I finally had my first season of successful queen rearing thanks to you. I studied, tried, studied, tried, ect... This year I’ve been able to triple my colonies from queen rearing and early swarm management. And..I was able to maintain good original colony strength for honey thanks again to your wise advise on early swarm management. I’m finally making it happen. Thanks from PA
I appreciate you putting these videos out. I’ve watched all of your queen rearing videos multiple times. This is my first year to graft queens and I find your videos invaluable.
As always, great video. So grateful for your passion, realism, and humility. We started our first backyard hive this spring with a Randy Oliver nuc and queen. She's laying like crazy, they're building like crazy, and they've started on the second brood box. Right now, they love our neighbor's avocado, and the lavender and sunflowers in our yard.
@@kamonreynolds We live in Orange County, and every spring OC Beekeeping Supply takes orders and drives down nucs and packages from Oliver's place in the foothills. It's pretty funny - Oliver won't take checks or cards, so we swap cash and do an exchange in the parking lot.
Even with "only" 15 cells you will need 15 hives, 15 frames of brood and 15 frames of food - that's a lot of resources for a small apiary. This method is perfect for anyone with fewer than 25 or so production hives - and scaling up is as simple as running additional setups. Thumbsup!
Exactly my problem. I raised 14 queens my first try this spring already, but I only have 2 hives. I gave a few away to some other keeps they all didn't go to waste.
This method is perfect for anyone that has any bees. It is nice just to be able to replace a queen if needed. Dead queens in alcohol will make good lures for swarm traps.
The fewer grafts you try to start at a time the better they get built - so don't start way more than you will be able to use. However you will learn a lot and your apiary will benefit if you keep a cell builder and mating nucs going for several cycles. In particular its really good to have ripe cells ready 2 and a half to 3 weeks after placing a batch to replace failed takes - be sure and add more brood though or the mating nuc will probably crash before it gets going. FE 8 grafts, 6 pretty nice cells 6-28-20 photos.app.goo.gl/dvbhFW411QoN67NKA
I dont mean to be off topic but does anyone know of a method to log back into an instagram account?? I was stupid lost my account password. I would love any tricks you can give me.
Thanks to your inspiration and encouragement I tried grafting for the first time. My Q cells turned out quite runty compared to yours but I LOVED the experience. Obviously did not have sufficient bee population. Had 5 of 6 emerge and now we wait! Thanks again for your encouragement and willingness to break the process down to an understandable level.
I didn't say how many grafted larvae it took to get six cells LOL....let's just say I mistakenly started with two bars (JZBZ). I'm still VERY satisfied with the results!! Thanks for the comment.
Hi Kamon, I recently found your channel and have found it to be enjoyable and informative. It's currently Fall here in Australia, so I'm waiting for spring to come around before I try some of the ideas that I have picked up from you. Just wanted to say thankyou.
Kamon, love your videos. I'm a first time beekeeper and I would love to see a video of how to tell the difference between capped broad cells and capped honey cells. New wax and everything looks the same.
Thank you so much for this video. I always wanted to build a box like that, so I can transfer the brood from property to property without chilling the brood......perfect . How many watts do those light bulbs have and what is the humidity needed? You could get silicone heating pads from ebay or amazon with the same wattage as the bulbs have that use less room this way and those red silicon heating pads are usually moister or water proof. Say hi to your kids and wife. Thank you.
Ive taken a cue from Joe May and use a pheasant or turkey feather to brush bees, especially when a delicate touch is needed. Pisses the bees off a lot less.
It can take a few days to start laying well. She may even lay 2-3 eggs in a cell for a week. If she isn't laying good after a week or so then there are some issues
Did you peel off the burr comb on that end cell or did you just scrap it? I know you are really REALLY busy at this time of year, but it would be interesting to see how you would harvest such a queen cell, or the reasons why you didn't, if it was for any reason other than you just didn't have the time, considering everything else you need to accomplish every day to keep your business going forward. Love your videos, I have learned so much from you. Thank you (and Laurel too!) for taking the time and effort to produce them.
