Q right raiser and virgin emergence

[B+.]

Unless the colony was making it's own decision to swarm this is very unlikely to happen, you can virtually never force a colony into throwing a swarm by adding cells at any stage of development.

Since we don't know the age/condition of the laying queen, I thought my post was reasonable. There is a risk. It will be less of a risk in a young queen and more in a "mature" queen. There is also more risk if the colony is used as a "starter" too (e.g. with a Cloake board). If you watch Mike Palmers queen rearing videos, he does reassemble the starter as a finisher and use the colony to complete the cells to maturity but, I suspect, the queens are quite young (Please confirm Mike). I don't do it that way. I use a queenless colony that is dedicated to the purpose of cell raising - all the way until sealing (i.e. not starter/finisher), supplemented with frames of sealed worker brood from support colonies (which were moved above a queen excluder for 9 days to ensure that I am not adding open larvae). There is no risk in a system like this, but I am producing a lot more cells than I think Jeff wants.
For the beginner: risk is a continuum. It takes a lot of work to make a no risk cell raising system. You may not have the time/support colonies necessary, or even a need for the number of cells I produce. So, other methods may suit you best - but, you may also be introducing a little bit more risk - One risk I have just touched upon is the risk that a queen (either a virgin which has left her own nuc or a queen returning from a mating flight) flies into your cell raising colony. Sometimes, it feels like the bees are conspiring against you in this. They will happily accept any queen if you allow it. This can be a pain in the neck if you are working on a particular line. As the season progresses, the risk of this happening increases, particularly if your mating nucs are close together or your apiary has no landmarks to help the queen return to her own nuc.

risk = the probability of an event occurring
cost= the consequence of if it does.

In evaluating whether you need to take action to mitigate a risk, look at the output of risk * cost. The higher it becomes, the more important it is to manage the risk. I could talk all day about risk management (it used to be part of my job as a programme manager) but there are things you can do to manage risk:
Prevention - take whatever action is necessary to prevent the risk from occurring (often difficult and costly) risk =0
Reduction - take whatever action you can to reduce the risk to an acceptable level e.g. increase landmarks to aid navigation, space mating nucs further apart/alternate directions, etc. Risk tends to 0
Acceptance - accept the consequence should the risk become reality.
Contingency - take alternate action to provide an alternate in case the event should occur (e.g. produce more cells than you need, make multiple cell raisers, use different methods, etc)
Transference - transfer the risk to someone else e.g. insurance, buy rather than make, etc.

 

[mbc]

Since we don't know the age/condition of the laying queen, I thought my post was reasonable. There is a risk. It will be less of a risk in a young queen and more in a "mature" queen. There is also more risk if the colony is used as a "starter" too (e.g. with a Cloake board). If you watch Mike Palmers queen rearing videos, he does reassemble the starter as a finisher and use the colony to complete the cells to maturity but, I suspect, the queens are quite young (Please confirm Mike). I don't do it that way. I use a queenless colony that is dedicated to the purpose of cell raising - all the way until sealing (i.e. not starter/finisher), supplemented with frames of sealed worker brood from support colonies (which were moved above a queen excluder for 9 days to ensure that I am not adding open larvae). There is no risk in a system like this, but I am producing a lot more cells than I think Jeff wants.
For the beginner: risk is a continuum. It takes a lot of work toto make a no risk cell raising system. You may not have the time/support colonies necessary, or even a need for the number of cells I produce. So, other methods may suit you best - but, you may also be introducing a little bit more risk - One risk I have just touched upon is the risk that a queen (either a virgin which has left her own nuc or a queen returning from a mating flight) flies into your cell raising colony. Sometimes, it feels like the bees are conspiring against you in this. They will happily accept any queen if you allow it. This can be a pain in the neck if you are working on a particular line. As the season progresses, the risk of this happening increases, particularly if your mating nucs are close together or your apiary has no landmarks to help the queen return to her own nuc.

risk = the probability of an event occurring
impact = the consequence of if it does.

In evaluating whether you need to take action to mitigate a risk, look at the output of risk * impact. The higher it becomes, the more important it is to manage the risk. I could talk all day about risk management (it used to be part of my job as a programme manager) but there are things you can do to manage risk:
Prevention - take whatever action is necessary to prevent the risk from occurring (often difficult and costly) risk =0
Reduction - take whatever action you can to reduce the risk to an acceptable level e.g. increase landmarks to aid navigation, space mating nucs further apart/alternate directions, etc. Risk tends to 0
Acceptance - accept the consequence should the risk become reality.
Contingency - take alternate action to provide an alternate in case the event should occur (e.g. produce more cells than you need, make multiple cell raisers, use different methods, etc)
Transference - transfer the risk to someone else e.g. insurance, buy rather than make, etc.

