Jon

Hi Jon,

Beats my queen rearing efforts. Spent yesterday filling apideas and inserting queen cells Got 7 from 10 queen cells using the Cupkit. The apideas are now in the cool dark outhouse until Saturday. It is amazing how the sound goes down after inserting a cell to a queenless nuc. Have also been working on my 3rd apairy site which is an isolated site. It does mean walking in over a hillside to get to it carrying nuc hives. I will not be starting anymore queens this year due to the lack of equipment. Just going to see how the mating goes and get them built up for the winter.
I saw the ben harding method on my queen breeding course. My head can't get around how it works. To me the queen could still swarm and queen cells should not be raised. I will have to look more closely on how it is done

Jimbo

To me the queen could still swarm

Hi Jimbo.

That was my big fear as well but I have asked around and it does not happen.
Apparently the cells are raised under the supersedure impulse because the upper box is missing queen pheromone.
Both my cell raising colonies have had cells in the upper box continuously for a month, sometimes over 30 at a time.
About 80 queens have hatched since last month and I have a few beekeepers with Apideas taking the cells 10 at a time in some cases. It's a good way to spread those AMM genes.
Yesterday we left 21 Apidias at a mating Apiary which has 12 colonies all producing Galtee drones.
With regard to loading the Apideas, I shake in bees from the two cell raising colonies and just put the cell or virgin straight in. You don't have to leave the Apideas 3 days queenless in the dark that way as the bees are taking their own queens.
It takes a leap of faith to leave sealed queencells in a massive colony but it works.
My queens are not even clipped although they probably should be.

The colonies have to be inspected as normal for queen cells in the lower box, none so far thankfully.
You also have to move the pollen frames and a couple of frames of open larvae beside the cell bar frames in the upper box to provide food and draw up the right age of nurse bee. Most of the sealed brood goes in the upper box as well and then a week later the frames are returned to the lower box when most of the bees have hatched, thus giving the queen new space to lay in.
The upper box has a feeder above the crown board and gets a pint of syrup per day.
The queens are as big or bigger than any produced from natural swarming.

I have about a dozen mated and laying including 4 mated with the Galtee drones.
They are all from Colonies 31 and 33 which I posted in the DrawWing thread.
31 is also one of my two cell raising colonies so it is donating larvae for grafting, raising queens, and has two supers full of honey. definitely not lazy bees. I had it designated as a drone raising colony as well so I try and take its queens for mating elsewhere.