[marshmasterpat]

Have a mess in one of my hives, lots of cross comb mainly caused by comb that was placed in with rubber band. I missed centering it when I placed some of it in a frame. Then had 2 and 3 narrow pieces of comb I placed on a single frames. These had brood during the cut out and hate to waste any so I was trying to save them. It worked but where the edges of these combs are now built together by the bees, they make a mess. They tried to make 2 rows of comb instead of making the 2 edges line up. So I am slowly cleaning all this cross comb up.

Well there was a strip of cross comb about 1 inch wide sticking out from the frame. It had eggs in it and since I have 3 nuc hives that are queenless I came up with this idea.

I cut the strip off, used bread ties to attach it to the top bar of an empty frame and then smashed almost all the eggs leaving one egg in every 4th row. That is one egg about every 3/4 inch remaining. Placed it in a hive and crossing my fingers.

This hive has no eggs, no larvae, and still quite a few bees that hatched out within the last week. So I am thinking that these 6 or 7 eggs will hatch within 36 hours. Since the comb is now hanging vertically, I am hoping the hatching larvae will be made into queen cells.

If this doesn't work, going to do combine with queen rite hives and give up on these nucs.

Is there a chance of this working?

 

[Bees of SC]

Your eggs may bee to close to work with later. I try to keep the eggs at less 1 1/2 " apart for cutting later.

 

[kilocharlie]

Yes, it may indeed work. Do you notice the "queenless roar" sound? If so, they will likely try to make a queen from whatever they have (or whatever you give them).

 

[marshmasterpat]

Thanks guys

Bees - I was worried about that, if I do it again, I will give them more run.

They running like crazy and seem to be very excited all the time. And yes they are making more noise than the rest of the hives.

Struck out on my attempts to cell punch, not sure what happened there. I was successful last year and then I am 0 for 2 attempts to graft a few.

If this works I will try it on the other 2 hives.

 

[marshmasterpat]

Failed again.

They pulled off the comb attached by ties. Now they are building comb on the frame.

And boy they were not in a good mood this evening. They piled out of the hive hard, fast, and mad. Guess who didn't smoke. And guess whose hood wasn't on properly. Got me 5 times in about 10 seconds. LOL - It doesn't pay to be sloppy.

 

[kilocharlie]

Ouch-ee-wah wha!