Robbing Apideas

[Jon]

Most of the stuff you find on the internet about running apideas and inserting cells is nonsense and quite unnecessary, closing them in the dark for 3 days before inserting the cell and suchlike.
Every day an apidea is closed up you get more dead bees in it and they are under a lot of stress.
We have one guy in our group who fills them too early and opens them too late and half the bees are dead every time.
I fill my apideas with bees and stack them up and usually add the cell the next day, never any need for a cell protector.
If I fill apideas with bees from a box which has queen cells in it, I just put the cells straight in.
With the cells I graft, I cover them with roller cages 3 days before emergence date in case a virgin emerges early and pulls down the other cells.
I then try and insert them in the apideas about 24 hours from emergence date as the queen is fully formed at this stage and there should be little chance of damage through chilling of the cell.

[Adam]

I generally add the queencell and the bees at the same time - a day or two before emergence. Never had a queencell torn down - The bees have been living with the queencell for days anyway as they come from the same hive. I do keep them in for 3 days - in the cool - they then go out in the apiary they came from. By this time the queen is out and the bees are happy.

I did put some foil around a queencell just the once - that was in a full-sized colony this Spring where I wanted to replace the queen that was failing, with a different flavour. It worked.

[Black Comb]

These bees were from the super of a different hive but I did wait 24 hours before placing the cells in the Apideas.

[Rosie]

I like to get my mini-nuc bees from an out-apiary and then put the queen cell in as soon as I get home with them. I then keep them closed for 3 days in a shady spot and spray water in twice a day. After 3 days I release them at their mating site, about 150 yards from my drone colonies.

I was talked into releasing them straight away once and most absconded so I haven't tried that again.

Steve

[Jon]

As long as the virgin has emerged they should stay put. I had a guy bring three or 4 mating nucs to my allotment one time to get cells put in. He asked if he could leave them to mate with my drones. He put the cells in and while I was distracted doing something else he set them out and opened them. I checked them an hour later and each was left with about 30 bees in it. They were Kielers and had about triple the population of an apidea before he opened them. Most of the bees ended up in one of my apideas which had a mated queen in it and I had to put a super on it as it was so overcrowded.
3 days is about the time mine are closed in and as Steve says, the water spray is necessary especially if the weather is hot.

[fatshark]

Of course an exception to this "absconding unless there's a virgin present" is if the mini-nuc has been in situ for some time. I tend to use them for a succession of queens, taking one out and replacing it with another sealed cell or - if none are ready - allowing them to 'grow their own' and then either knock off the started queen cells when I add the grafted cell, or removing the scrub queen they raise. The main thing is to avoid having to repopulate mini-nucs during the season, which I find is a pretty thankless task.

[Jon]

I do that as well fatshark. If all goes well you can get three mated queens from a single apidea which you only had to fill once in May.
At the moment my average is one per apidea for this season but I have about 30 with virgins in at the moment so I hope to get the average up to 2 queens per apidea.

[Black Comb]

Whilst I have your attention can I ask another question?
At what stage do you mark / perhaps clip?

[Jon]

I don't mark and clip until the following spring but others I know mark and clip when removing the queen from the apidea.
I have lost the odd one after marking and I presume it is something to do with the smell of the paint.

[Rosie]

I mark mine as I remove them from the mini-nuc. If I clip at all I prefer to do it at least a couple of weeks after introduction to their new colony.