Just recap. 1st atempt 20% acceptance. 4 out of 20 queens are now at the point of emergence. one queen has emerged and shown to be of poor quality. improvments made to grafting methods 2nd attempt 40% acceptance 4 of 10. Cell size looks better than 1s attempt will not know quality of queens for a coupel more days. Improvements made to strength of starter nuc. 3rd attempt was last Saturday. zero acceptance. I am thinking so far this is due ...
Our second attempt at grafting resulted in a 40% acceptance rate. so we improved over the first attempt by double. Giving us a total of 8 cells being made from 30 grafts. I decided at that point that the next improvement would most likely be made by improving the starter colony. We spent the next 4 days increasing the population of the 5 frame nuc we are using as a starter and giving them a frame of open brood. This was in order to get the nurse bees primed for feeding. ...
Around early May this year I loaned my hives to my son for polination in one of his hot-houses, where he raises cross-polinated F1 seeds. When they came back home the hives were returned to their positions and only last Friday, (June 7th) did I finish checking the last hives for an assessment of where they stand after the stresses of travel and hot-house work. UNEXPECTED I was surprised to discover that one hive was considerably weakened. There were a few last capped cells of ...
I have been using a thread I started weeks ago as something of a journal. I didn't realize I had a Blog and that I might possibly use it as a journal of sorts. Anyway three days ago we began our fist attempts at queen rearing. 20 cells grafted with a 20% acceptance rate. Not to bad for first attempt. We made our second grafting attempt yesterday after visiting a craft store and buying an assortment of doo dads to make lifting larva work better. I have selected a 10/0 shader brush as ...
Half a cup of bees do not a hive make. She is a pretty little queen, I've picked her up, she returned to her chosen bees. There is fighting near the entrance of the hive, not a lot, seems the workers have divided. I have no clean free of disease comb to give them, if she is not mated and I shut them up will she mate properly? I do have plenty of sugar water. I can move them into a nuc and try to get them to stay. For now they are settled in for the night at ground level and I have penned my chickens ...
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