# Cloak board and queen castle question



## deepster (Apr 14, 2016)

Hello to everyone from cold wintery Connecticut, I don't remember a March this cold ever!!!

I have decided to give queen rearing a try this year. I am going to try grafting and use a cloak board on a two-hive body, ten frame deep, production Hive as a starter finisher for my graft. Anyone who has had experience with this method, please give me any comments you might have. also thinking about setting up matting queen castles, by dividing my ten frame deep box into four equal sections, I guess two frames per section. I don’t have too many hives and Nucks, would like to get away with minimum donation to these queen castles, one frame of brood and one frame of honey with feeder bottle on top, would this work as matting Nuck?
Thank you in advance.
DP who is wishing spring was here!


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## Mapleone (Jan 10, 2016)

Deepster
I took a great class with Leslie at Bee Commerce last year. We learned a ton with great results. Unfortunately I have lost 7 hives this years cold winter. All signs lead to cluster size shrinkage and not being able to keep everything warm. Our next concern is the arrival of packages towards the end of this month.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

deepster, there are some variations on the them but sue cobey's method is pretty much what i follow:

http://www.delta-business.com/Calga...od of Queen Rearing and Banking Sue Cobey.pdf

the one modification i've made is i don't close the rear entrance all the way on day 2, but leave a small 'drone escape' opening. i find that most of the foragers still go back to using the mid entrance on the front.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

I have 4-section, 2-frame queen castles and they have done very well for me as mating nucs (every section got itself queen right on the first try from splits made around the Solstice.) I was pleasantly surprised that I didn't have trouble with robbing any of the times I used the queen castles, but that time frame is almost always during a very strong flow for me here (locust and basswood). (No robbing during the short occupation of the queen castle, but afterward all small colonies are supplied with robbing protection all season long. I put a very high value on a calm, well-ordered yard.)

The main limiting factor, however, is the difficulty in getting colonies that are started this small (as opposed to "standard" four- or five-frame nucs) in mid-late June up to a good wintering size, all on their own, I find they do best with steady donations of drawn comb and stores from other hives. Splits started earlier would probably do better (because of having more time), but then in my area you might have other issues related to chilly nights, etc.

I am not sure how many new colonies you'd like to try to make, but my advice would be to not get too far ahead of your existing resources. If your goal is just four more colonies there are easier ways to get four than setting up a starter finisher, etc., and grafting. Simply making two splits apiece from two other hives using a Snelgrove board and notching cells on more than one frame (OTS-style) in each of the upper sections will easily give you four divisions to stock a queen castle. And allow you then redirect any surplus resources of bees and frames back to the parent hives while the queen castle's starts get themselves hatched and mated. This keeps the parent hives strong and able to make combs for subsequent donations to the splits all season long. 

Grafting is a fascinating technique to play around with but it may be over-scale for a project that has an end-goal of only four splits. In my experience even OTS-style notching results in an inordinate number of queen cells. 

You'll need to make up a special bottom board for the queen castle that has an exit on each side. I would paint the sides of the queen castle a different color on each side to help with queen orientation. I have used castles that have had just feed bags for inner covers, but I find that ones with separate, four-piece wood inner covers (just strips of 1 X wood, not with rims or ventilation holes) more likely to result in four queen-right sections. (I think feed bag covers may not provide as secure a one-queen-to-a-section isolation.) I put the two weakest (relatively speaking) splits in the middle sections. And I have pieces of 2" insulation foam (painted to match the colors of the sides) that I install before any cool, or even just not-warm, nights. And a foam piece to lay on top of the tele, too.

I find splits in a queen castle to be very endearing little colonies and very easy to work (though as a rule I keep pretty much out them after set up until expected queenright date, except a quick check a day or so after setting them up to make sure they have retained enough bees to make a go of it.) They taught me how astoundingly resilient even a tiny bee colony can be. While they might do OK on their own for the rest of the season, I find a steadily feeding-in drawn combs (perhaps with some light resources) throughout the summer keeps them booming right along. And it has little cost to my other big hives. I get the nucs grown-out without using special nuc boxes by employing wood follower boards and foam pieces to take most of the space, at first, in regular deep boxes. Then as the nuc grows - and/or as I add a donated comb from time to time - over the course of the summer I just keep pulling out some of the foam pieces, and finally the follower boards. I think having a cozy, custom-sized space all summer long reduces the energy costs (both heating and cooling) to the new colony. My end-of-season goal for a new nuc is eight well-occupied-by-bees frames, which combined with a final donation of up to four frames (honey- or syrup- filled) gives me a triple 4 x 4 x 4 nuc (solid honey in top story) that invariably winters well and comes on strong the next year. Of course I am making these for my own use, not for sale otherwise I would keep them as double 4s. I like to have all my colonies strong (for their respective sizes) and secure in their premises, and I value that over just raw numbers of increases that may struggle along, attract pests, provoke robbing and in the end wind up just being troubling dinks that some people would just shake out or combine. You know that often-quoted advice: "take your losses in the fall"? That's a smart move, but I think a _smarter_ move is to reduce the risk of having weak colonies by not making too much increase just on spec. 

