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Re: When to start queen rearing
PostPosted:25 Apr 2020, 19:05
by stechad
Patrick wrote: ↑16 Apr 2020, 20:04
Good on you for giving it a go stechad, nothing to lose and plenty to gain even if it is to discover what does or doesn’t work for you.
I work on the principle there is no point in rearing queens when there are no drones to mate them at the end of the process and when I am around to do things. So when I am seeing drones appearing it is reasonable to assume there should be plenty two to three weeks hence.
Round here in Somerset that means I will start preparing things this weekend and hopefully have some cells emerging first week May.
I see you are in the Northwest so others more local to you on here can give you a more specific steer - I suspect they may say you’ve got a couple or so weeks in hand yet.
Going to graft some cups tomorrow as I now know why they failed first time, queenless hive was in fact not queenless, kicked her into laying though. Need some new queens for potential new apiaries.
Re: When to start queen rearing
PostPosted:25 Apr 2020, 20:45
by Patrick
Ah, the old definitely Queenless colony that mysteriously finds itself a Queen mullarky. Fallen for that one just a few times..
Re: When to start queen rearing
PostPosted:26 Apr 2020, 08:47
by Chrisbarlow
AdamD wrote: ↑25 Apr 2020, 09:26
I have started queenrearing this year - but the first attempt was not sucessfull. The colony had been queenless for 3 days and had not really gotten going with producing emergency queencells and it being fairly early in the season they gave me just one queencell from some grafts I had put in. The bees just weren't ready.
I've found this in the past too. First attempt nothing happens, week later, much greater success
Re: When to start queen rearing
PostPosted:30 Apr 2020, 07:56
by AdamD
I haven't used a cupkit for a while so I've had a go in the past week. The queen was in the cupkit cage for 4 days and I took out some tiny larvae as the picture. I would say that they were perfect. However the bees accepted only 7 out of the 12 I put in, so they had a different view!
Re: When to start queen rearing
PostPosted:30 Apr 2020, 10:42
by NigelP
Nice picture Adam....I really must think about doing some grafting shortly. I could do with a load of new queens this year.
Re: When to start queen rearing
PostPosted:30 Apr 2020, 13:10
by stechad
First attempt this year at queen rearing this year was a total fail not one graft accepted, Separated the top brood box by an additional super (now 2 supers apart) found 1 queen cell which was removed and introduced 10 grafts, fingers crossed.