My experience has invariably been tied to spells of particularly bad weather at the time of introducing the cells. The odd one pulled down by bees procured at exactly the same time, from the same source hive as those used to make up the rest of the batch (which haven't taken out their cells).
Maybe there's a tie-back to my thoughts regarding giving workers access to the cells; perhaps those cells which I've seen torn down would have produced queens that would have either vanished before successful mating or would have been early for supercedure.
I really wish I knew more about bees, it might make things more certain.
Finally we posted some queens from the Ardnamurchan Native Black Bee Project this week. I hear they all arrived safely the next day and went into nucs straight away.
Here's me putting queen and attendants into their cage for posting ... forgot to put up my veil in my excitement:
Nice video(s) and, quite possibly the best running commentary that I've ever heard on a beekeeping film. No whispering, lecturing or inconprehensible waffle. Totally refreshing. I hope that you'll be posting more.
So glad you liked it Prakel but it's all thanks to the very enthusiastic friend who was with me, with her iPad and questions and eager watching/listening. She took more film but each of the others need some editing to cut out boring bits. Would then be happy to upload them.
Can anyone guide me on editing videos in iMovie?
Cracking video :-)
.... wish I knew more about editing videos myself.
I have a Keiler with laying workers so a chance to experiment
I took one of their empty combs and grafted a few larva along the bottom cells on it yesterday
It won't work but its a learning opportunity
Liked Kate's Video
I waited 27 days for laying in another mini nuc keiler and she is finally laying
That's laying yesterday the first frame of eggs and timed from checking the queen cell had hatched
I hope I am not being too negative about more queen rearing this season
It's just if you add 27 days to the 15 from using a cupkit cassette or 12 from grafting its the biblical 40 days and 40 nights
Ok for a backup queen in case of failure but not perhaps for replacing older queens before Winter
Better Weather might change all that and knock 10 days off the time
Last edited by The Drone Ranger; 30-07-2015 at 09:08 AM.
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