The Rose method of queen rearing

[Wmfd]

As I've already got a Morris Board, think I'll give this a go in 'Rose mode' next year with a split brood box - that is, to leave one Q/X permanently open, and simply close the other using the slide as if it were the plastic sheet. And no fiddling around with various door permutations ! The only difference I can then see is in the different size Q/X's - the Morris Board's only being 4" square. Whether this reduced size is siginificant or not, we'll soon see ...

The method is far simpler (less steps/ manipulations) than that of the Morris Board, and the underlying principle certainly sounds right. I'm looking forward to trying this ...

LJ

I'd just whipped a Morris Board up myself last week (should have used thicker ply but serviceable), and now read this thread - looks like a good approach as you say, it certainly requires less "hokey-cokeying" with the doors.

morris board.jpg
(I know I can't jigsaw straight!)

Now I just need to find a nice flat piece of metal or plastic to close the opening through the Qx (oh yes and then make up some half size commercial nuc boxes).

David

[Little_John]

Looks all right ...

I made 2 slides from ally sheet - one plain, and one incorporating a mesh to fit over the q/x - thought I might experiment with combining using the board ... but never did get to play with that.

I have to say that although I got my head around the Morris Board sequence - the girls themselves never did.

So there they were, happily coming and going through the normal hive entrance, when Yours Truly blocked that off, and opened the Morris Board lower front gate. It took them a while to adjust to that - but we got there eventually. And then, just as they'd got used to that entrance, it was closed, and the one at the back was opened ...

Ok - so we know that the idea is that the bees are supposed to return from foraging and enter the half box which now has it's own front door opened, and those exitting from the back entrance are supposed to return via the front ... only it ddn't quite work like that. Many of the girls decided to both come and go via the back door, and even started hanging out on that closure bar. I reckon that they'd been messed about that much that they were now going to use whatever entrance was available to them.

I did get some queen cells though, although not from the half-box - turned out I got a bunch of swarm cells under the Morris Board, so I used those instead. I had planned on trying again next year, but Steve's method just seems so straightforward - the hive entrance position never changes - all that's required is for the girls to find an alternative route to the brood comb (and cell cups) for just one day - and they seem to manage that ok.

So next year I'm going to ignore the lower doors completely, and only use the upper doors to access the slide - and that's all.
There's potential there of course to swap over to the other half-box once the first batch is started - but to be honest, I'll be happy to just get a small batch of q/cells first time out.

LJ

[Wmfd]

Looks all right ...

I made 2 slides from ally sheet - one plain, and one incorporating a mesh to fit over the q/x - thought I might experiment with combining using the board ... but never did get to play with that.

Thanks LJ, I'll dig out some aluminium sheet I scrounged from a dung heap a while ago. Hopefully be able to make up something serviceable reasonably quickly.

So the mesh was to let the odours of the colonies mix before you let them have access to each other?

Ok - so we know that the idea is that the bees are supposed to return from foraging and enter the half box which now has it's own front door opened, and those exitting from the back entrance are supposed to return via the front ... only it ddn't quite work like that. Many of the girls decided to both come and go via the back door, and even started hanging out on that closure bar. I reckon that they'd been messed about that much that they were now going to use whatever entrance was available to them.

I did get some queen cells though, although not from the half-box - turned out I got a bunch of swarm cells under the Morris Board, so I used those instead. I had planned on trying again next year, but Steve's method just seems so straightforward - the hive entrance position never changes - all that's required is for the girls to find an alternative route to the brood comb (and cell cups) for just one day - and they seem to manage that ok.

That's great, it all sounded so credible as an approach, if a bit of a faff, but good to hear about actual practice!

Last year I harvested some queen cells from some swarming hives, and got them mated and introduced to colonies, but this year didn't get myself organised enough to do anything. So, fingers crossed for next year and giving this a go.

David

[Jon]

Steve et al. I am sure this method works but it really is far more complicated than it needs to be to rear queens.
All you need to do to start queen cells is remove a queen from a colony or a strong nuc and drop in a frame of grafts an hour later.
Next day lift out the frame of grafts, including the adhering bees, and set it into the middle of the brood nest in a queenright colony for finishing where the brood is above the excluder in the top box and the queen below the excluder.
I kept a queenless starter colony going from mid may to mid august without problems. I topped it up with the odd frame of sealed brood as well as the frames of larvae I took grafts from. It made the odd queen cell on these frames which I removed.
The main work is rearranging the queenright finisher every couple of weeks to put all the brood up top.
In the summer I am checking colonies every couple of weeks anyway as part of swarm control.
People keep telling me that the Cloake board method is even simpler as you don't have to lift the graft frame from from a starter to a finisher.

