Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum

BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => REQUEENING & RAISING NEW QUEENS => Topic started by: mat on May 19, 2006, 10:16:54 am

Title: Easy queen rrausing method
Post by: mat on May 19, 2006, 10:16:54 am

I red somewhere about that method where you put a frame with egs and larva flat on the top of queenless hive and they will bild queen cell. And I do not remember where. Can anybody help me with that?

Title: Easy queen rrausing method
Post by: mat on May 19, 2006, 10:40:53 am

Guess what, I foud it
http://www.sfbee.org/pdfs/HopkinsMethod.pdf
This is the article. Does anybody has experience with this methode?

Title: Easy queen rrausing method
Post by: Michael Bush on May 20, 2006, 12:51:53 am

Sure.  The secrets are, first you have to have the right age larvae, and second, you have to limit the number (and spacing) so they don't build clusters of queen cells instead of seperate ones that you can cut free.  Jay Smith did another variation of this where he essentially cut strips from the comb with the larve and waxed them (with a paintbrush and melted beeswax) to a top bar and put them in like a cell bar.  This is simpler in some ways as it saves making some kind of shim to hold the frame above the box.

Title: Easy queen rrausing method
Post by: mat on May 20, 2006, 07:26:36 am

Thank you Michael. I think I'm gonna give a try.

Title: Easy queen rrausing method
Post by: Michael Bush on May 20, 2006, 12:57:09 pm

You might also find Jay Smiths experience useful in removing every other row and every other egg (Jay would remove every other row horizontally and remove two and leave one on vertially).  But he did it by simply poking a hole in the bottom of the cells he wished to remove.

http://www.beesource.com/pov/hayes/abjmay91.htm  Here's the Hopkins method.

Title: Easy queen rrausing method
Post by: mat on May 21, 2006, 07:25:38 am

That would make it even easier.

Title: Easy queen rrausing method
Post by: Rabbitdog on May 22, 2006, 09:30:03 pm

Sounds like fun.  I'm ready to try it.  I have a new frame ready to insert to the donor colony tomorrow.  
My question is this, when the frame is placed in the cell builder colony, wouldn't it make sense to destroy all of the eggs on the top side of the frame?  It seems to me that doing this would allow the bees to concentrate on developing the queens rather than the worker brood above.  Also, I wonder if raising workers in cells upside down could create problems for them physically.
Thanks

Title: Easy queen rrausing method
Post by: Michael Bush on May 23, 2006, 07:46:45 am

>My question is this, when the frame is placed in the cell builder colony, wouldn't it make sense to destroy all of the eggs on the top side of the frame?

It will make no difference whatsoever and will be difficult to do without destroying some of the bottoms of the cells for the ones on the bottom.

> It seems to me that doing this would allow the bees to concentrate on developing the queens rather than the worker brood above.

The bees will NOT develop the worker brood above.

> Also, I wonder if raising workers in cells upside down could create problems for them physically.

They will not develop.

Title: Easy queen rrausing method
Post by: Rabbitdog on May 23, 2006, 08:12:21 pm

Thanks very much.  One last question (I hope) .....
How long should the cell builder colony be queenless before the frame is introduced?  According to this article, I would say 4 days but it doesn't not explicitly say that.  Can I get by with 3 (maybe 2) days of queenlessness?

Thanks again!!

Title: Easy queen rrausing method
Post by: Michael Bush on May 24, 2006, 12:35:20 am

I'd do it one of two ways.  Either leave them queenless just over night (12 horus) and put it in.  But then check for queen cells in the hive to make sure that a queen you don't know about doesn't kill all your queen cells, or leave them queenless four days and then destroy all the queen cells and then add your frame.  The point is to avoid a rogue queen from killing all the cells.