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Thread: apidea management and grafting photos

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    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Default apidea management and grafting photos

    This is a series of pictures about apideas. I took most of them earlier this evening and yesterday.
    Click the images for bigger pictures.

    This is what you see when you have laying workers in an apidea.

    laying workers in apidea.jpg

    This is the pattern you get with a drone laying queen. There is a single egg in each cell.

    drone laying queen.jpg

    This is what you hope to see - a normal egg laying pattern.

    normal egg pattern.jpg


    This is what you end up with when you start a queen rearing group.

    apideas piled high.jpg

    The season starts by making sure everything is free of nosema spores by treating with 80% Acetic acid for a week.

    cleaning apidea frames.jpg

    Edit, I meant acetic acid not oxalic acid.
    Last edited by Jon; 11-12-2012 at 02:19 PM.

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    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    This is a frame chosen to take grafts from ( cue Papa was a Galtee drone)

    frame chosen for grafting.jpg

    The larvae in the middle are a suitable age but you would not want to take them any bigger than this. I grafted over 50 earlier this evening into 3 colonies.

    larvae right age for grafting.jpg

    This is a larva on the brush tip

    larva on brush.jpg

    This is the larva after transfer to a cell cup

    larva in cell cup.jpg

    Nice healthy larvae in a good bed of jelly for grafting

    healthy larvae in royal jelly.jpg
    Last edited by Jon; 27-06-2011 at 12:22 AM.

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    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Fantastic (except for the laying workers). We had a group at our apiary this afternoon but it was in the rain so there were no cameras out. Marked queens, checked Apideas, took a queen from one for a nuc in need, replaced with another Q cell from a nuc that had appeared to be good but was superceding, blethered, joked, and generally enjoyed ourselves.

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    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    A small cell can sometimes produce a good queen.
    A decent size queen came out of this natural cell and was placed in an apidea.

    small cell-good queen.jpg

    This is the cage used for queen introduction after the queen has been laying for a couple of weeks in the apidea.
    The two compartments are filled with fondant.
    The cage is suspended between two frames for 24 hours before the tab is released to allow the workers to eat their way through the fondant.
    The queen can only exit through the chamber on the left as the right chamber only allows the entrance of workers.
    The bees enter first through the compartment on the right as it is shorter and they mix with the queen inside the cage before she is eventually released to the full colony.

    queen cage witrh fondant.jpg

    The queen is placed in the cage with a worker or two.
    This queen was grafted from a larvae on 3rd of May and the queen emerged on the 15th.
    She started laying on 4th June.
    Her first brood was hatching yesterday in the apidea and the new workers were all dark - no yellow banding-which is a good sign.
    I introduced her the the queenless part of a colony I split which has the brood and the non flying bees.
    It is much easier to introduce a queen to a colony with only young bees.
    The cage was put in the colony yesterday and I opened the tab today after checking the reaction of the workers to the cage.
    I will do morphometry on the colony in the autumn to see whether she should be ruled out or in as a potential breeder - assuming the basics such as colony temperament are right.

    queen in cage with attendant.jpg
    Last edited by Jon; 27-06-2011 at 01:23 AM.

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    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    The graft frame and cups need to put in the cell raiser colony for a few hours before use to acquire the scent of the colony.

    graft frame and cups in colony.jpg

    During grafting I cover the cell raiser colony with a cloth to avoid clunking about with a crown board and unnecessarily crushing bees.

    cell raiser with cover cloth.jpg

    Loading the apideas can be a chore. the worst part is shaking bees for filling.

    loading apideas.jpg

    I have over 50 set out at the allotment.

    apideas-allotment.jpg

    Producing the right sort of drone in large quantities is crucial. I checked several colonies earlier today and they were bunged with drones and had drone larvae all stages. If I doubt a colony I never let it make its own drone brood. I transfer over drone brood from preferred colonies and that keeps everyone happy.
    I usually put super frames in the brood box for the bees to draw comb below. This year I have experimented by letting them draw their own comb in frames reinforced by fishing line. It seems to work well.

    frame-natural drawn comb fishing line.jpg
    Last edited by Jon; 27-06-2011 at 01:28 AM.

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    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Are they BuzzyBee queen cages? I've been using Butlers but need something cheaper for distributing queens.

    I had a drone laying nuc (not an Apidea, 2-3 frames in a Paynes box) which seemed to have gone fully queenless. Put in the very last of the current batch of queen cells from a decent colony on Thursday. The queen cell was worse than yours - tiny and entirely smooth. Today half a dozen eager beginners and a more experienced beekeeper or two had a look at the queen cell. It had a lid coming loose so we watched as a fully formed queen heaved herself out and staggered across the frame. She looked a little hunched (and also a bit pale) but maybe she'll straighten out.

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    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Alan Jones dumped 100 of those cages in my lap after coming back from Stoneleigh. I don't know who he bought them from but they cost pence.

    That cell was one of those I rescued from my disaster nuc on Thursday evening. It travelled home in the box of my puncture kit after removal of the patches and tube of glue. I brought home some workers as well and I opened the cell at home and put the queen in a cage with the workers. I was surprised how good she looked. She went into an apidea the next day. The one I left in the nuc was even better.

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    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    My two transfers from Apideas have been straight into a Butler cage and held in by newspaper, then immediately into a needy nuc. Do you know how long you can leave queens on their own?

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    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Virgin queens not long at all. Mated queens can live in cages for months within a colony apparently. A mated queen in a cage with attendants will last for ages if you make sure they have food and water. I think it is better to leave a couple of attendants in the cage with the queen. Sometimes I have introduced a queen in a cage and she has starved as they have ignored her. If I am introducing a virgin to an apidea I make sure to have a couple of attendants in the cage with her as virgin queens are easily ignored. the best way to introduce a virgin to an apidea is to drop her in through the floor and tip the cup of wet bees on top of her. That is a tip I got from Mervyn and it seems to work every time.

  10. #10

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    Thanks for posting the Apidea info Jon, starting to plan for next season now and drawing up another shopping list which I am sure the wife will be happy about. Want to be on the ball and get things moving earlier next year.

    What do you reckon your %rate is regarding mating succesfully and how long do you leave queen in apidea once laying or do you whip them out quick to reuse apidea again.

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