- Joined
- Mar 9, 2016
- Messages
- 2,005
- Reaction score
- 1,042
- Location
- Gower, where all the fun happens
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 24 + a few nucs....this has to stop!
Last year for my first attempt at grafting I had issues with bees drawing wild comb on the grafting frame. Thanks to tips on here it didn't happen this year and had a clean frame and cells.
Today I checked my mini mating nucs for queen emergence and only 2 out of 7 emerged with the rest being dead. In all the mini nucs with dead pupae the bees had gathered in the food compartment and didn't cluster around the cell or draw the frames.
Bees and cells were left for 48h in the garage to settle. I have decided to try again but going to put all the frames (half SN1) in a modified super above the BB of a full hive for the bees to draw them and the queen to lay in them. That way I hope I can populate the nucs properly to ensure better success.
Is there anything else that I should consider or others can recommend please?
Today I checked my mini mating nucs for queen emergence and only 2 out of 7 emerged with the rest being dead. In all the mini nucs with dead pupae the bees had gathered in the food compartment and didn't cluster around the cell or draw the frames.
Bees and cells were left for 48h in the garage to settle. I have decided to try again but going to put all the frames (half SN1) in a modified super above the BB of a full hive for the bees to draw them and the queen to lay in them. That way I hope I can populate the nucs properly to ensure better success.
Is there anything else that I should consider or others can recommend please?