@@kamonreynolds I am surprised considering she comes from feral unknown genetics and you have so many others, though, pleased too, and I hope she pays off big. Looking forward to following her. You could name your queen lines to make them easier for us to follow them ( example - Vino Farms has a Balboa line). She could be named after some wood nymph or fairy, considering her origins.
Hi Kamon & Laurel, thanks for the videos. I really want to give this a try but don’t have the resources to set up a lot of mating nucs. I’ve got some colonies I want to requeen with my rockstar’s daughters. What are your thoughts on pinching the old queen and just dropping in a cell? If it’s ok, what’s the process?
That would work well but some won't come back this is why having a few extras going in a simple nuc will get you what you need. Sometimes I get 80-90% flybacks sometimes 60% Always raise more than what you need or you won't have enough.
It's best to place ripe cells into queenless hives (mating nucs) on the 9th or 10th day after grafting. If you wait for them to emerge you still need to hive them as soon as possible. Within hours if possible.
Just was re-watching the video and was wondering if you could put the queen cell frame in a empty hive body and use some Honey Bee Gone ( or some other product ) just to clear off the nurse bees?
Kamon, I’ve seen pictures of individual cells placed in the top of a small round cylinder (looks sorta like a woman’s hair roller) inside an incubator. Do they not leave those in the cylinders to hatch? If so then does those beekeepers just place the virgin Queen in a hive or mating nuc for her to get mated? Is there any advantage to this method?
They have advantages (like seeing you have a healthy well developed virgin) Also some folks love doing virgin intros. I am not one of those guys. I have done it and it does work. But from the moment the virgin emerges from the cell she is running out of time to get mated. Also I think banking virgins is stress to a degree. I am nowhere near an expert on using virgins but I think using cells and letting them emerge into a nice nuc is the best. Many times you can just dip a virgin in honey and drop her in the mating nuc and come bcak when she should be mated and laying
Possibly but my JZBZ setup is fixed and it is so fast and handy I can live with some webbing. I think using a thinner frame is the ticket and I hope to try it soon
Extra curricular activity for the kids: when you do not have Queen cells in the incubator the kids can hatch chicks! Haha! Or make one for them out of an old ice chest like I did!:)
Last year I paid for queens. First to arrive were beautiful and unfortunately dead. The replacements were so small I couldn’t tell if a queen was in there. They solicited absolutely zero response from any hive even ones with queens. I then ordered a queen from another highly reputable source. Paid for the queen and shipping and this queen is going to have to be replaced. The hive has dwindled to two frames from a double deep. A lot of money lost.
Kamon, I have been grafting for the last two weeks but I have been unsuccessful I think because the temperature her in Maryland has dropped in the high thirties at night a day or two after I have grafted. Am I right about this as fare a the temperatures being to cold at night? It's finally starting to warm up in to 50 to 60 degrees at night and 70 to 80 degrees during the day. I grafted today hopefully I will be successful this time.
There are some professionals who use it with great success, but for me it is too labor intensive. I have very little experience with it. It adds so many steps to the process and since I already knew how to graft I never tried it again.
how long can you sustain such a colony before workers start laying drone brood? I originally had the same idea to keep a queenless hive/starter . However i was explained a better method.
Hi Kamon, Thanks again for some more great info. In your videos you favour removing cells at day 10 to place in mating nucs. Just wondering your thoughts in regards to why not remove the cells at day 9 or even 8 if a person has fears of a virgin hatching early? Will it hurt the queen cell if you place in mating nuc a couple of days earlier?
I know its an older video, but do you (or anyone) have a method to be able to catch queens out of the jzbz cups? Just incase one gets out before your able to get to them?
I could use some OAV between putting cells in. Perhaps I could do them while they are capped but you just have to be careful because quick stress can reduce the number of cells accepted (and sometimes they will tear a perfectly good cell down)
Thanks for the videos. This was my day for going into the incubator, too. Could you describe how to grade your cells? On my today's graph I noted varying amounts of royal jelly. Is this a function of nutrition? I used pollen combs and a small strip strip of ultra bee. I use cloake board, and use I one gallon internal feeder. Still learning, thanks for the videos.
I want left over jelly in the top on the cups after they have stopped eating. Also I want BIG cells. Some say it doesn't matter but little things make big differences in queen quality!
