Notching Brood

[RogueDrone]

Has anyone tried or actually use this system for getting Queens from a set colony?

I have just notched 3 frames two or three notches each picked young larvea / eggs and moved the laying queen plus two brood and bees to a nuc. Fingers crossed they will raise Emergency Queens as notched.

Once sealed will be split to two/three frame nucs if fail unite with old Queen and wait for natural cells.

Colin

 

[Black Comb]

Yes worked last week.

 

[RogueDrone]

Thanks BC thought its got to be worth a try for small scale queen rearing.

 

[DulwichGnome]

Just remember to follow the same time table as if you had grafted. The 'best' queens are produced from lava just hatched, day 4, so if three days after cutting the comb you have sealed queen cells then cut them out and only leave the unsealed ones.

Mike.

 

[Eyeman]

Removed the queens on 2 strong hives and notched a couple of frames to see if they will build QC where I want them. Will try and re-photograph on Saturday when the QC's should be ready to harvest.

Just noticed some of the bees show K-wing.

 

[Eyeman]

Harvested some nice emergency QC's.
But no sign of any QC's on the notched frames- in fact I had difficulty spotting where the notch had been.

Main problem with raising emergency QC
1. When you harvest the QC's 10 days after the queen was removed they are definitely at different stages of development which means that emergence times can be up to 6-7 days if they used a larvae that was an egg when the queen was removed.
2. You need to remove a sizable area of comb around the QC to avoid any damage- this makes it difficult to fit them into one of my hair roller cages for my incubator.
I will be going back to grafting next year