I tried the Nicot system last year (2019). When I went back to harvest my cell cups and release my best queen, I found the queen entirely gone, cell cups empty, and the hive full of emergency queen cells. I got new queens, alright, but I didn't need to spend a bunch of money on the Nicot kit.
Blaine Nay I have also tried this , am also having the same problem, with them removing the eggs, & also tried with just hatch larva, can anyone suggest how to get over this problem please.
happend the same to me and the reason for that is b.c your queen is small try diffrent hive and the cell cups emty ? ofc they wold be empty b.c the queen went back to diffrent frame to ley eggs
@@rooker7993 so there are few things that you need 1st do it after 24-26th april avoid doing it in august b.c it wont work 2nd place the box in the frame and surround it with new wax foundation arround it or... take frame cut the wax and put the box which wold be dificult b.c the wires... anyway 3 before puting the queen open the box and leave the lids of the box open so they can clean it bees dont like the smell of plastic spray it with alot of sugar water or honey dont remove the cups just spay it like that also the lids and put it into the hive btw 7-10 days some say 5 days but to be sure put it for 10 4 put the quen into the box chek on the next day if its there some queens are small and run out to lay larvas on there previos place so chek it 5 the queen has to be btw 24 and 72 hours into the cage 6 when you open the cage you need to see if there is royall jelly into the cups if not it wont work dont cage the queen again into the same hive change it 7 when there is royal jelly take the cups with out touching them like the guy into the video is doing also dont shake tilt or leave them on direct sun light = death 8 dont be greedy put btw 6 up to 12 quenn cups per hive 9 chek the calendar day when you have to cage the new queens 10 the most importent with which i shold have started with the hive needs to be strong REALLY STRONG you need to provide it with alot of sugar sirup 2-4 days before you start up to 20 days untill the caging of new queen cups but not only syrup if you can use also a protein vitamin hard food thats it wish you luck !!! 1st time is always hard just dont give up
suggestion, My friend uses the Nicot system, you will want to feed sugar water and a mix of pollen substitute and honey ( make a Paste) to your Cell starter/ finisher hive, they will need ten times the amount of food to raise the queen cells.
Thanks... I used Michael Palmers method for my starter finisher. I moved the capped cells to my incubator today. They looked amazing. I moved 33 capped cells. I'll be uploading the video later tonight.
Just got mine, cell cups lil sloppy,u have any trouble with that?My cell bar feels good and snug,knock off Nicot,few things I noticed lil cheap but I usually graft and thought I'd check it out before I spent a lot of money..just found ur channel and subbed
Baddest Bees No I didn’t have any issues with the equipment. My main issue with the system is they tend to want to replace the queen after she has been in the cage. They think something is wrong with her. I strictly graft all my queens now days. It’s a fun system to work with and if I were a person that just couldn’t graft it would be my next choice as there are ways to not have them replace the queen.
I put it in a colony prior to caging the queen to allow them to polish the cell cups and build comb around the nicot cage. The queen deposited eggs in the comb while they were building the comb out.
Steve Jackson Well I kinda depends... If the comb is already drawn out around the cage then 24 hrs will be fine. If you don’t have drawn comb around it then you will want to leave it in for several days or give it to a strong colony so they will draw it out quickly. You can also take a drawn frame and cut out a cage size section and then install the cage. Once you have the comb drawn around it you only need to put the cage in the day before with new cell cups for the bees to polish and you’ll be good to go. Are you planning to give it a go?
I found you channel today and subscribed, Can I ask, how ling do you leave the queen in the cage before you remove the cage and retrieve the larva? Thanks, Phillip Hall
Thanks, you did a good job with yours. 33 was really good! I read the comments and think I read where you are grafting now. Therefore I assume you like grafting better than this system? I am learning, is why I ask and since you have been there and done it both ways. You probably could shed a lot of light. Thanks again.
phillip hall yes I prefer grafting. The nicot system works great but the problem I had was the bees would decide something was wrong with the queen after she had been in the cage for several days so they would supersede her. It’s not a big deal that they do that but there wasn’t really anything wrong with the queens. If I were to do it again I would take that queen out and make a split with her in a different colony and give colony she was in a queen cell. It’s a great system but now that I can graft I much prefer to do it. It just my preference both methods are great and I’d encourage you to learn how to do both. Did you purchase the book? If not you should, it will help you to do it the correct way. The book does talk about them superseding the queen. If you follow the book you’ll be successful with it. Good luck to you.
