making increase (QC's after AS)

[beecology]

Hi folks,

another forum member has posted cutting out a few QC's and placing in cages, left in hive to raise a few extra queens.

I was hoping to do something similar, but I have no experience of making increase in this way, so I what extra equipment do I need to get a few of these queens.

I presume I will need a few mini nucs or apideas (any preference?) for when spare cells have emerged. A crown of thorns or similar to press into foundation around spare QC's?

Once the queen has emerged, does one place an amount of nurse bees into apidea/mini nuc (if how many etc) and feed/close up for a few days?

Any pointers, advice and experiences gladly received.

Cheers.

 

[TryingToLetThemBee]

The traditional way to do this would be to make up mini-nucs (I use Apideas: google that term for how to do it) for the cells. One each natch because you have to get the Qs matrd. The trouble is you have a Q rather than a viable colony; mininucs are not designed to build into colonies. So better is to take a partly-filled full nuc with a frame of brood, a QC, a frame of stores and a frame of comb or foundation. Not sure what caging in the parent colony adds to the equation but no doubt there is a reason.

 

[snelgrove]

place frames of brood with bees shaken off preferably open brood above a queen excluder on a strong colony. when cover with bees mostly nurse bees shake these into a box lightly spread with water. add a cupful per apidea and place in a shed in dark over night. next morning drop a cell or virgin into the roaring bees. open up in a different apiary.
I normally make increase by taking a nuc off colonies when cells found. an take to another apiary. this usually delays swarming but they make preparations later

 

[Finman]

.
I use to have 3-frame mating nucs. I give first 1-2 frames of bees. It takes 10 days that emerged queen starts to lay. Then I add more bees or a frame of emerging bees.

i move those nucs to another yard that old bees do noh return to old home.

After a month that kind of polynuc has 3 frames brood and it starts to get new bees.

If I make too big nucs, the honey yield will suffer in big hives.

When I have used 1 frame nucs, it is big hurry to get more laying space to queens. So my experience is that 3 langstroth frames is a good size of the nuc.

 

[Finman]

Hi folks,

another forum member has posted cutting out a few QC's and placing in cages, left in hive to raise a few extra queens.



Cheers.

Do not take queens from swarming cells. Change larvae in swarming cell and graft from good hive.