Timing is all

[thorn]

My bee buddy decided that he'd like to rear some queens from our productive, non-swarmy colonies and replace the queens in our poorer hives. He made the queen frame/cups, grafted the eggs and put the frame in a hive.
He wrote himself a timetable. He should have been at the apiary yesterday to transfer the queen cells to mating nucs, but was persuaded to take his mother-in-law out for the day. He took this morning off to make the transfers.
He opened up the hive, took the queen frame out and realised that one queen had already emerged. Over the next few minutes he watched as queens emerged from every cup. He grabbed them and popped them in every small container he had, though two fought before his eyes, one of them killing the other.
I got an urgent call for assistance, and between us we managed to put the survivors in mating nucs, of which we now have nine to find space for.
It was his first attempt at queen rearing, and, despite his success, may well be his last.
And the moral of the tale is, if you have a timetable, stick to it.

 

[Amari]

Ooops

 

[Amari]

My bee buddy decided that he'd like to rear some queens from our productive, non-swarmy colonies and replace the queens in our poorer hives. He made the queen frame/cups, grafted the eggs and put the frame in a hive.
He wrote himself a timetable. He should have been at the apiary yesterday to transfer the queen cells to mating nucs, in-lbut was persuaded to take his motherin-law out for the day. He took this morning off to make the transfers.
He opened up the hive, took the queen frame out and realised that one queen had already emerged. Over the next few minutes he watched as queens emerged from every cup. He grabbed them and popped them in every small container he had, though two fought before his eyes, one of them killing the other.
I got an urgent call for assistance, and between us we managed to put the survivors in mating nucs, of which we now have nine to find space for.
It was his first attempt at queen rearing, and, despite his success, may well be his last.
And the moral of the tale is, if you have a timetable, stick to it.

..........and yet all we read in the press and media is the hapless female sex being dominated and oppressed by us males........

 

[For want of a better word]

A salutatory tale... did any of the virgins make it to the drone shaggfest??

Yeghes da

 

[Finman]

.
I was lucky in same case this summer

I had 20 cells in the rearing hive. I did not remember, when did I grafted larvae.

I got into mind to look the hive. When I opened the hive and I piled the super near by, a swarm arouse from one super. Then another super started to swarm. Then all went to old hive.

After half a hour all three swarm bursted out from with queen.

I was lucky. Without swarming fever first queen would have killed queen cells, but now all queen cells had living queen. I got 15 queens. Some died into cages when they were too long in them.

It was some job when I made new poly nucs. I splitted with table saw normal poly boxes to 3 parts. So 5 boxes. Old nucs were in bad condition.Easier to do new.

 

[Anduril]

A few years ago I was dealing with an angry hive, after removing the queen, I left them to produce queens with the intention of going back and removing them before adding a mated queen. Anyway I couldn't get back to the hive when I wanted and when I finally did they were all emerging at the same time. Sorted it out quickly and got a nice queen in there.

 

[Herbalist]

I really hope that he does not quit. Failure is only really failure when you quit. Until then you are simply on a learning curve.

 

[wightbees]

Roller cages would of helped here.