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Thread: Setting up a cellraiser

  1. #61
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rosie View Post
    I would put the queen cells into the apideas a day earlier than you i.e ten days after grafting. I also keep the mini-nucs closed in a cool dark place for 3 days and spray water into them a couple of times a day before moving them to their final positions and opening. Having said that many people open the mini-nucs immediately and seem to get away with it. Be careful to position the mini-nucs a long way from your other hives and all facing different directions.

    Rosie
    The Mrs might not approve but I wondering whether to take them back home and stick them in the garden if they're that labour intensive. Apideas I can cope with, full hives or even nucs, no way.

    This is the advantage of getting a group together and grafting a batch every week.
    Early days! Our local group (aside from the association) is, ahem, polluted by the "natural" crowd and I'm sure this is against their principles or something.

  2. #62
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nellie View Post
    Early days! Our local group (aside from the association) is, ahem, polluted by the "natural" crowd and I'm sure this is against their principles or something.
    Don't bet on it. Once you take the lead and start organising something they will be lining up to get a slice of the action. The real diehards just wring their hands as their bees die slowly from varroa vectored virus and post on biobees about how Bayer and monsanto are killing the bees and we will have to hand pollinate all the crops and pay triple. I sold 14 lbs of honey to my local health food shop today, delivered by bicycle, and I bought a kilo of brown rice while i was there so I reckon my credentials are good. Still was more than £60 up on the deal.

  3. #63
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    This is putting my toe in the water. My aim this year is purely selfish. Test the method, raise some queens, replace some buggers with some better queens with a bit of luck, maybe raise a couple of nucs. Once I'm happy that I've figured it out I'll look to expand the scope. Might offer a queen or two up to some more experienced guys to see what they think, but I'm not rushing into flogging bees or queens, even inviting them in to join the group to new guys until I'm satisfied I know what I'm doing.

    I'm anticipating with the number of colonies around us and the number of people buying in bees that we'll have some horrors, but as we've got some horrors anyway, it doesn't really matter, if we can get the method working we can increase the number of queens we raise and start to get rid of the crap.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Nellie View Post
    Right then, because I'm going for the General Husbandry Assessment next year I'm trying to be organised about this and have created a tick sheet to work from. I'm sure I've messed up some of the timings please, so knives at the ready:




    As I was putting it together and bearing in mind jobs and time to get up to the apiary and so on:

    Given that the queen cells are caged, what are the implications around leaving them a day or even two late (day 17 on the queen cell timeline) to get them into apideas?

    Again, once we're satisfied with the timings and so-on I'll be happy to make it available as a pdf or Word Document.
    I would add feeding the cell raising and drone rearing colonies for at least a month before grafting ( especialy remembering to feed the larva doner colony before and during putting an empty comb into the brood nest)

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    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by fatshark View Post
    When using the Ben Harden system what do you do if/when you find cells in the bottom box?
    If I find cells in the bottom box I assume the colony wants to swarm and I do some form of an artificial swarm or else remove the queen to a nuc.
    I set up a different colony as a cell raiser.
    It does happen, but thankfully not that often. If you have swarmy stock it is likely a big issue.

  6. #66

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jon View Post
    If I find cells in the bottom box I assume the colony wants to swarm and I do some form of an artificial swarm or else remove the queen to a nuc.
    I set up a different colony as a cell raiser.
    It does happen, but thankfully not that often. If you have swarmy stock it is likely a big issue.
    What if the Q+ cell raiser is your only one, could the cells be left in the colony to be finished off after the AS was done?

  7. #67
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    No problem with that but if they are natural cells on a frame you can't use the roller cages on them like grafted cells so you have to be aware of the risk of cast swarms if you have several cells in the box.

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