Where to purchase Kutiks Honey
Mating
| These cells are well-fed. The beginning of comb building by the bees is an indication of surplus feed. Syrup is fed continuously to the cell builder and cell finisher colonies. These queens ought to be fully developed and ready for mating. |
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In preparation for emergence of the virgin queen, the
workers chew away the wax at the tip, exposing the fibrous cocoon. This is a good sign
that the queen is alive inside. Sometimes you can hear the young queen piping. Poorly fed queens will have underdeveloped ovaries and will have a shorter productive life. |
| Each finished cell is placed into a nuc that we have made. There are various size nucs. Some are four or five frame boxes of deep comb, which can be directly converted to full sized hives, by the addition of additional frames of comb. We also have small boxes which use shallow or medium frames, which are normally just used to get the queen mated, then she is harvested and placed in a queen cage, and another cell installed. |
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These nuc boxes are regular deep brood boxes, converted to double nucs by the addition of a partition in the middle and a special bottom board with an entrance at one end for one nuc and at the other end for the other nuc. The painted patterns on the boxes are to aid the workers, and the queen on return from her mating flight, to identify their own boxes. They are also spread out, with young trees and bushes to serve as landmarks for the young queens. |
Image copyright 2002, by David L. Green
The young queens will hatch from their cells, emerging at the tip. A cell like the one above is what we want to see. The cell below did not hatch, but was torn apart from the side and the young queen inside was killed by a queen that emerged ahead of her.
Image copyright 2002, by David L. Green
This is one we don't want to see. If this happens in the cell finisher, we either had a swarm cell that we did not notice, which was older than our grafted cells, or we waited too long. One hatched queen can quickly destroy all the other cells.
If it happens in the nuc, it indicates either a queen was already present, or an older cell somehow was present in the nuc.
The virgin queens must be mated within a few days of their emergence. If bad weather prevents their mating flight, they will be ruined for life. Each queen will fly on a sunny mid day, and mate on the wing with several drones, hopefully 12-15. If she successfully mates a sufficient number of times, she will be well supplied with sperm cells for a long productive life. If she mates with only a couple drones, she may start laying normally, but fail in a few weeks.
To be continued....this is
a work in progress.
The next steps will be added as the season progresses.
Kutik's Honey Farm
285 Lyon Brook Rd. Norwich, NY 13815 607-336-4105, Fax: 607-895-6298