Yes, I can see how that will be a problem. I just set the system up. Placed the queen in the cage yesterday. How did, or, were you able to straighten this problem out afterwards? I have this bridge yet to cross and it’s I don’t want to stop the progress already made now. Wonder if I check out the cage after a couple days, which will be tomorrow, and see eggs, will it be alright to turn her loose and let her go back to the bees all the time hoping the nurse bees will go ahead and add royal jelly to the new eggs without her in the cage? Even again, thanks. Phillip
phillip hall I didn’t do anything I just let them supersede her. I would pull her and start a new colony with her. If you see eggs tomorrow you could try releasing her. How many days has she been in so far?
i have a question, the black cell bases on the frame how did you mount those to the frame, why did u only do 2 rows why didnt you have a 3rd row? i have the nicot system (or similar) as well and preparing to do queen rearing in 2018.
I mounted the bases using a pneumatic stapler. No real reason for only two rows. I would think you would be fine using 3 rows if you like. I think you'll like using the system. I'm extremely happy with my results.
Hi..I have some questions...where are you put cells Witherspoon eggs,in new hive with Queen or without Queen?how old are bees on hive where you put cells Witherspoon eggs???tnx
I put the newly hatched larvae in a colony that I removed the queen. 10 Days prior to adding the newly hatch larvae I added several frames of capped brood to this colony so that when I added the larvae from the Nicot the colony would have tons of young nurse bees. This is all in the Nicot Book you can purchase on Amazon or Ebay. It's worth buying and reading. I am very very happy with my results :)
Commissarius I’ve never had brood on this frame outside of the Nicot itself. If If she did lay eggs in the surrounding comb I would just sacrifice it as I don’t want to leave the Nicot in the colony any longer than needed. I don’t want to give them time to gum up the plastic box.
Just how did you setup your cell starter finisher? please explain in detail, I am thinking of getting a Nicot system to use my self this year. Like you I am selling Nucs and Honey.
10 days prior I added a full 8 frame box of emerging brood. This way when it was time to add the cells to the builder there would be loads and loads of nurse bees. 5 days before I went through the colony and moved all the capped brood, older brood and frames of honey to the lower box and all the frames with young larva, eggs and empty frames to the upper box. I added the queen to the upper box and installed queen excluders to the top and bottom of the upper box. I then put 2 honey super's back on top. Lastly... the morning of moving the cell cups I moved the upper box with the queen in it behind the cell builder on a new bottom board and faced it the opposite direction. I then moved the bottom brood box off the stand and place one of the top honey Super's on the bottom board. This super was full of uncapped honey/nectar (this simulates a nectar flow). I then placed the bottom brood box on top of the super and then place the other super on top of it. In the center of the brood box a placed the best frame of pollen I had. It was loaded with pollen. The colony was now hopelessly queenless. I left them that way for 3 hrs. I came back that afternoon and placed the cell bar in the center of the box right next to the pollen frame. Also... I used a shaker box with a queen excluder attached to the bottom and shook all the bees into the brood box through it to be sure there wasn't a second queen in the colony. That was a lot to say hopefully you follow it all.
Later tonight I'll be uploading a video showing us moving the capped cells to our incubator. Sometime in May I plan to do a series of videos showing more step by step details from beginning to end using the Nicot.
CZBG if the queen is laying eggs in cell cup after queen will be released in nicot box and wait for 2 r 3 days nusee bees are feeding some royal jelly after 2 days queen will be shifted to another hive and the box will be queen less after that bees are working from cell cups in frame
