the right age of eggs\brood for queens

[peteinwilts]

please be gentle, I am queen rearing for my first time.

I have read conflicting information regarding the right age of the egg to harvest from the queen rearing kit. One set of instructions suggest the right age of the eggs is less than 24 hours old. This is what I did.

However, I have read since the right age is 'day 0', which it explains as 4 days after the egg was laid (egg layed at day -4)

Cell preparation is another confusing element. I popped my queen into the rearing kit, and she laid Saturday night\Sunday morning...

However, I have also read that the cells need to be prepared with wax, and left in the hive for a while before using...

This sort of information does not help the newbie and I am yet to check the hives, so best to ask the experienced...

thoughts on the above?

 

[Mike a]

I'm sure Pete HM will correct me if I'm wrong but I thought it was 3-4 days after being laid. Eggs less than 24 hours old would still be stood upright or just starting to tilt over and not floating in a bed of royal jelly.

 

[Poly Hive]

Bit confused hmm?

First of all you do not want eggs you want larvae.

The cell kits are a bit hit and miss in my experience and I have grafted out of them more than once however...

The plugs are waxed by screwing them into a bit of foundation then putting in the kit and giving the whole deal to the colony whose queen you intend using and spray the lot with light syrup to get the bees to clean it up and in so doing prep it for the queen.

Trap in the queen usually over night is long enough then let her out if the kit is laid up.

72 hours later the eggs will be hatching into larvae and at that point you want to transfer them to your starter box.

Once started, and the acceptance is obvious the next day as non accepted are empty and the accepted are getting wax built and there will be a visible pool of royal jelly.

Once accepted beware as your starter box cannot feed them all up to sealing point. Move them into supers in strong colonies and for goodness sake dinna forget where they are....

Cage them too so that when the virgins emerge they are under control.....

Then virgins into mini nucs and patience...

PH

 

[peteinwilts]

Thanks PH

i'll start again when\if we have some nicer weather

 

[Finman]

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All worker larvae get queen jelly for first 3 days.

I move so small as I can see. Propably 24 hours old or something. Just emerged larvae (few hours old) is imposible to take.

When this is your first case, I recommend that when you have swarm queen cells in some hive, move to swarm cells new larvae from your selected hive.

When you move a tiny larva in Sunday, queens will start to emerge after 12 days on Thursday evening. So in 10 th day you must put in cages the queen cells.

Best results you get if you split polybox into mating nucs. Then on 10 th day you move a frame with bees + queen cell into nucs and move them to another yard 2 miles away. It is good too that you have in that yard good quality hives with their drones.

Put in cage some queens. Take those which are easy to cut from combs.

Allways ptotect queen cells if bees have reared emercency cells and that virgin comes out in 10 days and it kills all your cells. Even if they are in cages.

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