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Thread: Apidea - hair rollers

  1. #11
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    I use the £2 sable brush from buzzybee shop.
    It is easy to pick up a larva but the trick is to pick it up on the very tip of the brush so that it is easy to place on the bottom of the cell cup by slightly rotating the brush and sliding it back. If you pick up a larva half way up the brush it is near impossible to get it off.

  2. #12
    Member voytech104's Avatar
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    Hi Jon,
    When you graft with any tool - you pick up larvae and then transfer it to the cup. Is the cup pre-filled with royal jelly?


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  3. #13
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    No I just graft them dry but you often get a blob of jelly with the larva and this makes it a lot easier to set it down in the cup without damage.

  4. #14
    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by drumgerry View Post
    You don't have to convince me Jon. As soon as I got my hands on an Apidea I could tell how much better they are. Problems we had last year with the Kielers were loading the bees in, adding the queen cell and topping the feed up. Lots of the bees in them absconded which ruined our efforts. Apideas have all of those issues dealt with admirably as far as I can see. But what do you do when the association has invested in 20 of the pesky things?!.
    Just use them! They DO work. I've got queens out mating in mine at the moment ... It's not the mini-nuc that's the problems, it's the rain and low temperatures.

    I don't bother filling the Kielers from the base, just open the lid, lift a couple of the top bars out and scoosh (a valid Scottish word from my Glasgow days) 300ml or so of damp bees into the gap. Reassembly takes seconds. I use a sheet of thick clear plastic as a internal cover, with a small cutout flap centred over the middle gap in the top bars. This allows the addition of a QC in one of those Nicot cups really easily.

    I'm not sure why you had absconding problems ... any more than with any mini-nuc. In the only side by side comparison I've done the Apideas had lots more problems with wasp attacks (late season grafts), several of which wiped out the little colonies. In fairness, this could have been due to under stocking ... a colleague did this.

    Don't get me wrong, there are problems with Kielers. The lack of QE to the feed compartment is one and, more significantly, the different height of the 'super' you can get for them. It's infuriating having to cut down the upper comb (or perhaps it's the other way round?).
    Last edited by fatshark; 13-06-2012 at 07:30 PM.

  5. #15

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    I don't doubt you Fatshark but the Apideas come ready to work and the Kielers seem to need a bit of tweaking. Refilling the feed compartment without loads of bees b***ering off was a real problem. Them setting up house in the feed compartment another. The top bars with fragile comb breaking off another. I think if one were to persevere with them as you have and get your own system going with them they would be fine but I'm a lazy so and so and the Apideas just seem less work.

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