Welcome, Guest

Author Topic: Nicot Failure Twice - What am I doing wrong  (Read 2306 times)

Offline mgmoore7

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 364
    • Moore Honey Bees
Nicot Failure Twice - What am I doing wrong
« on: May 15, 2009, 09:06:40 pm »
1st run.  Waited till exactly 3 days.  Moved nicot cups to cell frame.   Only 5 of the eggs were larve. I was already in the process of moving everything and could not go back.  I learned that I probably should waited a little longer for more of the eggs to have hatched and royal jelly to be fed.

5 of the cells did take.  Since I have limited resources on hives right now, I decided to start over since I wanted 10-12 queens and don't want to have to do 2 full runs.  I decided to just start over. 

2nd run.  Waited till exactly 3 days (this morning).  Only a few of the eggs had hatched so I decided to wait till tonight thinking I would still be in the correct age window. So tonight I went to put the nicot cups in the frame and all but abot 5 of the larve/eggs had been removed.  I think only 2 are viable larve. 

So for the moment, I had my nuc cell builder ready to go and I installed the cell frame in and will wait 24hrs and see. 

I was supposed to get a chinese grafter today after waiting 3 weeks for a order with some items that was delayed due to a childs suit being on back order only to find out that the grafter was not delivered due to being out of stock.  The grafter was my backup and I planned to try it if this did not work this time.  If they would have notified me that it was out of stock, i could have gotten it from somewhere else. I am so frustrated. 

I already installed the Nicot in the donor hive again to try again. 

What did I do wrong if anything?   I did reuse the cups the 2nd time but did give the bees time to clean them out for 2 days prior to confining the queen. 

Offline RayMarler

  • Field Bee
  • ***
  • Posts: 520
  • Gender: Male
Re: Nicot Failure Twice - What am I doing wrong
« Reply #1 on: May 16, 2009, 01:43:17 am »
Wait for the 4th day to transfer. On day three, the eggs are hatching. Day four they will be 12-24 hours old. They do better if over 12 but no older than 36 hours old larva.

Offline mgmoore7

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 364
    • Moore Honey Bees
Re: Nicot Failure Twice - What am I doing wrong
« Reply #2 on: May 16, 2009, 07:49:14 am »
Wait for the 4th day to transfer. On day three, the eggs are hatching. Day four they will be 12-24 hours old. They do better if over 12 but no older than 36 hours old larva.

That is what I thought and why I waited yesterday until the evening but they removed almost all of them.