This system seems to be a giant pain in the butt.....someone correct me if I am wrong... I can see the advantages.....however you have to put it in the first day, then go and find the queen the next day....give her two days to do her business, then go release her , leave the system in for four more days , then go get the cups and transplant into the hive. then the rest is the same either way you do it i guess
do you all use this system? I have got a great little queen three years old and I don't want to lose the genetics on this babe.....
That seems to be about it. I have a kit, but have never got a chance to use it. I keep finding queen cells to place in the queen castle or just make splits.
Hand grafting takes much less effort, but more skill. It is a trade off.
I use the NICOT system. You were about right on the "what you need to do". If your hives are reasonably close by, it's really not that time consuming. You forgot one step...
The first thing I do is I make 2 strong hives queenless a week before I even put the NICOT frame in the the "mother hive". These will be the cell building hives. I either do this by making a really strong queenless nuc or I take the original queen and a couple of frames out and make a nuc from that. You have to check the queenless hive/nuc for queen cells before you drop the NICOT frame of eggs into it.
It is a trade off. The NICOT system really is "skill-less" to do. I run all single deeps with marked queens, so it's not that difficult to find the queen. I catch her in the clipper and simply drop her in the NICOT box. I have found that it takes her 48-54 hours to lay, not the 24 hours the directions talk about. I like the NICOT because I don't have anywhere comfortable that I can sit and pluck eggs out of a frame. Grafting is a good way, too. For me, and many others, the NICOT just fits our needs, and maybe even skills, better.
If you do end up getting the NICOT, PM me and I'll send you a detailed description of "how to" that someone gave me and I'll also send you an Excel calendar so you'll know day by day what needs to be done.
Good points. I started with a Nicot system and progressed to hand grafting as I raised more queens. Still use the Nicot now and then depending on what I have going.
Here is some more details on using a graftless rearing system -> http://robo.bushkillfarms.com/beekeeping/queen-rearing/ (http://robo.bushkillfarms.com/beekeeping/queen-rearing/)
I also did a podcast with WpN on small scale queen rearing using the Nicot this past January. The audio and powerpoint can be found here -> http://robo.bushkillfarms.com/beekeeping/beekeeping-podcasts/ (http://robo.bushkillfarms.com/beekeeping/beekeeping-podcasts/)
If I want QCs from a queen I just remove her from her hive and let them make QCs. QCs are much easier to graft then eggs. I haven't tried any systems or grafting eggs because I'm cheap and lazy. :) Been reading a lot of old public domain beekeeping books lately and I think sometimes us modern beekeepers make things much harder or more expensive than they have to be.