I understand the basics of the cupkit system what confuses me is the timing, once the queen has laid in the brown cells are the cells placed in the queen less colony straight away or do you wait a further 3 days can anyone enlighten me.
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I understand the basics of the cupkit system what confuses me is the timing, once the queen has laid in the brown cells are the cells placed in the queen less colony straight away or do you wait a further 3 days can anyone enlighten me.
Hi Ebee. I graft rather than using cupkit but the principle is the same.
The bees start a queen cell from a suitable aged larva rather than an egg so I imagine you have to wait until the egg has hatched before putting the cups in your cell raiser colony - which does not necessarily have to be queenless.
I think Jimbo mentioned that he uses cupkit so he would be the best placed to comment.
I suspect that all unhatched eggs would be removed on introduction.
I have used the cupkit system for a number of years. For your timings you can download a nice excel sheet from the BIBBA web site called Tom's Tables. You just enter your start date and it corrects all the dates and times for you. In practice I have found that the queen sometimes when placed in the cupkit will stop laying so after 24 hr I check for eggs using a magnifying glass. If I don't see any I leave the queen for a further 24hrs and usually find eggs on the second visit. This alters the dates on Tom's Tables by 1 day, but other than that I find it an easy system to use and get about a 70% success rate in producing the queen cells ready for Apideas
Hi. I am new on here.
If you search IWF.de and watch raising queens it is fantastic as are all the videos I have watched. I am now trying to find out who they are and how to contact them. I would like sizes of their hives and how to make their floor.
KR
Thanks for your advice I will put it into practice in my attempt at rearing my own queens.
that's a very useful site, thanks for the tip
I used a cupkit for the first time last year. On both occasions I put it in the centre of the broodnest for a day first so the workers could prepare the cells. Queen in the next day. I left her in for 1 day the first time and 2 days the next (I think). Then put the brown plastic cups in the holders and into the queenless part of a rearing hive. So in both cases it was eggs that went in rather than 1 day old larvae. The brown colour of the cups means that you should be able to see eggs through the translucent plastic. Poundland glasses always helps.
That's interesting Adam. I read somewhere that eggs would be rejected and it had to be larvae.
As Roger Patterson often says, you read a lot of twaddle in bee books.
I usually wait until they are 1 day old larvae in the bottom of the cup when you usually see a tiny drop of brood food. I have never tried just using the eggs. I suppose it would depend how queenless the colony is. I would have thought if the bees were desperate to produce a queen then they are unlikly to dispose of the eggs
Well thats module 7 sorted, please Mr/s examiner, watch IFW.de I think that answers all your questions, now where is the nearest pub I am not due home for another couple of hours .....
ps I love the horse and cart for transport, I wonder if they have any vacancies for trainee managers.....
If you want to make a "deep" floor like the one shown on the IWF utube video,you can adapt a standard national super or brood box by leaving out the two side boards,making a new "plug-in" back and resting the inner floor board on the two rebates of the top cleats.The opening is the full depth of the remaining side opening.The base is boarded to close this off.I have "mocked" one up in my workshop this morning and it looks feasible.
Commenting on previous posts, in a queenless hive, why would bees not use eggs if they are presented to them?
Dunno! It would not make sense to pass up the opportunity.
I have just had it drilled into me that you graft with very small larvae and I almost always uses a queenright system so I should just shut up about cupkit!
I dug the cupkit system out again this year
First use just stuck the queen in and by day two she had laid all the cups
I let her out , left the front off the cassette
The eggs hatched and the bees provided a little jelly ready for transfer to the queen raiser
This month I put the kit in another hive, different bees and queen
Followed the same procedure and released her as soon as eggs were laid up
This time the bees cleared all the eggs from the cups
I stuck the queen back in but this time kept her there after eggs until some hatched and were given a little jelly
I took the larva and put them in a cell raiser and released the queen
Out of interest I then put the cassette back in the hive to see what they would do
Once again they removed everything from the cups apart from a couple of eggs
Odd how different hives act given the same circumstances (possibly time of year might be an influence)
Used Cupkit system twice (different hives) this year near the end of May
Put the cassette in the day before then put the queen in only overnight
Left front on cassette and just pulled the white plug out to let her escape
They laid and it all went without a hitch in both cases
The eggs were within 12 hrs of each other so that helps with timing
On the opposite side of the coin I impulse bought a Thorne NB copy of the Nicot (I was in the shop browsing, fatal)
So I grafted into those purple cups a few days ago and got 50% ( 5 takes) so waited for capping and then fitted the roller cages
They slipped off in front of my eyes so I pushed them on harder and watched them just slip slowly off again
Ended up taping the white bit and pushing the rollers on over tape real nuisance
I suppose it's a cheap £25 smaller scale copy of the nicot and likely made in China by someone who doesn't keep bees
I thought Thornes would have tested it before selling though
Genuine Nicot will be marked with the name (thats what Nicot claim). The small version of the box (Thorne NB) is not in the nicot catalog so it must as you say be a chinese import. I was also wondering if purple and brown are the same size.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/CUPKIT-Compl...s=nicot+cupkit
This looks like a good price £28 + £3 delivery
Thornes £70 + delivery
Thornes NB smaller look alike £25 + delivery
I notice that Amazon also list a turnover crate for sheep in their queen rearing equipment at £2384.64 ... this must be for a method I'm not yet familiar with.
