Cupkit or Jenter?

[beeboybee]

Which system for a first timer, both look pretty similar....
Going to give queen rearing ago next season and hopefully expand my colony numbers..

 

[For want of a better word]

Which system for a first timer, both look pretty similar....
Going to give queen rearing ago next season and hopefully expand my colony numbers..

Grafting to me seems to be a black art..... Nicot / Jenter systems take a little bit of the problems of picking correct age larvae for rearing in cell raising hive.
Do not underestimate the number of bees you will need to increase your colony numbers.
Double up on everything... 2 to four good very strong and healthy colonies for supplying bees for mating nucs.
another 2 to four ( two set up at same time for cell rearing... in case one fails or q gets past the excluder!)
and loads of cell cups... cheap enough to bin after use!

and then another ten or so strong colonies to make up nuc boxes from... if not requeening existing colonies.
To be sure it takes lots and lots of bees to make more bees.

But so rewarding... you will start by intending to sell them, but will keep every colony you produce... almost family!

 

[MJBee]

I fear you will struggle to make use of either a cupkit or jenter system with one 14 x 12.

As Icanhopit says you will need at least 2 strong (double brood) colonies, one to raise the queens and one to provide bees for Nucs to get the queens mated.

Could I suggest that you build up your 14 x 12 as quickly as possible next Spring. Artificially swarm them and use the swarm cells to make 2 nucs. By the end of the season you should have 3 good colonies and can queen rear following season - nothing like planning ahead - lol.

 

[beeboybee]

Good advice, thanks I have also updated my details to 2 x 14x12... Not that that helps me much. Yep one colony is going to get split next year if it gets through the winter, it was on brood and half this year, the other one only just made it from NUC to hive and filled brood box before things started slowing down,
Going to reassess my plan but really want to give it ago sometime soon...

 

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi BeeBoyBee

If you consider using a Snelgrove board you can make a safe split of your one hive early in the season.
That will get you two hives the one above the board will have queen cells
From which you can also stock an apidea with bees and add a queen cell when they are ready

 

[beeboybee]

Will look into this... Plenty of winter nights ahead to read up and get ready..

 

[For want of a better word]

Look into joining a bee breeding and rearing group... must be members in your local association that would be thinking the same way as you.

I can honestly say that without the help of BIPCo and WCBKA Apis mellifera mellifera breeding groups we would not have produced enough queens for our selves this season.. to make up 20 new colonies and requeen many more.

 

[beeboybee]

Just bought snelgoves book on queen rearing, going to see if I can buddy up with a more experienced beekeeping for queen rearing lessons..

 

[rogerb]

I’m with DR on this, but do it a little differently;
You will need; two nucs (min five frames) c/w frames and foundation, as many mini-nucs as you wish to breed queens and a queen clip.
In spring as they build up on (or hopefully before) the Oil Seed Rape give your strongest (and nicest) hive only one super, they will soon outgrow it and make preparations to swarm.
As soon as you see the first cells with a larvae and jelly find the queen and catch her in the clip, keep the frame she’s on to one side.
Take all the other frames and spilt them between the two nucs, making sure both have viable queen cells, food, lots of bees and brood.
Move the nucs to another part of the apiary (min 20 feet away but more if you can).
Take the queens frame and remove any and all queen cells (or they may still swarm).
Put the queen back on her frame, in her original hive in its original location, with the foundation frames round the queens one, put the super back on top.
You now have three colonies, the two nucs and the queen with her artificial swarm (all the older bees that will all go home now).
If your nucs were short of bees when you made them up then shake extras out of the supers (but you most likely won’t have to do this).
Keep and eye on your nucs and as soon as you see sealed queen cells then get bees from your other colony (the three you have made up don’t want to be weakened in any way if you can help it) and make up the mini-nucs with a cup full of bees, don’t be too greedy or they’ll leave as soon as the queen hatches. Put a sealed queen cell out of you nucs in each and move the mini-nucs away as far as you can (put them in the shade, they don't want sun at any time of day) , and feed them candy (constantly).
Now go through your nucs and get rid of all but one good queen cell.
Except for feeding if needs be, leave them all well alone for two weeks then check to see who’s laying and who’s not, don’t worry about those that are not laying chances are they will start soon but it may be time to start thinking about what you are going to do if they don’t……..

 

[BJ's Bees]

They are both very much the same, go for the one you can easily get parts for.

 

[DulwichGnome]

They are both very much the same, go for the one you can easily get parts for.

The Cupkit system seems to be a bit cheaper than Jenter in the UK.

We used the Cupkit kit this year and it worked well, so long as you are happy handling the queen. I used the 'pipe' style catcher and it was fine.

We tried queen rearing with 14x12s a couple of years ago and they seemed to need a lot more bees to get to that critical mass to want to work the queen cells, too few bees and they seemed to go off and do other things. Mind you it could have been that we miss timed it and there was not a flow and/or we did not feed, it was our first year rearing queens.

This year, our third, we have used the John Harding system but with full sized boxes not nucs which worked well, http://www.bibba.com/john_harding_method.php. The book says that you don't get a honey harvest with this system but we ended up with three supers full. Also having a QE and supers made it very easy to draw off young workers to go in the mating hives.

Mike.

 

[For want of a better word]

I now pick the queen up with ungloved hands.... seems that after pulling a few frames to look for her and allowing the bees to gently wander over your hands no strange scents get transferred... I rinse my hands with a splash of cold water and flick them dry before opening up the colony.
Thinking about it if the bees are so aggressive that the bare hands can not be braved... do not breed from that queen!

On the subject of honey... expect to get a good crop from the queen donor colony, because that means good honey producing genes and a good strong colony to make it!

Lots of bees are needed to make more bees.

 

[DulwichGnome]

Just found some photos, the frame feeder was used as a follower when each of the two main colonies was small. We used the Cupkit in each of the main hives every fortnight and grafted 20 cells into the poly nuc in the centre each week. We had an 80/90% success rate of raising virgin queens, sadly we only had a 10% success rate at getting them mated.

Mike.

 

[beekeeping4you]

Cupkit - Cupularve

Self explaining?

 

[beeboybee]

Nice photos... Thanks I like the idea of a smaller box that fits the cell frames