Well, over the past two/three days, I've been preparing equipment for use during a starter/finisher procedure. As part of the queen rearing module of an advanced beekeeping course, this coming Saturday all participants will get 6 pre-grafted pedigree larvae. I have chosen to use a starter system that is similar to the one used by a lot of people locally, but using mostly materials laying in the yard. Next year I'll make it from proper materials.
What the starter will look like once the bees are in it:
Removing the lid...:
Removing the larva cup cell holder...:
Removing the sliding door which, when removed, will introduce 10 000 very unhappy bees to the larva cup cells after 3 hours of panic. These three frames are just for show -- at the time, there'll be one frame of pollen, one frame of honey/nectar, and one frame of water.
Of course, first you have to get 10 000 bees into the box. So you add a bit of a funnel...:
Then a queen excluder (no accidents with unexpected queens or drones in the starter!):
And then extend the funnel:
As you can see, most of the equipment consists of old hive bodies that I've been meaning to burn. The sliding door is poorly made, and I'll have to plug the hole after removing the slide (on professionally made models, the slide is a thin aluminium sheet, so the bees can't get out of the hole).
Then, there is of course a finisher. The started queen cells have to be finished in a finisher hive, and if you have a strong colony, you can use a queen excluder to keep the queen "below" while the queen cells are "upstairs", but my finisher (my biggest colony) is small, so I'll hang the queen cells in the middle of the existing brood nest, inside little cages, like thus:
I still have to add a bar inside the frame.
