Queen cages loaded with candy. On my way to catch and ship queens.
Burr comb honey
Some of the queen cells I pulled out of a cell builder hive today. The cells were placed into queen-less mating nucs in the queen yard. We shipped mated queens out today so there were a number of queen-less mini nucs.
The kids like to paint hive boxes. I like to see them when I’m in the bee yards. A great way to display their artwork especially since the refrigerator is covered in masterpieces. (I also enjoy the painting activity)
Queen Cups Before and After:
Upper picture shows cups before grafting larvae and lower picture illustrates what the cups look like 10 days later with queen cells fully formed over queen pupae.
Me. (The chic beekeeper behind the posts and pictures.)
Ready for transfer. Truck is loaded with deep boxes, tops, comb, feed jars (sugar water) and 5 frame nuc boxes with strong, thriving colonies.
Looks like we have a nectar flow! The bees in the cell builder hive built this comb under the hive top in less than 24 hours. (There were two empty frame slots. They filled in that area with their own comb. ..busy ladies!)
Grafting Queens
photos by Jennifer Magli
A frame of brood with day old larvae is selected from a breeder queen. Plastic cell cups are primed with royal jelly. Recently hatched larvae are carefully scooped up with a grafting tool and placed on the jelly in the cell cups. A frame holding three rows of cell cups is then placed into a “starter” hive (queenless). The same frame may be moved to a “cell builder” hive (queen-right) in a day or two. The fully drawn and capped queen cells will be placed into a mating nuc in ten days where the bee will hatch. In a few days the virgin queen will depart to mate with 10-30 drones and return to start her life as queen.
Fuel on Flickr.
Lighting and fueling the smoker with Pine needles