Split hives, mating nucs and queen cells (100th post!)

I have been avoiding this post because I wanted to make it 'special' since it is my 100th post. That's right, this is my 100th post. What I have written about in the past 99 posts, I am not sure. I hope that the few people who stumble onto my blog enjoy what I have been up to over the last couple of weeks.

I am attempting to increase my hive numbers to be 5 hives total. I am also trying to replace some queens in my remaining hives. I am trying to do this the cheapest way possible as well. I understand the benefits of just buying a queen and doing splits and putting the mated queen in a candy cage and being done with it. This year I am interested in making my own queens. The hive at my farm is fairly mediocre. They seem to be aggressive and the queen is failing. So that hive was split up into (2) 4 frame splits; and (2) 7 frame nucs. I also made (4) mating nucs which required a cup of bees in each.

How many hives do you see?

This is a mating nuc; which is made out of injected polystyrene. It has a built in hive feeder and an entrance disc to open and close.

My one successful mating nuc

I purchased 9 queen cells from Ferguson Apiaries in Hensall, Ontario. They are within a reasonable driving distance from where I work and live. The cells are capped queens which are ready to emerge in a day or two. The cells need to be stored in a warm thermos. This was achieved by placing warm water bottles in wood shavings and just dropping the cells into the shavings. Bill Ferguson claims that queen cells have an 80% success rate; I am not sure if that means that only 80% of the cells will emerge or if 80% will be accepted, etc. That may be a question for the next time I see him.

Queen cell pushed into foundation

How do you use a queen cell? Well, you push it into the foundation on a frame that is centered in the hive. Make sure you do not damage the cell when handling and that you do not obstruct the queens exit.

Queen cell hatched and removed

The bees add wax to secure it to the foundation. I am fairly happy with how easy they were to use.

Brood with chalkbrood! Did I expose the frame too long?

The hive which was at my other site had tons of swarm cells in it. The hive was also brimming over with bees. So I split it and put the 'old queen' in the new location. I saw some swarm cells which a queen had emerged from, so I placed another queen cell into that hive in the hopes of getting the genetics I wanted. The next week I could see that the old queen at the new location is still laying eggs. One thing that scared me was that there is a fair amount of chalkbrood in the hive. This may be due to the fewer bees in the hive. I will continue to monitor the situation. I gave the new location a lot of capped brood so that their population will catch up to the original home.

New eggs

It is difficult to see the eggs, but they are there. They look like little grains of rice. The queen hasn't laid in all the cells in this particular picture.