Why I HATE The Nicot Queen Rearing System Part 1

[Applause] talk about luck pulling out my second cream and there is the Queen so there you have it a complete failure [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so this is my 2018 attempt of the night cot system I tried that last year I'll mention that in the video got a lot of flack for it because I didn't complete it as this video progresses you're going to see that you know it was my honest attempt and desire to produce this video and I really wanted it to be a night cleaning video because everybody loves a Nikon system they think that it's the easy way and they're not gonna have to learn to graft and it's just gonna be y'all perfect you know fairy tale ending your beautiful Queen cells and everything's going to work out but in my situation I've never been able to get the system to work out correctly this is the reason why I do not like the Nikon system and I do not recommend the nightcup system and the reason why I would encourage you to learn how to graft and if you don't want to learn how to graph there are other ways to raise queens but these little box kit systems they sound good they look good on paper but they don't always work I'm not saying they don't work because they do people get into work and some people have success with them but you need to realize that this is this video just going to show you a prime example that it may not work and with the amount of money that you've invested in this system you could involve some really nice crafting equipment and save yourself a lot of time in here and probably got me a better product [Music] [Music] [Music] all right so today let's talk about the knight heart Queen Wren system tried to make a video on the nine o'clock night between during systole last year and got a huge response from it on my youtube channel but I never finished the series so just to start off if you're watching this video on YouTube I have completed the series all the videos have been made and they'll all be coming out on YouTube last year my goal was to produce the videos while I was doing the system but I got busy raising Queens the attempt that I made last year didn't work out and I never really got time to make the video again so this time I'm just gonna go through the whole process I'm gonna make all the videos and then that way I know whenever I publish this one the other ones also be regiment publish as well so if you're researching this technique then you obviously know what the Nikon Queen root system is it's one of these boxes with a little sail cuts in the back I'm not really a big fan of the Nikon system I think that there's better ways I think that the Nikon system is a good system but I do think that grafting is a better way to go but if you can't graph for visual reasons or if you just want to make a few Queens and or maybe you just don't want to graft and you want to do something else then I cost the knight cost system does work so the first step in the Nikon system after you assemble the box and get everything put together and put it on the frame is to catch the clean and to put her in a cage and so that's what we're going to do today we're going to catch the Queen just like we did last year and we're going to put her in the cage okay so the hive that we're using today this is a queen that I raised last year she went through the winter and a little fly frame nuke and she's done quite well she made it through the winter they were strong all the way through the winter and she has grown this hive up into a triple deep nuke and it is packed full of bees one thing that you got to remember about raising cleans is that the number there's a direct correlation between the number of Queens you raise and the size of the hive that you use I'm gonna use this triple deep Newt but I'm also not going to produce 50 or 60 Queen cells out of this box my goal is to put 20 sales or you know 20 starter Cup 20 of these cups in the box to produce Queens so I'm just trying to raise 20 Queens with this method so this will work you can raise 20 Queens with a triple deep Newt or probably even a strong double D nuke or a double deep normal high but if you're gonna raise 50 or 60 queen cells which is possible with this knock off system you're gonna need a much much bigger hive you're gonna need at least 2 or 3 deeps and it's gonna have to be packed with bees hanging out the front check out some of Michel Palmer's videos on on YouTube with their cell builders and and you'll see what I'm talking about [Applause] talk about luck pulling out my second frame and there is the Queen all right so the first thing we need to do is take the cap off of this Queen excluder because this is the hole that I'm gonna feed her into this box through [Applause] [Applause] what we're going to do is we're gonna reach down we're gonna pick her up by our wings I like to lick my fingers a little bit to get them wet I do not want sticky honey or any type of propolis on my fingers some more pressure from the front pick her up by our wings want a sitter all my finger I'm just gonna I'm just gonna sit her on my finger [Applause] and spin around I'm gonna stick her head in the cage and just let her climb in there so she's walking around in there and I'm gonna put the cap on so that part is done so I can replace this frame now since I'm adding this frame I've got to take out another frame and what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna find the frame that doesn't have any brood on it preferably that's either empty or got a little bit of honey on it I'll take that frame out and I'll mate and that will allow me to make room for this frame so I found a frame here it's got some honey on this side it's got a lot of drone brood on this side so we're just going to shake the bees off of this frame in front of the hive and take this frame out of the box all right so our queen is in our cage we're going to reassemble this box and I'm going to put make sure that this bar this frame is in the middle of the box and I want to put it in the middle of the hive does that really matter probably not that's what I'm gonna do now I'm gonna make a note of the date which is April Friday the 13th that might be a bad thing I don't know let's we're gonna find out and I'll make a I'll make a mental note that the queen is in the middle box she's on the second frame hand from the from the right when you're standing on the back of the hive and so that's basically it for step one you find the Queen you take the little plug out put her in the in the layin box put the plug back on put her in the hive and close the hive up we'll come back in a few days and check her out she'll be fine in there we know that those eggs will not hatch out into small larvae until they are three and a half to four days old it is Friday the 13th as I mentioned earlier it is 9:20 in the morning so it's gonna take her a little bit before she starts laying in there those bees will have to polish those cells up my guess is that she probably won't late till this afternoon or into Saturday morning so we just have to count if she lays Saturday morning you'll have Sunday morning Monday morning Tuesday morning Wednesday morning so by Wednesday morning we should be able to come back out