I sure am happy you are bringing the black bees back. There are absolutely no more left nor available in North America. I would say Apis Mellifera Mellifera is extinct here. The last one seen here was a fossil found in 2017 in a dry lake bed. They named her apis mellifera neoartica but she is absolutely identical to apis mellifera mellifera. The last living ones in North America were in the 1990s.
The cell holder works great for removing the queen cups, simply remove it from the frame and push it onto the cell cup and bingo! lift and remove and put it back in the frame :)
Very well done overview of the Nicot system, thank you. I understand why you recommend using tweezers to load the cell cups into the cage and that seems ver good advice. However, I don't know why you also use tweezers to transfer cups to the cell builder frame. I thought the cream coloured holders were meant to be pushed on to the selected cell cups and then that combined unit was pressed firmly on to the brown base mount. I see that you have the cream parts already mounted on the brown base units on your cell builder frame. Is there a reason for this?
I can't wait to try it unfortunately I think I'll have to wait until next year and see if I'm capable of establishing a few strong colonies and a few nucs for mating. This really does look like the fun part of beekeeping.
I’m getting prepared for nxt year I’m guna give this a go after having to spend £50 on a new queen as I had a drone laying worker hive no queen. So hopefully I’ll be selling queens nxt year grate video thanks 😊
I think my friend you do not need a tweezer,you just can push the white base in to the buck of the cel cup and get it out of the sistem,and push it then on the brown base.I hope you understand.greetings from hellas.
I think your meant to use the white cup holders to pick up the egg cup without the tweezers, as I am shore the white cup holder will twist of and on to the frame so they must be the tool to pick up the egg cup and double as the final holder
Thanks for great video. How do you know it's the original nicot system please? also can you please tell me the name of the push in cage can't find it on EBAY
let me correct you in one thing the Nicot has to stay with out the queen not 2-3 days but 7-10 days as you said there are imitations of Nicot but imitation or not bees don`t like plastic so it has to stay longer time
Ps. Tip 2 : Firm Holding Cups ! Cups hold in better with a bit of Wax & Propolis is Rubbed onto that new Plastic surface. They fit better and stay Snug apparently. (Not drop out as you said 'could' happen with those lesser 'made' ones !) Worth a try. 😉
Hello Phil and thx for the video. I'm tring to use the NICOT system since 3 years ago. Results are really poor. My issue is that the Queen lays eggs; I can see them but before they hatch the bees clean the brown cups removing all the larvae. I tried with different queens, in different families and nucs; this year I tried with Carniolan bees (I have both Carniolan and Ligustica). No change. Brown cups are clean or with eggs. No larvae. Any suggestion? I loved the system as soon as I've seen it but now really I'm getting mad and I have to continue grafting! Thanks in advance
Thank you Phil..your video inspired me to purchase one a I did so. One question please: when the queen emerges into the hair roller cage...what are the procedures in inserting her in a queenless hive. Can I just set her free into the hive or cage or need to cage her with fondent as we would with a purchased mature fertile queen ? A very video would be very helpful for many. Thanks from Italy again Phil!
Phil. Tip : Another Video used a 'Spare' Cup "Holder" pushed onto a 'Cup' to "picked it up nice and easily. 👍 I've just bought this Nicot Set and hope to use it and this picking up 'trick' in the up and coming Bee Season. Just waiting for Winter to finish and have a go for real ! (I assume that Tip works, but hey its watching a RU-vid Video so I can't comment on its effectiveness !) Also : News :January 2023 Alas, Simon the Beekeeper is Closing his Shop ! 👀 Sale on now until March. He had his own Channel giving the sad News re Closure. 😢 I think it's the effect of Brexit : (is to much, & or complications of Rules and Regulations) for his Bee Business to continue ! I will miss his great Bee Items. 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝 Happy Beekeeping 2023 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝 Thanks for mentioning Nicot use in other Hives too. I have a Langstroth Horizontal Hive, a National and a Warre. Glad the Nicot Kit can work in all these Hive/Frame/Top Bar types. Nice. 😎
Great vid, and thanks for the pronunciation bit. I’m new to this and don’t understand why the queen needs to be sealed into the Nicot contraption. Why not just put it into the brood super without putting the clear plastic cover on? I’d appreciate some clarification. Thanks
It’s so you know the day she starts laying in the cells. If you just put it in the hive, there is no indication of laying start date. And that is the idea behind these. You put the queen in and then she starts laying in it pretty much straight away.
@@BarefootBeekeeper Thank you Phil from Italy. I was missing three caps, did order them , but would like to begin queen production tomororw. Have a great week. Great job.
Probably best if you just search eBay for "queen introduction cage", as links will not stay current for long and there may be different listings in your area.
Great stuff! Been interested in Bee keeping for years. Time to actually get around and do it. Any recommendation of species for an absolute novice in Scotland and given I believe winters are to get colder?
FYI, things that are "cheap, Chinese made" are made out of a substance called "Chinesium". Virtually every property you can think of - it has the worst quality of it.
Thanks Phil, I'm new to bees and found some great tips in this video. I hope to breed some queens eventually. The recommendation for the genuine system was a good one. If you're using the hair-roller cages and multiple queens emerge before you've moved them out will they all be fed by the nurse bees until that time?
