The Honeybee Wranglers » Q5 http://www.littleluceyfarm.com/honeybees Trying to get a handle on these amazing creatures Mon, 16 May 2016 20:53:34 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.35 Queen Rearing Round 5 – Allen Helps Out http://www.littleluceyfarm.com/honeybees/index.php/2015/07/queen-rearing-round-5-allen-helps-out/ http://www.littleluceyfarm.com/honeybees/index.php/2015/07/queen-rearing-round-5-allen-helps-out/#comments Thu, 02 Jul 2015 22:15:58 +0000 http://www.littleluceyfarm.com/honeybees/?p=705 On May 31st we met at Allen’s outyard, selected our queen rearing colony and set it up with the cloak board.

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On June 3rd, we grafted from the tailgate of Allen’s truck.  Allen practiced on 5 cups and grafted 5 cups, Kristien grafted 15 and Liz grafted 10 cups.  On June 7th we checked to see how many grafts had been accepted by the bees.

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Each of us met with success! A total of 12 grafts had been accepted and capped.  It was also an exciting day when Kristien noticed a swarm and Allen hooked up his winch and shook the swarm into a box!

 

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On June 12th, we harvested the queen cells.  By the end of this day, we had 2 virgin queens, an incredible naturally made queen cell and 11 grafted cells.  We opened a couple cells to see what stage of development they had reached at this point.

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Kristien, please fill in here how the virgins and grafts were distributed.

On June 20 we located and marked one of the Q5 queens in a nuc at Kristien’s.

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