Andy
New Bee
- Joined
- Jun 29, 2023
- Messages
- 63
- Reaction score
- 20
- Location
- Aberdeenshire
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 5
Today was a bit frustrating. I had a colony that was really not very nice. So I set it up in the ben harden configuration and killed the queen in the bottom box. I grafted from my nice queen and got 15 takes from 24 which I was delighted about as it’s only my 3rd try. This reduced to 14 by the time they all got capped. The hive was a nightmare, so to make it easier to handle I split it into nurse bees and flyers. The nurse bees had the majority of brood frames and the grafted cells. They got capped on Wednesday. I had a quick peak yesterday(sat) and they all seemed fine. Today I was kindly given a virgin and I was going to steal some bees to make a small mating hive. I found the cells were all torn down on the top bar and a couple on the bottom bar leaving me with only 6 cells. I grafted from larvae not much larger than the eggs. I also knocked back the queen cells on the frames of which there were not many as all the frames had been in a demaree. Could a queen emerge 3 days early? I’ve put a roller cage on them and emergence for the remainder is Wednesday hopefully. I was wondering if in the future I cage them as soon as they are capped. Does this have any implications as I understand the bees often help the queen out by chewing around the cap.