The kit has started to arrive so that I can hopefully produce my own Queens for sale next year.
I have reached the stage where I have all my colonies producing huge broods, that are very calm and this season, swarmless, just about an ideal combination.
On the right is a pile of artificial queen cells and the 'hair curler' queen cages that prevent the emerging queens from escaping into the colony and fighting each other.
This is a single artificial queen cell assembled, once the cell has been capped the ' hair curler' cage is placed over the cell and is a tight fit to the beige plastic cell outer casing.
Grafting tools, these are used to scoop up from the donor colony a one day old larvae along with its royal jelly, then push the larvae gently into the artificial cell. My wife is going to be doing the grafting, I have big fat 'blokey' fingers, which renders me incapable of carrying out such a delicate operation, apparently.
A national brood frame with ten cells that I have attached ready for next season. I am going to be using the Ben Harden method of queen rearing, a well documented way of producing queens in queenright colonies.
I am designing a 4 compartment mini nuc box, so that the entrance for each small colony is at right angles to the next. Pictures will be up as soon as I produce the first one.
Here,s wishing you a great success with your new venture.
ReplyDeletethanks steve, it will be 2014 before you will have to think about new queens. gives me time to practice
ReplyDelete