In preparation for determining how many queen cells might be viable, I built a queen castle from medium equipment.

I put it together using old equipment and excess lumber and coroplast laying around the house. I was lucky enough to find a piece of molding exactly the width I needed to use for the inner covers.

There are only three compartments to account for the smaller frames.

I have two questions before it goes into use:

1. Is a 5/8″ circular hole adequate for the entrance? Or should I drill a couple in a row as had already been done on the front of the box?

2. Should I make 1″ screened holes along the top on the front and the back for ventilation? I’m sweating just thinking how hot it could get in that closed box.

UPDATE:

I modified the solid bottom board to make three screened channels, one for each compartment.  I feel much better about the ventilation within the castle at this point.

6/21/14  On 6/19 we populated two compartments of the castle in preparation for the cells from Round 2.  Round 2 failed.  This morning I checked to see how many bees remained in the castle.  In the compartment on the left there were very few bees, maybe 100.  They were clustered just in the space between 2 frames in an area about the size of my palm.  In the compartment on the right, there were about twice as many bees.  They covered the same area but in the two spaces between three frames, maybe 200 bees.  I’m not at all certain that this would have been enough bees to support the queen in her transition had we been successful with the cell rearing.