I got myJZ bee cups and Chinese grafting tools. I don't have comb made for nuks so waiting till the Spring. The video is much appreciated especially you explaining what the bees need.
Let me offer some advice.. make sure your Donor hive has alot of pollen, if not feed pollen patties..so they are in copius amounts of jelly to start with. It makes grafting alot easier too.Not that you need advice lol I just meant here's a good trick ..
The more young bees the better when it comes to queen cell building but yes it can be done with fewer but would be best to do proprtionately less queen cells.
Is it possible to make or use a cell builder with only 2 or 3 frames of bees, if you aren't making a ton of queens? When I read about cell builders they seem to emphasize that you have to have it be massive and packed out for optimum efficiency. I get and understand why they'd say that. But I'm not mass producing tons of queens and don't have tons of resources. So I wonder if you could do it with less if the number of queens made isn't high? But also if the colony size is small then I worry that might make smaller queens also...? (And many people think itty bitty queens won't last long). People don't also say the minimum to get away with, for smaller numbers.
Though my experience is limited I believe it is all about relative numbers of bees to cells. So a breeder wanting to make 45 cells twice per week a big population is required...if you want to make 15 cells once I would say not so much. I see Ian steppler is using a 6 frame nuc making 45 cells this year. I plan to use a 5 frame nuc this year.
@@BeekeepingwithTheBeeWhisperer Thank you. I've also heard of good results with 5 frame boxes/nucs. Your experience is very good in my mind so far. But I like that you were being humble about it.
