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Thread: Grafting / Queen rearing 2019

  1. #21

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    Or occasionally rain stops play Adam!

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  2. #22
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    Our small North East Scotland queen rearing group had a go at grafting last Thursday on a particularly dry evening (remember them?!).

    One group grafted about 59 cells into three hives and had a take up of 37 cells (the no-takes were re-grafted the day after). The second group had a similar level of success.

    My plan is to follow Jon Gettys set up keenly. I have an octogon 20 incubator that I have used in the past but just wondered what the optimum humidity is and if anyone has a good idea of how to keep it steady ? A few times in the past its dried out and emerged queens have died.

    Once the cells are sealed I'll move them into the incubator and leave till emergence. How long could virgins survive in there if fed queen candy ? Do I need to stick in attendants particularly ? Just thinking if we cant fill the apideas all in one go.

    Any hints about maximising the effectiveness of incubators would be good

  3. #23

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    Ewan you're right that Jon is a whizz when it comes to the octagon 20. I have one as well and I do what Jon does re humidity - keep both troughs full at all times. Seems to work well. Letting it run dry is fatal as the fan dries the air inside. I've used mine to successfully hatch chickens, turkeys and queen bees!

    I find mine good for taking cells up to a day or so before hatch and then the cells go into mating nucs. I'm not as successful when I give a virgin queen to an apideas.

    I'd be reluctant to bank queens long in the incubator especially with no attendants. Banking them in a colony with attendants is a different matter but something I don't have experience of.

    Cheers, Gerry.

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  4. #24
    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    I've not used an Octagon, but have used my honey warming cabinet (which can take about 87,000 queens at once, but hasn't). I put the Nicot cages in an ice cream tub with lots of moist kitchen paper. Getting them to emerge isn't a problem but, like drumgerry, I've had more success priming mini-nucs with mature cells, not virgins. In my setup, unattended virgins didn't survive particularly well. I didn't try adding attendants. I mainly used this setup when conditions were good and I wanted to put a second or third batch of cells into my queenright Ben Harden system. This always worked best when there was a good flow on and they would inevitably build a huge web of brace comb around the cells ... by putting them into the incubator I could fire up the next batch and avoid all that surgery to free (even caged) cells from the cell bar frame.

    As an aside ... I've had to teach my computer to 'learn' the word drumgerry ... because of this:

    Screenshot 2019-06-14 22.54.13.png

  5. #25

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    Tee hee . Nice to know my weird username is good for something!

    Had horrific weather here in Speyside most of the last fortnight. Hoping the apidea queens took their chance for a mating flight in the sunshine last Friday or maybe tomorrow as we have a decent forecast for once

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    Update !

    They have started to emerge and are being distributed to the group for filling apideas and the like. I was planning filling mine tonight so inevitably there are thunderstorms forecast. In the incubator I used some seed tray wicking mats that worked very well to hold humidity.

  7. #27
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    I use an incubator I built 15 years ago for quails.. It is Heath Robinson but appears to produce results OK.. If it works, almost anything will

    Just about to restart QR - the month of June has been abysmal 12-14C tops daytime and LOTS of rain and grey skies.. Getting queens mated has been fun - not. And almost all my laying queens have stopped laying as zero food coming in...

    For humidity I have a tray full of water under a wire mesh floor and a microfibre cloth half submerged in a 500g plastic margarine container . It wicks out water very effectively - average 65% humidity or so...
    Last edited by madasafish; 24-06-2019 at 09:45 AM.

  8. #28
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    Quote Originally Posted by madasafish View Post
    I use an incubator I built 15 years ago for quails.. It is Heath Robinson but appears to produce results OK.. If it works, almost anything will

    Just about to restart QR - the month of June has been abysmal 12-14C tops daytime and LOTS of rain and grey skies.. Getting queens mated has been fun - not. And almost all my laying queens have stopped laying as zero food coming in...

    For humidity I have a tray full of water under a wire mesh floor and a microfibre cloth half submerged in a 500g plastic margarine container . It wicks out water very effectively - average 65% humidity or so...
    My humidity readings are bang on 65% so very similar. Good to know !

  9. #29
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    Quote Originally Posted by greengumbo View Post
    Update !

    They have started to emerge and are being distributed to the group for filling apideas and the like. I was planning filling mine tonight so inevitably there are thunderstorms forecast. In the incubator I used some seed tray wicking mats that worked very well to hold humidity.
    A further update and questions for you all !

    So the incubator cells have hatched fine and are now in mini-lysons / apideas.

    However I had left a batch of caged sealed cells in one of the hives (the queenless one that also raised this batch before I caged on day 10). As the incubator queens had emerged I went to the hive to remove what I assumed would also be emerged queens. Only 1 had emerged succesfully. The rest had died in development and by the looks it was about day 11 or 12 but a few later.

    What could have caused this issue ? The weather turned horrid during this period so I wondered if the bees couldn't warm the caged queen cells sufficiently during this cold period.

    In the future I will use the incubator for all capped cells I think.

  10. #30
    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    I'd have thought they'd have only 'abandoned' the cells if there were too few bees in the box.
    I almost always use queenright colonies and either a Cloake board or Ben Harden setup so can't really comment from much experience. Whenever I've used a queenless colony it's always been heaving with bees.

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