Transporting queen cells

[drumgerry]

I have the offer to graft from an association member's queen who lives about a 20 minute drive from me.

I have a cell raiser set up already at my home apiary and I have 12 mininucs filled with bees there.

My question is this - is there any way I can graft from this queen and then immediately transport the young larvae (in Jenter queen cells on two Jenter bars with room each for 10 cells) to my apiary? The problem is my cell raiser is here and the queen is there. In an ideal world I'd have the larvae raised there and then transport the sealed cells to my apiary. Even then would I need something like a Carricell or would they be fine kept warmish by a passenger in the car?

[Jon]

The larvae are ok for an hour in transport as long as they do not dry out.
Put a damp tea towel over the graft frame with the larvae and put all inside a plastic bag.
the drop in temperature is not a problem, just the humidity.

[drumgerry]

Just the answer I was looking for Jon. Brilliant! I can now go ahead with my plans to graft from her.

[gavin]

I have a cell raiser set up already at my home apiary and I have 12 mininucs filled with bees there.

Bear in mind that your grafts will be 4 days into the 16 day cycle. So plan on virgins hatching out 12 days after you graft. I'm not sure that queenless mininucs will be happy for that long. Maybe you could try - very carefully - moving Q cells in early (once sealed) to keep the bees in the mininucs in optimistic mood? You'd normally wait until near hatching to set up the mininucs (hope I'm reading you right).

[drumgerry]

My mininucs already have virgins in them so won't be queenless for long.

I'll time having the new batch of sealed queen cells with the now hatched queens in my mininucs being in lay and ready to go into nucs (as you've done with your ESBA1 colony). I'm aiming at grafting the week after next so they'll be ready for the Apideas 10 or 11 days later which gives my current mininuc virgins a couple of weeks plus to get mated and laying. If they aren't I'll be fairly ruthless in getting rid of them (except your two Gavin!) to clear the way for the next round.

Hopefully it'll all work out!

[fatshark]

Following the comment from Gavin ...
Through operator error, work commitments and weather I ended up keeping queenless bees in a Kieler for 6 days before adding the QCs. They look like they're going to be OK but there were more dead bees than I'd have liked. Not recommended.

[Jon]

That often happens, especially if the weather is hot. You can lose half the bees.
I like to fill the apideas one day and put the cell in the next.
If you use bees from a cell raiser you can just put the cell in right away.
I never get cells torn down and I don't understand that oft repeated advice about filling apideas and leaving them in the dark for 3 days.
It just isn't necessary.
I once left an apidea closed up by mistake for 11 days but it did have a virgin in it.
When I opened it there were eggs 2 days later.
She didn't hang about flying and mating.

I'm not sure that queenless mininucs will be happy for that long.

Queenless apideas develop laying workers very quickly, in 2-3 weeks.

laying workers in apidea.jpg

Multiple larvae in the cells and all the eggs on the bottom of the cell.
That's another old wives tale about laying workers always leaving the eggs on the side of the cell.

[fatshark]

Queenless apideas develop laying workers very quickly, in 2-3 weeks.

laying workers in apidea.jpg

Multiple larvae in the cells and all the eggs on the bottom of the cell.
That's another old wives tale about laying workers always leaving the eggs on the side of the cell.

Interesting on two counts ... firstly that there must be something that triggers laying workers that usually isn't present in a queenless hive (where 2/3 weeks without a queen isn't unusual). I know the scale is bigger and they might be being missed, but maybe it's something to do with the bees being largely young 'uns in a mating nuc, with no old foragers to balance things up.

Interesting also that none of the text below your photo - old wives tale etc - appeared in the original post viewed on my iPad via Safari, but is in this reply. Just off to see whether its there in Tapatalk ... what else might I have been missing?

EDIT... It's there in Tapatalk. There must be some weird HTML or something for Safari to ignore it. Over to Guru Gavin ...

[Jon]

I added another couple of lines 2 minutes after making the original post!

[fatshark]

D'oh!