Friday 8 May 2020

Black Queens coming!

Hello readers,


On saturday 09th of may 2020 I'll be picking up 20 larvae of the apis mellifera mellifera.
I split a colony on may 3rd (the LL2019 into the LL2020) and went checking on it a couple of days later to see if they had made any queens.
It didn't look like it, or maybe they moved an egg...  In any case here is my current plan of action:


  1. Prepare for the cups to be placed inside a hive, bring a nuc.
  2. Collect the cups
  3. Move them onto the frame that is prepared on site.
  4. Switch LL2020 and LL2019 from position.
  5. open the LL2020, check for closed queencells.
  6. If I don't find any, move to step 10 - If I do find queencells I'll open the LL2019 and look for the queen and take her out into the nuc.
  7. I'll take out every frame from the LL2019 that has larvae in them and move them into the Nuc with the queen.
  8. Add a frame of Pollen and nectar to the 6-framer.
  9. Then move the closed queencells from LL2020 into LL2019 
  10. Place the cups with larvae inside LL2020

I think I covered everything to get the larvae going.

Once the queencups are closed I think of distributing them into matingnucs.

Suppose all 20 larvae are succesfull as of today I'll have this available:


  1. Mini plus (1- feeder on top, standard bottom board and roof) (1)
  2. Mini plus bottom feeder, standard roof (2)
  3. Queencastle, holds 3 times 3 frames of zander - feeding frame, empty frame of drawn out comb and a frame of closed brood only (5)
  4. 3 mini plus DYI bottoms and roofs (8)
  5. Chinese mating nuc (10)
  6. 2 6-framers simplex with food from fridge (12)
  7. 1 6-frame Zander poly nuc (13)
  8. The rest (7) caged in the LL2020
  9. I might be able to take one more out and split the 2 deeps high LL2020 into 2 seperate hives.
If I want more hardware to work with I have till 18th of may to fabricate more.
I have half a mind set on not fussing too much about extra roofs and just stack 2 nucs on top of each other making sure their entrances are on opposit sides. With nothing more than a solid bottom board to keep them separate.

I'll keep you posted as soon as I can!


 Bob Out

Sites to visit - Nine Lectures on Bees - lecture one.

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