Jon
Big Bang Wednesday 15th June – a whole lot of shakin’ going on.
by
, 11-06-2011 at 07:35 PM (2871 Views)
This is going to be the trickiest logistical exercise to date.
Apart form our queen rearing group, there is a group of about 15-20 beginners who have signed up to get a queen in an Apidea. We are meeting next Tuesday evening and the agenda is to show them how to assemble and manage an Apidea.
The problem is that I have over 30 cells due to hatch on Wednesday and I suspect some of them will hatch early on Tuesday.
If they hatch on Tuesday, it is feasible that we hand over the apideas replete with virgin and cupful of bees later on that evening, assuming there is time to do a whole lot of shaking earlier in the afternoon to fill the apideas.
If they don’t start hatching on Tuesday, we will put the cells in anyway and check on Wednesday or Thursday to ensure that a queen has emerged into each Apidea. I have another 6 cells due to hatch on Friday so these could be used to replace any which fail to hatch. In a way it is easier if the cell has hatched as you drop the virgin into the bottom of the Apidea and tip the cupful of wet bees on top of her. It guarantees that there is a queen in the Apidea.
The priority tomorrow is to get roller cages around the cells so I will have to do that tomorrow morning. I got caught out a couple of weeks ago when cells started to hatch nearly two days early and I had queens emerging from cells as I tried to place them through the hole in the transparent cover of the Apidea.
The members of the queen rearing group will be bringing along Apideas on Monday evening as well but these ones will already be filled with bees and just need the queen cell to be added. I also have another 7 in the shed which need to be filled with bees. Hopefully there will be enough cells to go round. Sometimes the bees start to pull them down when the weather is bad but I have a feeder on the two cell raiser colonies so hopefully they are happy enough.