So at about 8:30 on the morning of June 18th we checked to see how many nucs we needed to prepare for the soon-to-be emerging queens. We counted 7 capped cells. They seemed a little short and we detected movement of the queens within the cells. Off we went to prepare homes for the new royalty.
Kristien put in quite a day helping both Todd and me to locate appropriate brood within our hives and get the nucs set up. Ah, the optimism!
These are the somewhat shortened queen cells from Round 2. Note the lack of royal jelly remaining in the grafting cup. We noted movement of the queens within the cells at this time.
At 6:00 pm on the 19th we met to take the cells to their awaiting nucs.
All cells have been opened. Some show signs of destruction from the side, others appear to have hatched from the bottom.
Too late! All the cells have either hatched or been destroyed!
Lessons from this round:
1. Hindsight is great! If we see the queens moving in the cells, we should immediately prepare nucs and place the protected cell into the nuc.
2. Youthful vision wins the grafting game! Andrew had a 75% success rate. The actual success rate for the rest of us wasn’t much worth calculating!
3. The nurse colony should be moved a significant distance from the colony where the nurse bees originated. It seems that by placing the queenless colony right next to the colony from which the bees were taken a significant proportion of our potential nurse bees returned to the queenright hive.
4. The way we have been counting days in the cycle may not be allowing for variability in the age of the larvae that the bees choose to propagate into queens. We have been assuming that bees will only choose day 3 larvae to rear into a queen. Taking into account Todd’s research, there is the possibility that bees will raise an older larvae into a queen. Maybe our day count should err more on the side of moving the cells to the mating nucs earlier.
Now to return the queenless nuc brood to the colony from which it was taken and on to round 3.
I’m still undecided about what to do with my nuc hive 6. I’m not going to pull apart my hive 1 to put the brood back. I either severely stunned or perhaps killed my queen from that hive and I have vowed not to pull it apart again for a month. I also put a frame into that nuc from nuc hive 5 this morning because I didn’t think there were enough bees to support the new queen. I am tempted to leave this hive alone to raise its own emergency queen, but I think emergency queens tend not to be as strong. I need to do more research on this.
you can bring it on Saturday to help fill the nurse hives?