Similar to stocking an apidea with bees.
The handy sheep cage allows a WBC to be inverted thus avoiding the tiresome task of dismantling the outer lifts and removing the frames
Ok so I've been using Jenter cups and roller cages and latterly JzBz queen cups but have been finding things about each system niggling me and I'm thinking it's time to move over to Nicot holders, cups and cages. There are aspects of that design which will solve some of my problems - I like that the roller cages have hinged lids and I think you can leave the base attached to the cell bar whilst removing the cell holder from it. Please correct me if I'm wrong about that!
So.....where is best to buy said Nicot kit? Not wanting cheap knockoff stuff as referred to above and would rather not pay Thornes prices if poss.
The Nicot stuff is pretty good, I don't think you'll be disappointed. I bought most of mine from ModernBeekeeping and - before its demise - Buzzy Bees shop for the cell cups (I think). I see that ModernBeekeeping are out of stock at the moment. Mann Lake do them as well.
Thanks Fatshark! Buzzybeeshop is a sad loss.
Been searching around looking at prices and in the UK Maisemore seem to be the best so far at around £30 (incl shipping) for 20 complete units and 100 cell cups.
Alternatively I could take a punt and buy from Irish Bee Supplies for £20-ish not including shipping for 30 complete units and then I'd need to buy a packet of 100 of the cell cups for subsequent grafts (I sometimes clean and re-use cell cups sometimes don't). Slightly concerned that these might be copycats at that price. Anyone have any info on these?
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WEll, I got the cupkit system as advertized on amazon from 'simon the beekeeper'. You know what they say, if it looks to good to be true then it probably is not.
The cupkit components supplied are genuine NICOT however the box is a cheap chinese fake - shame on you Simon ! :mad: I compared it to my genuine original box, the moulding is poor and some of the cells are offset, the front and back covers are looser than the original and the white plug holes are smaller, the genuine NICOT has made in france etc in the moulding whereas this fake box has no text on it at all. Wheather it would work as well as the original is to be decided and might explain reports of why some queens just wont lay in boxes if beeks are using fake boxes without knowing. Errrrrr.
If you know anyone in France you could order from Icko-Apiculture … I can't see the cups advertised, but the Nicot spigot, cage and cup holder are less than €14 for 20. That's less than £11 in our money, or about 500,000 drachma …
Order 1000 and they work out at about 40p each delivered.
PS I should have added … I've ordered from Icko and got great service. Quick delivery.
Thanks again guys. I've ended up ordering from Mann Lake and ordering a 1,000 cups and 100 each of the various components not including the cassette which I won't need anyway. Shipping was scary so I topped up the order to get free shipping with 3 National brood boxes. We'll see what they're like.
I'll bear Icko in mind for future orders Fatshark but hopefully won't be needing more Nicot stuff for a while now! ;)
Counterfeit merchandise:*Products offered for sale on Amazon.co.uk must be authentic. Any product that has been illegally replicated, reproduced or manufactured*is prohibited.
Unauthorised and unlicenced merchandise:All items offered for sale on Amazon.co.uk must be commercially produced and authorized or licenced for sale as a retail product.
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These are photos of one bought from Thornes some years ago.
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These are photos of Amazon one.
Cant see a difference the covers are interchangeable all pegs the same etc.
Internet down due to lightning so this on tapatalk might fail
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The amazon one again sorry some photos disappeared due to operator error.
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So all genuine but ordered another one
This time it is fake.
http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/07...afdcf90077.jpg
Which is what Phill got sent as well so thats going back for refund.
Sneaky trick
Someone will need to tell my bees as over the last three years I have on three occasions put frames with 20 plastic cupkit cells with 3 day old eggs from cupkit into colonies using cloake board system and got between 9 , 14 and 11 queen cells respectively (in comparision with 1 day old larvae I have achieved between 15 and 19) . Use of eggs all came about because queens didn't lay right away in the cupkit box so when I went to transfer the cells on the 4th or 5th day all I found was eggs and due to circumstances (a weeks foreign holiday in every case) I could not wait as it would be impossible for me to come the next day to transfer larvae. I must try in future not to queen rear so close to booked holidays ( dates of which are determined by my better half) The main problem I have with cupkit is the queen escaping from the box through the gaps down the sides between the front cover and the box if the cover is not pressed firmly enough into position with just a small amount of wax or propolis allowing the gap to be large enough for he rto squeeze through (you don't get this probelm with jenter as the front cover fits tight to the face of the box).
When you move cups to cell bar
If you leave the cassette in you can check takes next day
Any gaps pick up another larva from cassette.
Might get a third chance before they are too old.
So....my cupkit kit has arrived! All fits together nicely. How many of the brown bases (the bits that are pinned on) do you guys get on two bars of a National frame? I can get two rows of 10 using Jenter kit. The nicot stuff is a bit bulkier so it seems to be a bit of a squeeze getting the same or am I being too fussy?
Hi drumgerry* … far too late to start queen rearing this year … you'll have to put that shiny new stuff away until 2016 ;)
You can comfortably fit 10 of the Nicot cell base holders to a single bar in a National frame. The only problem you might have is arranging the cell bar frame to allow two rows to be caged easily (once they're swamped with helpful workers).
* … autocorrect makes this drudgery, lucky I noticed and changed it back.