Jon,Originally Posted by Jon
It is a Brinsea incubator. In our apiary, we put grafts into a cell raiser colony (Wed evenings), then a week later transfer sealed cells to curler cages (with a drop of honey in the bottom) which are put into the incubator and taken home by one of us. Hatching is usually the following Monday. The Qs stay in the incubator until Wed evening, then they are transferred to Apideas in our apiary. Maybe with time our success rate will improve.
Alan.
If you transfer the cells to the incubator after ten days rather than a week you will get a far better emergence rate. I try and put the cells into the apideas on day 11, ie 24 hours before expected emergence of the queen. Moving cells between day 5 (when cell is sealed) and day 9 from grafting has to be done really carefully as this in when pupation is taking place.
There is no advantage gained by moving cells early to the incubator.
Jon,
We work on a weekly schedule because we are a group and find the routine convenient. I take your point about cells moving to the incubator at a late development stage - thanks.
Alan.
Apologies for trying to hijack this thread but...
I've been thinking of getting an incubator for some time now but have held off due to an inability (so far) to justify it financially -our bees are on a very tight budget. What strikes me, the more I read from different sources, is the very small amount of time which people keep cells in the machine for. What I'm wondering is whether those of you with experience would buy one again if you were starting over.
I made my own: a cardboard box. insulation and a heated floor thermostat switching on/off a (sprayed red) 25 watt lamp.. Cost (the thermostat on ebay) £15.
Hatched turkey eggs, quail eggs and bee queens.. Manual egg turning for birds.. Could not justify buying one.
But now I use cell protectors and don't use it...
My meanness has nothing to do with being brought up in Banffshire and being a student in Aberdeen. Err...
I use my honey warming cabinet … it has accurate temperature control. I increase the humidity with a pan of water. Works fine, though I prefer to use cells rather than emerged virgins.
Do you go for a specific humidity fatshark ? At work we use different saturated salt solutions to control the humidity.
Nope … I simply have a litre or so of water adjacent to the cells. Low tech, that's me
Why bother complicating things with an incubator? I don’t raise continuous batches of virgin queens (or cells) for introduction but if I did, I’d cage the cells and rear the next batch a few frames away. Is that plausible?
I got an incubator for the first time this year and am finding it really useful.
I move the cells to it about 3 days before emergence and transfer them to apideas a day before emergence.
You can hold the cell up to the light to see if it has a viable queen in it.
You can also usually see if it is a runt or normal size.
One advantage is that you have the cells at hand when you need them and don't have to go rooting through a colony to get them out in ones and twos.
Having said that, I reared loads of queens without the use of an incubator this past 4 or 5 years.
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