First cells hatched 2012

[Jon]

I had a couple of queens emerge today in apideas.
24 hours early, must be the heat as they were grafted from small larvae.

[Calum]

Well done, all my attempts have been fruitless so far. Just single queens in my (whatever you call it when you put three frames of bees and brood in a new box). Gone up from 7 to 21 colonies so far, so not too bad..

[Jon]

Just back in from our queen rearing group meeting.
We have about 35 members now.
Tonight I demonstrated how to do an artificial swarm on a colony I found queen cells in two days ago.
No point in people taking home fancy dan queens if they don't know how to prevent them leaving in a swarm.

We also put rollers on over 60 grafted cells which are due to hatch on Sunday.

I want to put the cells in apideas either Friday night or Saturday morning at the latest.
There were about 25 apideas loaded with bees dropped off.
I have about 20 of my own still to fill so there will be no problem getting rid of all the cells.

Hope to graft a load more this weekend, time permitting.

[gavin]

It is great to see new season queens again. I have hatched cells from natural queen cells, a fine sight. Will start grafting this weekend so that we can have a show and tell on 16th June at the association meeting.

[Jon]

Yes it is very rewarding when you graft 20 larvae and get most of them started as queens and even better when you check the apideas and find the queens have emerged successfully. An even bigger kick when you find they have mated and started laying. Plenty of setbacks as well so you have to make the most of it when things are looking good.

queen cells after queen emerged.jpg

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi guys what are you doing with all these queens you only need one per hive

[kevboab]

Thats what has put me off using kielers i have. Find it so much easier borrowing frames of bees and making nucs up. Had a nightmare of a time filling them last year and made fatal mistake of inserting sealed cells and finding them chilled instead of running in virgins.

[Jon]

Cells should not get chilled in any type of mini-nuc. The trick is to insert the cell about 24 hours before the queen is due to emerge as she is fully formed at this stage. Some people put the cells into the apidea 3 or 4 days before emergence but if you do it that way you will lose a lot.
I cage mine 3 days before the day the queen is due to emerge, and put them in apideas 24 hours before emergence.
You get the odd one which hatches early in the roller and these are misted and dropped into the base of an apidea before having a dollop of wet bees dumped on top of them.
I got 65 cells and virgin queens into apideas for our queen rearing group yesterday teatime and this morning.
7 had hatched in the rollers and they looked like really nice queens. Very good size and black as yer boot!

I grafted another 75 today as well as you need to keep the production line coming along.

[gavin]

Two questions (but with a smile on my face having seen a virgin in an Apidea this afternoon, despite the paucity of bees in that one):

- do cages encourage chilling of the queen cell? Can the workers get at them to warm them?

- if it takes two weeks (ish) for a queen to come into lay and three weeks for the first brood to be ready and the queen properly matured before she can be moved on (and the mini-nuc recycled), then each Apidea (or Keiler, or whatever) must be out of action for about 5 weeks. Do you have a high attrition rate to justify the frequent grafting?

G.

[Jon]

- do cages encourage chilling of the queen cell? Can the workers get at them to warm them?

My cells are reared in really strong cell raiser colonies, usually the cell bar with maybe 8 frames of brood and bees and a couple of frames of pollen so I doubt if the cells are going to get chilled in that set up.
The problem is transferring the cell to the apidea too early as only about 500 bees are responsible for keeping the queen cell warm enough so that she can chew her way out of the cell. You need to leave it as late as possible so timing is crucial.

Re. the second point, our group has way over 100 apideas among the members so there is a need to keep grafting every week. In addition, quite a few people take away queen cells to requeen dodgy colonies or queenless colonies without using apideas at all. There are probably about 50 or 60 apideas still waiting to get a queen cell.
A lot of queens get lost on orientation or mating flights.
It is good practice to check if there is still a queen present in the apidea about 10 days after emergence and if she has gone awol the apidea gets another cell.