Have fun with your project this summer - making new colonies is my favorite thing. It's so exciting!

I am really sick of winter by now, too. Single digit temps at night and a fair amount of snow still on the ground. And my girls were out orienting and collecting water from snow melt yesterday in temps in the low-mid 30s, so I know they are impatient for spring, too. Just need to keep the feed on them, and then next week, start a little pollen patty, too. All this swarm-catching and split-making chatter from the south and CA just makes me grumpy.

Nancy


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## deepster (Apr 14, 2016)

Great replies guys thank you.
Nancy
I like to requeen all my hives and Nucs so may be as many as 16 queens I need, setting up cloak board and castles is a overkill for this many queens?
thanks
DP


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

No, not if you are planning for that many new queens, perhaps the majority of them just being new queen cells placed in colonies after culling the existing queen, without making new colonies out of them.

But the question is why you'd want to replace all your queens in one go? How could they all be duds? And what makes concentrating on the genetics of the drones in your area _of one particular year_ worth that much effort? 

I would also prefer a varying-age assortment of queens simply so all the colonies aren't all going to want to swarm/supercede in one year down the line. It would spread the work load around better, I think, as well as maintain steadier over-all honey-production.

I have never replaced a queen - I always let the bees figure out the logistics, need and timing of that. But my bees are all from swarms that arrived here on their own initiative, so they are local mutts, already.

Nancy


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## deepster (Apr 14, 2016)

Nancy,

Ok, please tell me what is the correct approach, If I want post summer solstice queen in all my hives and Nucs, totaling 16. when do I start and when do I stop making queens and what approach do I take?
Thank you.


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## deepster (Apr 14, 2016)

Nancy
I have been warned against giving pollen patty during the wintry weather reason being chilled broad. I fight hard to stop myself as I really like my bees to takeoff. I noticed you are planning on giving some pollen patty, how do you approach this and does chilled broad concern you?


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Deepster:

Last question, first:

I start giving pollen patty (as opposed to winter patty which is a different thing altogether and which I have been providing for a month already) on my husband's birthday, which is next Friday. There is nothing apiculturally special about that date, but it is easy for _me_ to remember. I teach my students a different mnemonic: no pollen _patty_ before St. Patty's Day, which up here, north of Albany, NY is a date everybody knows. 

We can have very erratic springs (even more bizarrely erratic than last year when it was May in February, and March in May - and not just for the odd day here and there, but for weeks in a row.) Even in normal years we can still have a killing frost a week before Memorial Day. So I try to add pollen only when I can count on getting back in regularly to replenish on schedule because once started I don't stop it again until reliable supplies appear in mid May. I've read that bees judge their brood sizes on the basis of pollen availability so I don't want give them mixed signals. And for sure I want my bees to have ample pollen through the tricky period in early spring when lack of enough good pollen can promote development of EFB. 

But you asked how to do that w/o risk of chilled brood? There is no reason to have chilled brood if all you do is pop the top and set down a patty on top of the frames within the feeding rim (my feeding rims are also my upper entrances). Yesterday I added winter patty at 35F, when it was calm. But my bees had been out flying and orienting for a while before I started. I usually aim for slightly higher temps but I was already a few days late due to the last (I hope!) of the nor'easters that blew through here last week. Here's a picture just before I set the patty down on top of the frames. You can see the remnant of the last patty and ordinarily I'd be tidying things up more, removing the paper, etc., but it was colder yesterday than than I like when I have the hive open:








To put the size and position of this colony in context, here's what you can't see in the first shot - an inch and half of bees hanging down from the inner cover:






These are bees not needed down in the frames below where there is a fair amount of brood, which is protected by the bees in the seams. The bees on the inner cover are just loafing around in a warm spot in the hive. 

Because I have been feeding steadily since Valentine's Day, these long-lived winter bees are used to me by now and quite calm about my sudden appearances. They rarely react when I open the top, or lift the quilt box, so most of them simply stay put while I do my thing. I give them a tiny puff of smoke beforehand as a polite knock on the door.

