# Queen right cell finisher



## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

Have you had success using queen right cell finishers? How did you do it?


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

keep the queen under the excluder, cells overtop


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## snl (Nov 20, 2009)

Ian said:


> keep the queen under the excluder, cells overtop


Yup!


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## MTN-Bees (Jan 27, 2014)

That's what I'm using this year. I have 3 deeps. The bottom 2 have the queen. The upper one has the cells with a queen excluder between the 2nd and 3rd deep. I've been using it as a queen right queen bank for the past couple of weeks while splitting hives and overwintered Nucs.


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## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

You don't need a box of honey as a buffer below the box with the cells?


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## MTN-Bees (Jan 27, 2014)

I don't- most of my honey frames are in the bottom deep. I rotate open brood to the upper box then place capped brood below the excluder every 7 to 10 days.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

don't feed or over feed the finisher...


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

I used a cloak board to get queenless start, and queenright finish with the same hive. My first round went well, and I had queens emerge into nucs mid week. Going to re-run the setup with another batch in a couple days. One issue I ran into, which all reading on the subject doesn't mention, the best time to raise queens is when there is a flow on, and we have a flow going. The reading suggests that once the batch of cells is ready, move the empty frames from the top down to the bottom to give the queen space to lay again. What it doesn't tell you, with a flow going, there wont be any empty frames in the top, while the cells are cooking, the bees will totally plug the top box with nectar and pollen.

It'll be a little more effort going the second round, I added a super so they have a little more space to store things, so I'll have to pull a super off any time I go to check on the cells. I have been debating putting the box with the cell bar above the super instead, not sure what the ramifications of that would look like.


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## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

Thank you, all.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I like one box between the queen and the cells. So it typically looks like a bottom box with a queen, an excluder, another box with brood or honey, and a top box with the cells and some open brood (to draw nurse bees up).


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## jonathan (Nov 3, 2009)

Good to put a couple of pollen frames in the top box as well.

This short paper by Wilkinson and Brown explains the concept well


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