I thought MP's system had the cells sealed before switching to q+, not the same as what's traditionally understood to be a "finisher" where the cells are transferred to a q+ situation 24-36hrs post graft.
The rest of your post doesn't really help with understanding swarming in relation to cell starters, I may have misread or be wrong.

 

[B+.]

I thought MP's system had the cells sealed before switching to q+, not the same as what's traditionally understood to be a "finisher" where the cells are transferred to a q+ situation 24-36hrs post graft.
The rest of your post doesn't really help with understanding swarming in relation to cell starters, I may have misread or be wrong.

Actually, you are correct. I had it in my mind that he moved them earlier but I just checked and you are correct. So, the only difference is that I move sealed cells to an incubator in Nicot cages so I can mark them before introduction, while Mike uses the re-combined colony as an incubator and moves the "ripe" cells to mating nucs. It depends whether you want absolute certainty over the lineage which version you choose.
The rest of my post was addressing your assertion about there being no risk. In fact, there is very rarely no risk in anything. To get it requires lots of work which often doesn't come cheap. Ultimately, you have to ask yourself what amount of risk you are prepared to accept.

 

[jeff33]

That looks like the risk assessments I also do in my work Paul and yes, I believe MP reassemble the colony after capping.

I use a Q+ with cloake board for the whole process and tend to re-open the cloake board 48h after grafting. I am not too sure it would make any difference in my set-up (re-open before or after cells are sealed) as I only do 1 round of 12-14 grafted cells twice in the season. For the amount of cells I need and 2 rounds in the season that system works very well for me.

I have had my Q+ colony swarm before after all Q cells had been removed but in insight it would have been preventable and I should have split the colony. What I want to ensure this time is that if I leave all the virgins to emerge in the top box and leave them there for say 3-4h it will not trigger immediate swarming. I can deal with preps made in the bottom box if I notice them in advance.

 

[jeff33]

I think it may be easier/less risky for me to spend an hour modifying my mini nucs and insert 14 days Qcs when I make them up and leave them for 3 days in my garage to settle down.

 

[B+.]

I think it may be easier/less risky for me to spend an hour modifying my mini nucs and insert 14 days Qcs when I make them up and leave them for 3 days in my garage to settle down.

Do you have ventilation (e.g. in the floor)?
You will need to spray a little water in daily so they can dissolve the fondant and draw comb.

 

[Apple]

From what I understand if you introduce the bees and virgin all in one go and spray with syrup then acceptance is pretty high. But acceptance then goes down for the second batch as the bees have formed a cohesive colony by then.

Ist batch in keiler with a mix of young bees from 3 colonies ( used to use a Warburg box? but have found that drones can be filtered out through a qx by a semi artificial swarm.( and of course 3 days in the cool and dark not flying with a daily spray of tepid water to help them eat the fondany and draw down comb... Gelph use a qmp stick as well... works)
#2nd time around put in sealed queen cell to coincide with day 16 hatching ie 14 days ( with qc 14 days old )after mated queen removed.
Go back on day 4 after removing queen and knock down any queen cells prior to introducing the sealed queen cell.
Bit of a faff, but using the larger Keilers ( Or the Abello doubles but with no dividers as on larger colony) seems to be successful for open mating.... just do not have the staff to raise the 1000's of queens we will requite due to the import ban!
AND of course any chance of the EU funding to expand any business venture has been dashed by Brexit!!

Chons da

 

[B+.]

That looks like the risk assessments I also do in my work Paul and yes, I believe MP reassemble the colony after capping.

I use a Q+ with cloake board for the whole process and tend to re-open the cloake board 48h after grafting. I am not too sure it would make any difference in my set-up (re-open before or after cells are sealed) as I only do 1 round of 12-14 grafted cells twice in the season. For the amount of cells I need and 2 rounds in the season that system works very well for me.

I have had my Q+ colony swarm before after all Q cells had been removed but in insight it would have been preventable and I should have split the colony. What I want to ensure this time is that if I leave all the virgins to emerge in the top box and leave them there for say 3-4h it will not trigger immediate swarming. I can deal with preps made in the bottom box if I notice them in advance.

