Rearing Queens and Making Splits

[Music] hi I'm Steve Clifford we're here on the beautiful British Columbia Sunshine Coast uh this BR is home for the Sunshine Coast beekeepers Club um we're going to do a video on raising Queen cells making splits and planning the queen cells so uh first thing to do is get this cell Builder ready and then we'll graft this is a very simple little onehive uh system this Hive is at once the cell Builder the cell finisher and the and provides the grafting material so it's very simple uh what we have now is one box of brood and a queen excluder and the cellbox what's extremely critical here is that the bees are only flying to the bottom entrance they can't have any other extraneous entrances they can only be flying to the standard bottom entrance and we'll see why that is here in a minute so the first thing we need to do is to go through that bottom Brew chamber and find the queen as you can see we got some population here h well we need to find this queen because we need to take some of this excess population and put it into the cell building box so it's I know it's kind of a drag but we got to find this queen I went through it a bit ago told her to be ready when we came looking okay we found her there she is right there let put your finger on her again okay so now this brood chamber is going to come off so what we have here is a feeder I fed it uh some sugar syrup couple hours ago and two frames uh heavy with pollen and a fair bit of bees but we're going to we're going to muscle it up a little bit and this is the box that's going to receive the freshly grafted cells you can see there's a good honey flow on whoops sorry Steve cuz that's that's all fresh nectar that's shaken out of that brood cone I'm going to give it one more uh I went through this Hive earlier and picked out a frame with good grafting material made a little Nick in it so I could mark it uh you always know whether that's a fresh Mark or not because it's after a couple of days the bees will propol that and you'll know it's uh it's not today's so I don't want to shake it too hard and upset that larvae just just a little bit okay we're going to we're going to set this double screen over the cellbox with the entrance to the rear and then we're going to put the queen and brood box back up here and this is why it's essential to have no other extraneous entrances because if the field Force were able to get back up to this brood chamber with the queen in it they would but because they're stuck on that bottom entrance they're going to stay there they're going to feel queenless right away and they're going to tend to those freshly grafted Queen cell cups cuz they don't have a choice so the queen still there okay so she's going to go back in here with her brooded frames okay okay this is my homemade grafting tool just a piece of brass it was actually the core of a welding rod at one time um the way I describe what size Lara to graft is that you don't want to take the very tiniest ones you want to take the the next X size up so we want to slip under it it's on the needle just want to touch down the loose end roll away and there she is touch down the loose end roll away and there she is I keep track of where I'm at with my thumb I put my thumb on the next uh on the next cell okay so you can see the larvae on the end of my needle and I'm just going to she's hanging off a little bit so I just touch the bottom down and roll away and there she is okay and the next pick up one y there she is all right you get to really appreciate when you find a good frame of grafting material and this is a Dandy lots to choose from and they're very well fed if I'm not sure about how one went in I'll put another one in that same cell and the bees will be happy to figure it out for me if the phone rings I'm not going to answer it if somebody says let's go have coffee I'm going to finish this before I do where it's not really a Race Against Time but the quicker this gets done and they get back in the bees the better okay that's it I've filled these two bars so into the frame they go and the sooner they get back to the bees the better so the bridge up here we got to take him off okay just remind us where the queen is the Queen's back in The Brood box and into the Swarm box I guess we can call it the cell box go the cells okay the this is the crucial time right now the quicker the bees get on those cells and feed each one the better the more they're going to hit so we've done everything we can it's now up to the bees we got a lot of young baby bees in there and uh they're the ones that feed the royal jelly so that's why it's so important to have a terrific uh population that double screen is the is the magic component that the fact that the brood box and the queen are separated by that double screen is enough to make them feed those Queen cells I know that you know they can smell the queen and the bru but uh that double screen separates them enough and they will immediately jump on those Queen cells and feed them the sound the hum we're hearing now is this unit down here that is queenless and broodless and you know that's a Telltale sign of the bees crying for a queen so fingers crossed they will feed a good number of those Queen cell uh the fresh graphs we put in there and but tomorrow we'll see tomorrow we'll reverse this around and uh see how well they did good morning Steve Clifford again we're here at the beautiful botanical gardens in seashel British Columbia we we grafted some cells into this Hive yesterday and it's time to see how they did and reverse them so I'll pop a veil on and they've been down in that bottom box with no Queen no brood so hopefully they've had lots of time to get those grafted cells fed uh if they're not fed by now they're not going to be but it's pretty easy to tell whether they've hit or not uh there should be a should be a good deal of royal jelly in the cells and and the uh larvae should be growing so that population has diminished I can tell because all the field bees will have flown out of this rear entrance and gone back and join the bottom which is uh which is what we wanted to happen so what we need out of here are a couple of frames of brood to put up with those Queen cells this is the