Hi Phil, Recently purchased a Nicot queen rearing kit. On my first attempt found that the bees in the hopelessly queenless hive, had removed all of the eggs from the cups, and then made queen cells on a drawn comb frame. On my second attempt the bees just covered all of the cups over with comb. Any suggestions what I am doing wrong please.
Quite late response, if you haven't find any solutions yet to any of these problems my suggestions are: in order the bees to accept the plastic cells there should be no open brood in the hive and therefore no other option for them regarding raising a queen. For the funny comb drawing, I usually put a frame with wax foundation 1 frame away from the cells and the bees do most of their comb building there. Hope this makes sense.
Hello Philip, I live in bristol and I wish to use black bees, would you happen to know a queen rearer that would supply me with a nuc or queen? Regards Simon
Simon Curtis sorry I missed your question. We have had a delay in our black bee breeding programme due to a holdup with DNA testing, but we still hope to be able to supply some West Country black queens later this season.
In preparing to start queen production I'm watching and reading. After watching 2 videos, from 2 different British chap, I've decided to go with Nico. My question is: you only put 20 cups on that frame. There are many more than 20 on that Nico frame. Do you simply select 20 and discard the rest?
Usually, I will have several frames in use, so I can use multiples of 20, but otherwise, yes - select and discard. There will, in any case, be some cells that have no egg, and sometimes some with multiple eggs.
Phil Chandler oh my, I've decided to avoid trying grafting as my old eyes aren't reliable...now I have to determine 1egg, 2 eggs or no eggs. Well I won't be needed many queens so I suppose 20 cups should give me enough success to satisfy my needs. Thanks
@@stevejackson5062 you could consider cell-punching as an alternative for small numbers. Roger Pattison swears by it. See here www.dave-cushman.net/bee/cellpunch.html
Phil Chandler, thank you for the reference and I love the concept but despite reading it 3 times and studying the photographs I can not understand the technique to a strong enough level to feel confident. The NICOT system I understand so I'll go in that direction.
Instead of saying that your going to make more sense of something, figure it out before you make the video so it becomes more efficient in achieving your goal in explaining the queen rearing system. Great system BTW
Use the cell holder to remove the cell. Press the cell holder onto the cell and then put the cell holder and cell on the cell bar.no need to handle the cell cup and fumble around with it.
If it's cheap, says Nicot and ships from China, I'll bet it's not a Nicot 🤓 None of that stuff will interchange with the Nicot stuff. I bought both 🤐 was disappointed to say the least.
virgil warren They are mostly a good fit, but only if you buy all kit from one supplier. I have been known to use pieces torn from blades of grass to take up the slack.
Instructions say to use all new cups each time. There are 110 cells in the system, so she could lay in all 110 cells, then you transfer to your finisher system. I assume you don't create 110 queen cells each time, I'd guess at most 20. Does that mean the 90 cells you don't use just get tossed out and use 110 brand new cells next time? Or can you re-use the 90 that didn't get made in to queen cells? Thanks for the video. Very well done!
I typically choose 40 to start queens and allow the others to continue to develop into workers. I have three cages, so can still use them continuously in series. You can re-use cells, although they are fiddly to clean.
I've read you can re-use the cell cups but your success is diminished somewhat. So if you only need 10-20 cells and the queen only lays in a small margin of 20% it all works out. I've purchased the Nicot system and will be trying it out this week. Thank you for the great video, its great to hear from someone who has used it a few times.
This is probably obvious to almost everybody watching, but it wasn't obvious to me. What makes the bees decide that the bees in the queen cups are to be raised as queens?
@@BarefootBeekeeper Thank you very much for the reply. I've been trying to figure that out for awhile as I've been watching various bee videos over the last few weeks. I had no idea about the complexities of bee keeping before I started my little mini bee video binge. It started a few weeks ago when I took a macro image of a bee leaving a flower and started trying to figure out a little bit more about what was going on in the image. photos.app.goo.gl/51o22h3FkoJdt581A
I would add you should take a piece of wire like a single strand or a paperclip and add a drop of honey that has been mixed with some water so when the queen emerges she can eat or else she will die within about an hour.. very very little goes a long long way though I mean a very little or she'll have it all over her and get stuck she could even die from drowning if it covers her thorax and everything or damage her wings possibly
It is spelled "aluminium" and pronounced accordingly. "Nicot" is a French company, so we pronounce it "nee-co" as the French do. We pronounce "schedule" as "shed-yule". You can pronounce it any way that pleases you ;-)
Checkwalk Care You can put the cell frame above a queen excluder, along with frames of sealed brood and pollen, with the queen downstairs, or you can remove the queen and a couple of frames and make up a nuc to keep her safe while the cells are built.
Checkwalk Care ... you catch the queen from a queen right hive, put it in the nicot system, put the nicot-frame directly back in the hive, let her lay eggs and just remove the excluder side of the system to let her go back. all can be done in the hive, where the queen belongs to.
I tried them but none of the parts fitted properly and they were a pain to use. Given that the real thing is cheaper than buying just one queen, I think it is false economy to use cheap stuff, but if it works for you, then good luck.
Phil Chandler yeah Phil I agree with some stuff. I bought a suit off Fleabay now that was a mistake. But the nicot lookalike has reared me over 20 decent queens. So I can't fault it. I enjoy your videos