[mbc]

I have a concern about this system regarding the conditions the cells are started in. My preference is to maximise the number of bees in the cell starter to overcrowding, but with this system I can only see the starting box retaining the bees already in there looking after the brood and losing many to the more queenright side. If it works, it works, and the proof is in the pudding as they say, but personally I would worry the larvae's first 24 hrs might be a bit undernourished resulting in less than optimal queens.

[mbc]

People keep telling me that the Cloake board method is even simpler as you don't have to lift the graft frame from from a starter to a finisher.

Spooky cross posting Jon, poor Rosie having a dual rain on his parade in two minutes.
The added advantage of the cloak board is that it crams all the flying bees with their returning pollen and nectar into the top cell raising box.

[Jon]

My compadres in NIHBS mostly use the Cloake board system.
My main interest having stepped up queen production a bit is working out an efficient system in terms of time invested and queens produced.
Getting the queen cells started and finished is a relatively straightforward part of the process if the nutrition is right.
I started using an incubator this year as well which allows more batches of cells to be produced as you can remove them to the incubator once they are capped and get a fresh batch into the cell finisher.
Managing a large number of Apideas and removing the queens to cages in a timely manner involves far more work.

[Little_John]

Thanks LJ, I'll dig out some aluminium sheet I scrounged from a dung heap a while ago. Hopefully be able to make up something serviceable reasonably quickly.

So the mesh was to let the odours of the colonies mix before you let them have access to each other?

Hello David - yes - here are the plates I made - different colours according to whatever paint was being used elsewhere at the time ...



The experimental black plate is reversible - one way closed, the other a permeable mesh. But never got around to using it, due to a serious case of failure.

But - it was while reading what I had written about my Morris Board 'epic fail' that I suddenly realised what the problem had been, and for anyone intending to use a Morris Board in the future, the following explanation might prove useful.

The Rose Method has two clear advantages over the Morris Board method: it does not require complex apparatus - AND - the system can be deployed at a moment's notice. But not so the Morris Board, and in order to understand why this is, it is first necessary to go back to basics.

Bees enter beehives in two distinctly different ways. Having played outside a hive entrance for a while, bees somehow 'fix' their navigation system upon that entrance. From then on, they accurately home-in on that entrance and enter the hive, usually without a moment's hesitation. I'm stuck for a word to describe this - so let's call this 'being on autopilot'.

Now - if that entrance is moved as little as 3 inches to one side, the autopilot of those bees returning to the hive will take them to wherever the entrance used to be - an observation more easily made with hives having holes for entrances, rather than wide slots. And, having now discovered that the entrance isn't where it used to be, the bee will revert to the use of it's sensory apparatus - the many thousands of smell sensors located on it's antennae - to follow the scent plume wafting from the hive entrance, wherever that now happens to be. (which of course is how some bees get trapped under an OMF after a hive has been moved)

When the Morris Board is first installed, the Bee Craft author (Michael Badger) writes:
"The normal bottom entrance to the hive should be closed [...]. The front entrances in the board are opened and the bees quickly adjust to entering the hive in the middle instead of the bottom."

Now that is optimistic thinking, and only partly true. The bees may well 'adjust', but they will remain in 'sensory mode' for some considerable time - such that when the slide is inserted and the front entrance to the main hive body closed, the only remaining opening to the main hive body is now at the rear. This opening is on the lower side of the Morris Board and, when coupled with an OMF at the bottom of the hive body, a substantial plume of warm air containing hive odour will then pour out of the rear entrance. Any eddy currents from even the slightest breeze will then waft that plume all around the hive's exterior, such that any returning bees operating in 'sensory mode' will then follow that scent plume to the rear entrance, and away from the front entrance to the graft box !

How best to overcome this limitation ? Easy - install the Morris Board, open it's front entrance, close the normal hive entrance ... and then *leave it* like that for a week or more, until you begin to see the bees homing in on that new entrance without any hesitation at all, indicating that their 'autopilots' have finally re-adjusted to the new entrance. Only then will the board work as intended. It might also pay to blank-off the OMF while the slide is in place, to reduce the scent plume at the rear.

This failure to wait long enough also explains several criticisms made of the board which I have read, which are of the form, "the first run is always rubbish, but it gets better as the season progresses". Well, it would ...

LJ

[Little_John]

Provided that the bees actually *start* the queen cells - which I believe is the rationale behind cramming as many bees into a box as possible - I can't see why under-nourishment presents an issue. After all, during the first 24hrs (the only time artificial 'cramming' takes place) the queen cell larva only consumes as much as that of a worker - and an extra 20-odd 'worker' cells to feed can't be stressing resources that much. It's a very different scenario a few days later of course, but by then the hive has been returned to normal.

LJ

[Jon]

They will start more cells when a colony is queenless.
I have used both queenless and queenright systems for starting and I consistently get more cells started when the colony is queenless.