frame we grafted out of yesterday so I know it's a good one to put up there not so many bees not so many bees yeah like I said the Field Force has transferred to down there which is which is what we want can't have too many bees to start those Queen cells so I'm just making sure that we don't have a queen here what I want to put up there with the queen cells is Young open brood that needs feeding to draw the young the baby bees up there they're going to help feed those cells I see a started Queen cell here which is what we don't want because if this virgin were to hatch before those Queen cells come out uh she would kill them all so I don't see a queen okay well we're going to put a couple of empty frames in here and we're going to trade that double screen for a queen excluder because once those once those cells are started are started the bees will finish them that's the kind of be cover you want to see on those Queen cells once again all we had up here was two Combs heavy with pollen and honey the moment of truth you can see the royal jelly and I'll take this there's two misses the rest are being fed one miss here and the other one's simply fell off so these go back here now these frames of open brood go in one on either side of the frame of cells and that will draw the young bees up to help feed those Queen cells as I said once they start them they're going to finish them and feed them uh we've got a pretty nice uh late spring early summer honey flow going on here and that Queen cell frame does not obey the the law b space so I'm going to add a couple of frame frames of foundation just to give that extra wax someplace to go uh if this if this nice warm weather keeps up there's a danger that they can build too much extra comb around those Queen cells and and makes it a little a little trickier but until 10 days from now that's it we don't have to do anything else uh I would feed them again if necessary but as I just said with this uh nice honey flow going on there's uh there's no need to do anything else so the timing is 10 days starting today not yesterday the day we grafted so 10 days from today Friday the 2nd of June is one 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 we're going to harvest these cells the morning of the 10th day starting today okay uh hi good afternoon Steve again um the last time we did this we raised some Queen cells and they're they're getting uh ready to hatch so now we're going to make a couple of splits to receive those Queen cells I like to do it this way I don't find the queen I just going to go through this Hive and pick out a couple of frames of brood shake the bees off and CP them up above a queen excluder let the bees cover them again the the big advantage to this is I'll come and take this off move it to a new location in the morning and the be distribution will be perfect uh yeah works really well no brood there but you can see they're on a bit of a honey flow they're gaining weight so I'm certainly going to look for the queen don't see her okay so once I got that three frame hole in there it's easy to shake them all off one last look for the queen once again I don't see her I don't see any on those open drone brood which is encouraging just talk about what you're doing okay well put this brood in the center of this new box maybe clean that up a bit and that's it and as I said when I come back in the morning the be distribution will be perfect there'll be covering these two frames of brood I'll pop this off put it on the truck take it to a new location uh there'll be no drift there'll be no guess what work about how to distribute the bees and uh it's good that this split will sit queenless for two or 3 days before the queen cell goes in they'll start emergency Queen cells uh that'll put them in the right mode to accept the queen cell that I put in and it'll also act as a backup in case uh the queen cell we put in should fail morning Steve Clifford again uh we're here at the beautiful botanical gardens in seashel British Columbia uh this is the last little part of this uh video we're going to do we're going to take the queen cells out and plant them in those nukes we made last video is it we've been on a a pretty strong spring flow so I took most of the power away from this Builder so they wouldn't gum up the frame of Queen cells which you can see here of course it's queenless so they're they done another one for me they didn't hit too bad a few fell off and I already sold three this morning that's my best excuse for those misses make sure there's no dead ones if I tap them a bit I can see I can see the Queens are in there they all look good this Pham block uh is part of the plug in the cigarette lighter incubator that is in the truck um it's uh it's fine to put them in a in a cooler with hot water bottles but this is just a little uh a little handier unit we'll show it to you when we're done here one here it looks all right okay okay well this is my uh New Zealand manufactured carry cell plugs into the cigarette lighter and makes it pretty easy to carry these things around so simple as that and we're I plugged it in an hour ago and we're almost up to the 90° Mark but a hot water bottle the queen cells and an egg carton work just as well okay so for the last little piece these are the nukes we made a couple of days ago they're good and queenless they've started their own Queen cells which is just fine so the cell goes in there uh then I tell people not to look at him for two weeks the queen will fly and mate when she's about a week old then it'll take her a few days to uh start laying and it's all there is to it okay well I want to thank uh my video friend here Steve sleep for uh doing this I want to thank the sea shell botanical gardens our club uh really appreciates having this location we have our meetings here and uh we do tours uh School groups come and we do our best to uh show them what the bees are about and if there's any questions uh about this video apparently there's a link you can ask ask questions to us and I think that's [Music] it

Channel: Steve Sleep

Views: 16,958

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Id: 2XiY67rhbGc

Length: 33min 31sec (2011 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 28 2024