CoolBees: your killing me with envy: flowering trees poping up everywhere!!!! Good for you, my turn in about 6-8 more weeks. I experience what I call Spring Bee Fever every late winter as the beeks like yourself texted about all the fun you are having with the bees, while I look at snow. I wanna play so bad!!! There is no cure, no treatment for for Spring Bee Fever, I just have to suffer through it, like every year, until April and WALLA, I am completely cured.
As most know I graft for queens n so I want go into that. Minz stated a most important issue with queen rearing, by any means [graft or natural] and that is YOU NEED A LOT OF NURSE BEES. A very important fact, lots of nurse bees. I consider capped brood almost the same as nurse bees.
So, if you plan on letting the bees raise queens, CONSIDER removing one frame to provide more space between remaining frames. I can?t tell ya how many queen cells I have destroyed pulling frames inwhich a queen cell was attached to two frames and ripped apart as I lifted only one frame of the joined queen cells. Oops!! Removing a frame creates more space between frames thus less likely queen cells are attached to two adjacent frames.
I also use queen castles as previously mentioned. My castles are made from a ten frame deep as follows: four sealed compartments, 1 small opening 3/4 inch each compartment and 2 frames each compartment, 1 food 1 capped brood.
I read on this thread, some beeks use two queen cells per new hive. Use what works for you, I only use one, but nothing wrong with insurance.
One last note, very important. When I makes splits, the original hive is moved, maybe only 50 feet. This is important to move the bees from the original position. If you leave a split in the original position, these bees will rob the newly created moved split, unless you are moving 2 miles. Robbing is such a pain: prevention is best, so move the original position split. Otherwise, some of your split bees will fly back to the mother hive and robbing is almost guaranteed.
Best of luck with your bees.
I also artificially inseminate queens, another story, off subject.
Please post pics of flowers and bees. Makes me feel so good, very happy, to see the pic of bees and helps lessen the symptoms of my Spring Bee Fever.
Van