Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Remove the queen cells 10 days later and place them in prepared mating nuclei
- four or five frame nuclei with a frame or two of capped and emerging brood, one
empty comb and two frames of honey.
If you don't need her anymore, destroy the queen you have been keeping safe.
Check the mating nuclei after two weeks to see if the queen has mated and is
laying. Leave her where she is to build the nuc into a colony or remove her to the
queenless destination hive and put new, just-about-to-emerge queen cells in the
mating nuclei.
Advantages
: The beekeeper has more control over the timings: they know the queen
cells' age and can therefore move them when ripe. The method also retains many of the
'easy' features of the basic method, and very little extra equipment is needed.
Disadvantages
: The bees rear queens from worker cells, not from eggs laid in queen
cups. This may mean that larvae of the wrong age are chosen, possibly leading to
inferior queens.
Variation 2
Procedure
The following is the procedure for variation 2:
In the spring, as soon as drone larvae are plentiful or the drones are flying, split a
colony in two, making sure that each half has both very young larvae and eggs. If
possible, move one half to a different apiary.
Two days later, check both halves. One half - the half without the queen - should
now have queen cells of a known age.
Ten days after splitting the hives, assess the cells and cut out those you find as
suitable for placing in mating nuclei.
Leave two good queen cells in the still queenless part and keep it separate, or
destroy them and reunite the colony.