Do you raise open brood into the upper box when you set up the Cloak board?
When they start drawing out cells, they may not discriminate. If they have older larvae on other frames, they may also draw cells on these. This may be why your colony swarmed. It's very easy to miss a cell unless you shake all the bees off the frame and destroy any that even look like they may be a cell (Obviously, don't shake your cell bars).

 

[B+.]

Ist batch in keiler with a mix of young bees from 3 colonies ( used to use a Warburg box? but have found that drones can be filtered out through a qx by a semi artificial swarm.( and of course 3 days in the cool and dark not flying with a daily spray of tepid water to help them eat the fondany and draw down comb... Gelph use a qmp stick as well... works)
#2nd time around put in sealed queen cell to coincide with day 16 hatching ie 14 days ( with qc 14 days old )after mated queen removed.
Go back on day 4 after removing queen and knock down any queen cells prior to introducing the sealed queen cell.
Bit of a faff, but using the larger Keilers ( Or the Abello doubles but with no dividers as on larger colony) seems to be successful for open mating.... just do not have the staff to raise the 1000's of queens we will requite due to the import ban!
AND of course any chance of the EU funding to expand any business venture has been dashed by Brexit!!

Chons da

Do you mean the Marburg swarm box?

 

[BigAshW]

Ist batch in keiler with a mix of young bees from 3 colonies ( used to use a Warburg box? but have found that drones can be filtered out through a qx by a semi artificial swarm.( and of course 3 days in the cool and dark not flying with a daily spray of tepid water to help them eat the fondany and draw down comb... Gelph use a qmp stick as well... works)
#2nd time around put in sealed queen cell to coincide with day 16 hatching ie 14 days ( with qc 14 days old )after mated queen removed.
Go back on day 4 after removing queen and knock down any queen cells prior to introducing the sealed queen cell.
Bit of a faff, but using the larger Keilers ( Or the Abello doubles but with no dividers as on larger colony) seems to be successful for open mating.... just do not have the staff to raise the 1000's of queens we will requite due to the import ban!
AND of course any chance of the EU funding to expand any business venture has been dashed by Brexit!!

Chons da

I've just purchased a qrn from thornes (mini-plus nuc) looking forward to seeing how this performs. I want to start QR but obviously nowhere near the scale that you're working to.

Would be nice to build that part of my hobby up to a decent level though as the process fascinates me.

 

[jeff33]

Do you have ventilation (e.g. in the floor)?
You will need to spray a little water in daily so they can dissolve the fondant and draw comb.

Yes I have made some ventilation on the floor and back wall by the fondant so I can spray it from the outside without having to open the mini nucs for the first few days.

Do you raise open brood into the upper box when you set up the Cloak board?
When they start drawing out cells, they may not discriminate. If they have older larvae on other frames, they may also draw cells on these. This may be why your colony swarmed. It's very easy to miss a cell unless you shake all the bees off the frame and destroy any that even look like they may be a cell (Obviously, don't shake your cell bars).

No, all the open brood is on the bottom box. 10 days before grafting I will reconfigure the hive and put in place the cloake board. The top box has only brood frames ready to emerge and I usually add 4-5 other brood frames about to emerge from other colonies. 24h before grafting I will put a frame of open brood to get them ready to feed and on grafting day that frame is removed and given to another colony. The only brood present on the top box are the grafts, they have nothing else to look after. I think it swarmed because of the added 5-6 frames of brood which once emerged created a massive hive.

 

[B+.]

Yes I have made some ventilation on the floor and back wall by the fondant so I can spray it from the outside without having to open the mini nucs for the first few days.


No, all the open brood is on the bottom box. 10 days before grafting I will reconfigure the hive and put in place the cloake board. The top box has only brood frames ready to emerge and I usually add 4-5 other brood frames about to emerge from other colonies. 24h before grafting I will put a frame of open brood to get them ready to feed and on grafting day that frame is removed and given to another colony. The only brood present on the top box are the grafts, they have nothing else to look after. I think it swarmed because of the added 5-6 frames of brood which once emerged created a massive hive.

Yes. Overcrowding can push them into swarming but this is what you want in a cell raising box. If I said any more, it would just be an informed guess so I'll leave it to others who use Cloake boards to comment further.
I just find it easier to dedicate a queenless colony with no open brood to the job. It means I don't have to worry about the colony swarming as they never have a queen.