It might be dose swarm fever but in my 50 odd years of beekeeping you can never tell what might happen. If a heavy flow starts you might not get swarming until later on
It might be dose swarm fever but in my 50 odd years of beekeeping you can never tell what might happen. If a heavy flow starts you might not get swarming until later on
Dream on!Originally Posted by busybeephilip
Stop those negative vibs man
sunny skies in comber rain clouds in locksley
Last edited by busybeephilip; 20-05-2015 at 04:11 PM.
I checked my grafts this evening. The expectation is that all will be sealed tomorrow morning sometime. Two were sealed tonight, presumably because I chose slightly older larvae. Has anyone noticed if these make appreciably less well performing queens … ? (I'm assuming the weather will improve sufficiently that these girls don't need umbrellas and overcoats to get out and mate)
If there is plenty of royal jelly in the cell you are probably ok.
With the best ones there is still a load of jelly in the cell after the queen has emerged.
Saturday looks like it is just about warm enough for a queen to take a mating flight.
Cells look pretty well loaded at the moment. I don't always get a chance to check the cells after emergence as most are just put into the mating nuc and the workers clean the cells out pronto after emergence. A friend likes the semi-translucent JzBz cups as you can look through the base of the sealed cell and just work with those stuffed with jelly. I prefer the convenience of the Nicot collars/cups/cages so don't have that option.
If I'm organised enough (Ha!) I'll record which nucs get these queens (and similar ones later in the season) and see if there's any obvious difference …
I hope Saturday works for you as the following week looks cooler again.
It was interesting to observe the apparent difference in quantity of jelly (or was it a difference in the speed at which a worker larvae consumed it) in the Nat Geographic metamorphosis video (@approx 10 secs) which Gavin recently linked on another thread. Still not sure what can be deduced from that though....
Last edited by prakel; 21-05-2015 at 07:25 AM.
Sometimes a small cell can produce a large queen.
If you let them emerge in the incubator you can make the judgement as to whether they are big enough before putting them into mating nucs.
Best weather for my girls over the next few days will be tomorrow at 17 degrees. Unfortunately it's unlikely to be warm enough for mating - but maybe the forecast will be wrong. There are plenty of drones around, eagerly waiting to end their lives... with a bang!
Jon, Any idea how soon after emergence these flights take place? I have a bunch emerging tomorrow in a set of nucs I'd like to swap about a bit to equilibrate the bee numbers in. Weather is poor until the w/e so I'm reckoning that even if she wanted to go on an orientation flight she might choose not to.
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