Hatching Queens in a Incubator

[hiveabee]

Hi all. How long can you keep a Queen in a artificial incubator once She has hatched?

 

[Mike a]

Ideally I would of thought as short a time as possible as she needs to be given to a queenless colony to be fed and groomed and make ready to get out on mating flights.

 

[hiveabee]

Ideally I would of thought as short a time as possible as she needs to be given to a queenless colony to be fed and groomed and make ready to get out on mating flights.

Thanks Mike. I have a small incubator and I have been thinking of employing it this year to maybe hatch some queens. I am currently looking for a good book on queen rearing that has a chapter on using an incubator.

 

[Mike a]

I bought one several years ago for the same reason and I had a pdf of recommended temps, humidity but I can't find it now or I would of shared it.

Since then I decided to go down the route of mini mating nucs and let the bees do what they do best. At least when she emerges she will get the attention she needs and encouragement to get out and mate.

This year I'm starting small scale by grafting 20 eggs in the hope of getting 8 queen cells initially in a very strong queenless colony before transferring the cells into the mating nucs a day or so before they are ready to emerge. Hope to start the process in the next couple of weeks provided the weather forecast looks reasonable.

 

[beebreeder]

have you got enough mature drones around Mike? The incubator is 34.5 degrees C by the way with maximum humidity
kev

 

[Mike a]

have you got enough mature drones around Mike? The incubator is 34.5 degrees C by the way with maximum humidity
kev

Hi Kev
I'm going to be testing the drone state with a colony I dequeened earlier this week before going any further with grafting, some but not all of my colonies have been producing drones for a couple of weeks and I wanted to deal with this colony as soon as I could before it got to big again. If the replacement emergency queen fails to mate I'll just combine them with another smaller colony and wait a few more weeks.

 

[hiveabee]

I still fancy the idea of hatching some queens via an incubator and then introducing the queen to a nuc, at least then i will have a good idea what sort of a colony i will have.