Hi all!
I just brought my second hive! So I need to breed another queen to colonize the hive. I was just wondering, in my other hive there is an old queen cell on one of the frames, if I were to put an egg or lava in that cell when I'm splitting the colony and put it in the new hive along with some brood frames, would that be an advantage to breeding a new queen? Would the bees just feed that grub royal jelly? Or would they still make a few of their own queens?
I don't know if I'm making sense. Basically would putting larva in an old queen cell, in a queenless nuc make the workers feed it royal jelly? I'm just curious if that is a good idea or not, it would make sense if the bees did feed it royal jelly.
Any advice on how to go about splitting a colony would be much appreciated!
Thanks!
The short answer is no. That old cell has old royal jelly in it and they will not reuse it. Just find a bunch of eggs on a frame and using your hive tool, cut a notch through the bottom of a few of the cells with eggs in them the bees will make queens from them.
Jim
Awesome thank you very much!
No problem.
The reason for cutting the bottom of the cell is that Queen larvae hang vertical as compared to workers are horizontal. You are making it easier for the bees to make a queen cell by opening up the cell.
Jim
I like that idea Jim I will give it a go too.
Cheers
Steve
It works. I made several like that this year. Do it on different frames and you can make some small nucs in the summer.
Cool, tip from "Don The Fat Bee Man" Is to actually cut a strip a few centimeters thick of comb with eggs in it from the brood, and lay it longways across the top of the frames (cells with eggs facing down between the frames). When he did that he got multiple queen cells.
That is what I did.
So basically, if you can make brood cells face downward, the nurse bees will treat the larva in it like royalty :tongue: and they will develop into queens?
I like that idea tooooo
Hey Jim, I just had a go at making some Queen Cells the way you described. Do you cut a slice out of the cell containing the egg? on the bottom side and clear a space around the selected cells?
Cheers
Steve
Steve,
You cut below the cell. Queen larvae must hang vertical, head down. Opening up the bottom of the cell allows the bees to easily create a queen cell. If you have new wax, the bees can cut out the wax to do this. If it is old wax, they will have to use royal jelly to float the larvae out to where they can build the cell vertical. The cut cell speeds things up.
Jim
Righto thanks Jim.
Cheers
Steve
Some good answers. Doing a split can be done in a variety of different ways, some more complicated than others. I have found that the simplest way, like a walk away split can often give you a queenless split, while some of the more complicated methods can leave you confused...
http://www.outyard.net/spring-splits.html
http://www.outyard.net/queens.html