here pull that frame out look in those little cells and we should see little larvae see if we don't see larvae in those cells then we'll replace the frame and we'll wait till Thursday morning and pull it out you want to time this to win you can check those cells I know that I can't check them on the weekend this weekend but I can check them any time next week so I wait it to the end of this week to place her in there because I know those eggs can be going through their developmental cycle this weekend when I'm not able to come out and check them so that's it for part 1 and be looking for the second part when we actually find a little larvae and we I'll show you what we do with those in the next step all right so we're back the last time we were here was on the Friday morning and now it is Tuesday afternoon it's about two o'clock in the afternoon and I just want to take a quick peek in this box and check the Queen and see how she's doing and see if we've got eggs still or if we made it to larva now you guys probably know if you don't you're going to the eggs are laid and they hatch out into larvae three and a half to four days so we put the Queen in the box on Friday morning so we had Saturday morning Sunday morning Monday morning Tuesday morning so this morning was four days my initial guess was that the Queen she's not going to lay eggs in that box probably for the first 12 to 24 hours and so my guess was it'll be Wednesday before we have larvae but I want to check just to be sure because we want the youngest larvae possible those 12 to 24-hour larvae those are the ones that were after so I'm gonna check on her some of you guys may be asking you know why did you leave the Queen in there why didn't you take her out well there's a couple reasons for that one of the one of the reasons is it's just easier to find the Queen I know exactly where she's asked she's an icon box another reason for that is there's only so many bees in this hive and I really want my I really want the bees to choose my eggs or my larvae the the ones that I put on my frame those are the ones that I want them to choose to make Queens I don't want them choosing eggs on frames throughout the hive so I want to really reduce the competition if I keep that Queen locked up in this Nikon system for however many days for the three and a half four or five days whatever it takes if she's locked up in there every day that she's locked up in there the eggs that she laid before I placed her in there are getting older and older and older so therefore the competition's going to be reduced if I let her out day or two after she's been in the box what happens sometimes which is one of the reasons I'm not a big fan of the knockoff system it a lot of times what you take the Queen excluder off and you take her out the bees will take those eggs out of an icon box and they'll move them to cells inside the hive so you'll come back you'll find the eggs and you'll come back two or three days later and the whole knockoff box will be empty because they'll actually remove the eggs so you know that's that's one problem but uh the main thing is it's just reducing the competition so hopefully there will be a very very few eggs in the high or young larvae in the hive with the exceptions of the ones at high place in my cell bars and then that'll give them no choice but to use the egg or the larvae on my cell bars for their for their queen so it just helps to increase your success rate it's kind of a cool day today you see it got my jacket on one of the great things about an icon system is the fact that you don't actually have to pull a frame of eggs out and you don't have to graft so it's a little bit better as far as weather goes because there's there's less time that you have to have the bees the frame out and trying to make sure you don't chill those young larvae before you can get them inside somewhere where you can graft [Applause] [Music] okay so she's got most of the little cells are are laid with eggs but I'm not seeing any larvae yet so my assumption I believe was correct she didn't lay right off the bat and so she's got eggs in there we'll come back tomorrow on Wednesday and we'll check then and see what we've got then [Applause] all right so it's a it's Wednesday I have not had a good day my iphone foot working yesterday and apples not going to replace it and so today's just not been a good day when we're going to open up this hive we're going to see if we can find some larvae in this knockoff box and see if we can't get started making some Queens so let's open it up and see if I was right whenever I guest on Friday that Wednesday would be the day that we could start [Music] [Music] all right so looking at that most of the sales still have eggs in them and there's no larvae hatched out so we'll have to come back tomorrow and try it again so this is a really good example of one of my biggest issues with the Nikon system I think it's got some really good aspects to it but it also has some flaws I started this process on Friday okay now it's Wednesday I still don't have larvae the correct age to start Queens which is a big problem I could have started my Queens on Friday and you know those eggs would have been three and a half to four days old and at day eight they actually captain the Queen cells so I could have graphed it on Friday today's been four days I would actually have my queen cells being capped today but instead I'm still waiting on the eggs just to hatch out into larvae so I can get my graphs theoretically started just so I can make this hive queenless so they'll start raising those Queen cells so this is just one example here of the problem that I have with the Nikon system in that you don't know how long it's going to take for that Queen to lay in those cells and so therefore it's harder to judge when your Queens are going to be ready versus grafting I know that I can make this hive queenless in the morning and I can come back in the afternoon and graft and put those cells in there and I know for a fact they'll start making Queen sales that day so it's Thursday I don't know if my little makeshift RV today it's been almost a week since we put the Queen in that box so I've lost a week's worth the Queen lazy so hopefully we've got some larvae in there so we can get this thing going I get the Queen release and get her back into production [Music] [Music] exactly what I told you guys they do a lot of times this frame that the the Queen the knockoff box is on all the sales on that frame are full of eggs and that Queen she's still in the cage it's just not working they're taking the eggs out the pump in the stand the sales of the comb that's on the frame so they're again this is the issue that I constantly have with this system you so there you have it complete failure I put that high back together and a place I took the Queen I left i freed her from the box that was Thursday the next day would have been Friday it would have been a weakness she had been in the box and just for the people who

Channel: Brown's Beef and Bees

Views: 35,378

Keywords: Queens, Queen Rearing, Honeybees, Beekeeping, Grafting, Queen Cells, Nicot

Id: K9PasKb4dPE

Length: 31min 21sec (1881 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 16 2019