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Thread: Lazy man queen rearing

  1. #11
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    If you had the faces on the outside couldn't you train your bees to fly into the mouths of people you don't like?

    I was impressed by your frugality *despite* your absence of clear Scottish ancestors.

    Here's a Wedmore split board, needing a good clean before the new season:

    wedmore_split..jpg

  2. #12
    Senior Member POPZ's Avatar
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    A neighbour of mine is dividing his colony this weekend. He is going through all the normal procedures except preceding any building of swarm cells. Just moving the hive to one side and putting new hive on original site. All as normal except that moving queen and frame of brood into one hive so forcing the queenless colony to immediately develop one of the worker eggs into queens.

    I thought an emergency queen was not a good idea from the breeding point of view as well as egg production??

  3. #13
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Is this the Warre beekeeper?

    This kind of 'walk-away split' seems commonplace in the US (damn those internet fora!) but only works when you have a hive boiling with bees and occupying a stack of boxes tall enough to rival the Empire State. And heaps of local drones, all raring to go and chase queens. Is that the position on Mull at the moment?

    Go tell him Uncle Gavin says that his technique is poor. Work with the bees, and wait and encourage them to start the process themselves. Most of us have had queen raising and mating problems in the last few years. That is probably due to mating in poor weather more than anything.

    In that light it worried me (as you may recall) Popz that you were feeding your bees to bring them on. If they are now filling boxes, I'd give them extra space ... let them draw more comb and more bees for you, then encourage queen cells a little later when the weather on Mull is a little more reliable.

    But there's nothing like a diversity of opinions to learn from ....

    G.

  4. #14
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    I have been going through my colonies this last week removing any frames full of stores and replacing them with empty drawn comb so that the queen has room to lay.
    There is a lot of nectar coming in from dandelion at the moment.

  5. #15
    Senior Member POPZ's Avatar
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    I will tell himself exactly what Uncle Gavin thinks of, not only his ideas, but also of the whole system he uses! I am sure that it will lead to some very interesting discussion. Diversity of opinion is the order of the day methinks!
    R

  6. #16
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jon View Post
    I have been going through my colonies this last week removing any frames full of stores
    Show-off!

  7. #17
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    We have had better weather and bees were still flying at 7.30 this evening. Balmy Belfast.

  8. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by POPZ View Post
    I will tell himself exactly what Uncle Gavin thinks of, not only his ideas, but also of the whole system he uses! I am sure that it will lead to some very interesting discussion. Diversity of opinion is the order of the day methinks!
    R
    Before you give him the chance to boot you into the middle of next week, perhaps you can get some floor debris from him first?

  9. #19
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    If you had the faces on the outside couldn't you train your bees to fly into the mouths of people you don't like?
    I bumped into a neighbour earlier this evening who works for one of the political parties here. He let slip that he has to help remove the election propaganda on May 7th.
    He has promised me as much Correx as a man could possibly want so I may well be making the folds so that the nuc entrance is directly through the mouth of the (hopefully) defeated candidate. Apparently he has a barn full of the stuff from past elections.

  10. #20
    Senior Member POPZ's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Trog View Post
    Before you give him the chance to boot you into the middle of next week, perhaps you can get some floor debris from him first?
    Floor debris is on it's way and mongrel queen is not available. She is far too too productive as opposed to the pure bred that is useless!!

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