robbers would have to go through a bottom box and a queen excluder to get to the upper box where the queen cells reside, so there is a difference. I am not sure if robber bees would kill queen cells? I know robber bees will kill a live queen, I had that happen on a nuc a few years ago but would robber bees kill capped queen cells too?
It could be a stray virgin queen entered the hive and destroyed the cells?
or
It could be that I selected a larvae that was too old and it hatched early and killed the other cells but she would have to be very busy to kill 20 cells in one day.
I also made sure the Original marked queen was below the queen excluder in the hive and she was indeed. The marked queen was nice and plump, so it is unlikely she killed the cells. Plus in the Cloake Board method there is no brood at all in the upper box.
I guess my main question to the more experienced Beeks is .....
Will Robber bees kill Queen cells too?
Thanks,
Bee Happy!
Phil