I prefer to use them in Queen of Puddings myself (where's me coat?!).Originally Posted by susbees
Some people use grass stems with the end chewed flat.
I prefer to use them in Queen of Puddings myself (where's me coat?!).
Some people use grass stems with the end chewed flat.
What's turned up so far:
2.5kg of Ambrosia fondant (out of interest, why fondant and not syrup?)
5 Apideas and frames
2 Apidea feeders to experiment with
1 brush because lots of people recommended grafting with it
2 chinese grafting tools because I've used them before
The 30 queen cups/rollers
A bee brush.
I already have 3 nucs, one of which will obviously take the queen from the colony I use to raise the cells leaving two nucs to muck around with and I've got two full spare hives, possibly three at a stretch.
I still need a few other nicknacks so will be trying out inspection cloths this year (one for each apiary and never the twain shall meet).
My plan is to use the allotment which I'll reduce to two colonies (of mine) assuming they come through winter of course, one to graft from, one to raise the queen cells.
So in total, I should have:
2 Full colonies to raise from
5 Apideas
3 Nucs
Does that sound reasonable for a first attempt?
Looking good
You should rope in a few mates with apideas to use the queen cells produced.
Producing queen cells in quantity is easy when conditions are right and you will be looking for a home for loads of them.
Make sure you are grafting from a good queen as rubbish in - rubbish out very much applies to queen rearing.
You can use thick syrup instead of fondant if you want but the bees can fill up all the cells very quickly and you will need to swap frames in and out if the apidea gets clogged up with stores.
I sometimes fill the feeder with dry sugar and wet it with a water spray.
Good point about the syrup, brain not in gear.
I guess the next silly question is how long you can keep a laying queen in an apidea. I'd assume that with only a few bees for company that swarming isn't an issue per se, but presumably a queen capable of laying up a full hive isn't going to be happy kept in an apidea with room for about 10 minutes worth of laying.
You can keep a queen in an apidea as long as you like.
The trick is to make sure there are the right number of bees with her.
Once the queen starts to lay you can put the excluder on so that she cannot escape.
Too many bees will lead to absconding and not enough bees means that the apidea cannot defend itself against wasps or robbers.
The trick is to move frames of brood between apideas to keep the right number of bees present.
A frame of sealed brood is a good present for an apidea with a virgin queen.
You can replace that frame with a frame of drawn comb or one with a strip of foundation.
You can also remove the feeder and replace it with two frames and if needs be - or put on an apidea super with 5 more frames in it.
There is research to show that it is best to let the queen lay for 3 weeks or so in the apidea before using her for requeening something else. Queens removed too soon are often killed or superseded - I think it is something to do with pheromone level.
Thornes now have a mini-nuc for £9. (Not in the mini-nuc section but under "The queen - queen rearing") Don't know if its OK or not.
For my first year I fixed the brown cell cups onto a frame bar with wax and grafted into that with a plastic grafting tool which I subsequently lost in the grass. I have a chinese tool which I don't like much and brushes from an artist shop which I have used with reasonable sucess. You could get some 9 mm dowel and make your own cups with wax.
One old boy I spoke to uses queen (play) cups and grafts into those and removes the queen.
An option for filling the feeder :- Pour in dry sugar and then put in a LITTLE water. Tip the mini-nuc to one side and allow it to dry. You then have sugar adhering to the feeder so it won't fall out, but as it's on a slope, you can subsequently add water or syrup and they can walk down to it on the sugar ramp without drowning. Mini-nucs need regular checking for levels of food as the small colony can run out quite quickly. The flexible 'crown board' can be bent upwards or slid across and syrup poured in without having to remove it and disturb the bees. Wood is better as a float on syrup. Polystyrene tends to get eaten - especially when they're hungry as it absorbs water and my guess is they break it down to get at the syrup within. (Yes they do nibble at the edges of the mini-nucs).
As Jon writes, you can swap frames of brood. However a small number of bees in a mini-nuc will naturally restrict the queens laying and the colony will build up only relatively slowly in many cases.
I leave queens for several weeks in mini-nucs and only clip and mark them when they leave. Older queens tend to be slower and less wriggly and easier to mark. Virgins just crash about all over the place.
You can probably do it for under £100 and then get a couple of polynucs and some frames and foundation and still be under your budget.
You can obtain specs from Poundland and if you break them, it doesn't really matter.
Last edited by Adam; 31-01-2012 at 12:12 PM.
In total, ignoring the kit I already had such as the Nucs I came in at a shade over £180 for the apideas, grafting tools and 30 queen cup/cages. plus a fiver for some Ambrosia fondant. The bee brush and a few other bits and bobs don't count as they'll be used for other things as well do I'm not counting them as specific to queen rearing.
I could have not bothered buying spare frames and feeders for the apideas I guess which would have saved £30 so you could easily do it with "premium" kit for about £150 all in.
Hmm...not sure what you'd get for £9. They had apideas for £30 on the stand at the NHS!!!
And I agree. Got quite good at catching mated queens mid-air last summer whilst marking out of apideas.
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