BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER > REQUEENING & RAISING NEW QUEENS

"finisher" tore down started Q-cells

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yes2matt:
I helped a friend do a cut-out, they had been in this barn for ~5 years, unmanaged, vigorous and healthy. So I wanted to graft from that stock. We saved some brood comb and when I got home in the afternoon I did kindof a rush job of setting up a starter hive. Then I grafted a half a frame (8-10) of young larvae out of one of those combs.

So they took ok, about 50%, which I thought was pretty good for being a rush job and I didn't have nurse bees on the combs in transit.   So at about 36 hours I took that frame out of the starter, because I wanted to do another batch out of the combs that had eggs and I had put in a healthy hive to hatch and feed the new larvae. I put the cell bar frame in the middle of the brood nest of a healthy swarm colony in a single 10-deep. The "finisher" colony is Q+.

Yesterday was the day to make mating nucs, so I went into that colony to check the cells, how many nucs I need to make up. Well, none. The bees had torn down every single started cell and cleaned out all the cups. https://photos.app.goo.gl/MpgKfc7unPjQe1Q38

Did I miss something? I thought: Q- cell starter, Q+ cell finisher, Q- mating nucs. 

BeeMaster2:
Did you make sure the queen was below the queen excluder before you put the grafts in it?
Jim Altmiller

yes2matt:

--- Quote from: sawdstmakr on June 02, 2019, 09:52:21 am ---Did you make sure the queen was below the queen excluder before you put the grafts in it?
Jim Altmiller

--- End quote ---
No, it was just a single box. I thought the QX was just insurance in case they didn't get moved into mating nucs in time. Does tge finisher need to be two stories with a QX between?

herbhome:

--- Quote from: yes2matt on June 02, 2019, 12:11:58 pm ---
--- Quote from: sawdstmakr on June 02, 2019, 09:52:21 am ---Did you make sure the queen was below the queen excluder before you put the grafts in it?
Jim Altmiller

--- End quote ---
No, it was just a single box. I thought the QX was just insurance in case they didn't get moved into mating nucs in time. Does tge finisher need to be two stories with a QX between?

--- End quote ---

Yes

BeeMaster2:
 I thought I answered this earlier. As Herb said, yes.
Na

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