Next Saturday, it will be in the 40s so I will take the time to clean up the accumulated wax paper from the last two weeks of winter patties, add another winter patty and also add about a 3" x 3" slab of pollen sub. This colony is probably strong enough to eat that up in a week. But if not, I will remove the remnant and provide a fresher, but _smaller_ piece until I get to right quantity where they will eat it up in 7 or 8 days, which is fast enough that freshly-laid SHB eggs will not have hatched before it is all consumed. (Too bad fresh SHB eggs aren't like caviar for the bees.)

For reference: I usually make sugar bricks for winter chow but illness and laziness this winter kept me on the commercial feed. I use Dadant winter patty. The pollen sub I use is Global 15% pollen. I buy both from Betterbee.

Let's see if those pictures worked. it's been a long time - and on a different laptop -since I tried to add any pics.

ETA: The pics worked, so that's good.

Nancy


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## deepster (Apr 14, 2016)

Nancy
As I mentioned I would love to feed pollen patty to my bees but I was afraid of getting them into trouble in cold weather. I have understood from your post that if the colony is strong enough and they have feed I can through in the pollen patty and encourage brood rearing! starting next weekend, is that correct?
Also if you share with me your small scale queen rearing and how you decide to replace the queen, I would really appreciate it, no rush, when ever you have time, as you can imagine with this cold we have plenty of time. 
Thanks
DP


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

DP,

Yes, that is correct - next weekend would be fine to add some pollen patty, if your weather is at least as good as this past one. I wouldn't add a slab a big as shown in the picture, though. That was winter patty, not pollen patty.

I only raise new queens in conjunction with starting new colonies - or, occasionally, to fix emergencies in existing colonies that for some reason the bees aren't fixing on their own (or they aren't fixing the problem the way I like). I don't routinely replace queens due to age, or on some pre-set schedule.

While I think there may be some truth in the belief that queens raised after the solstice are good queens I wouldn't replace an otherwise healthy, strong queen just to get one raised by a certain date on the calendar - even for something as cosmic as the summer solstice. For one thing the date, June 21, falls at very different places in the _foraging year_ depending on where you are on the Earth, which turns that queen/solstice relationship into a pretty arbitrary one. 

In the South you might be nearing the end of the main flow and approaching a dearth, whereas where I am, it's just before the sumac, black locust, and basswood triad which is my biggest flow in a season that will continue to provide a steady foraging level all summer right up to the start of the fall surge with goldenrod and asters. You are probably a bit more toward the southern model of a summer dearth than I am. I have a beekeeping friend in southeastern PA and he gets very little compared to what I can get in June/July and (most) Augusts. 

What I want for my ideal queen-rearing season is steady warm nights and days and an excellent supply of pollen and nectar over the previous weeks so the queen (who will always get the best chow, anyway) _and the drones_ she will mate with have always had lots of highly nutritious food when they were larvae. In general I want most colonies in my area (not just my own) to have had such rich, easy, pickings in the previous month that they were willing to invest in making a lot of drones, too. (Drone brood was once colorfully described to me as being analogous to having a big new pick-up in your garage - you don't invest in one if you are barely getting by.)

I have lived on my farm for three decades (long before I had bees under my care) and I know that I often have particularly nice, calm weather in the weeks before and after the solstice. So this period will be optimal for making mating flights, with few weather delays. And of course the days are as long as they will be for the whole year so there is more time for flights.

This is also just before the peak appearance of dragonflies which occurs here around the end of June/ July 4th. Dragonflies are flying-bee predators, so one could scarf up my queen while she was out on her mating flights, ending the month-long effort to raise her. (My bee yard is on a small rise above a large marsh, and dragonflies abound here.)

And, finally, I know that if I can get a nice strong split to be queenright before the end of June that in most cases they will be well set-up by the end of the season. And they may only need a couple of donated combs to make them up a into the triple 5 or 6 that I like to winter a new colony on.

I find that making splits (and getting some emergency-cells for a few extra queens beyond the split) is most easily done using a Snelgrove board on a strong colony. If I wanted to mature few additional queens, in addition to the new colony above the SB, I might also make up some two-frame splits from the initial Snlegrove split, to be placed in a four-section queen castle a few days afterward. I would get those two-frame queens out and mated before culling an existing queen and combining her former colony with one of the two-framers. Or if I was willing to gamble on getting a particular queen cell matured, then out and mated, I might cull the old queen and then give the bereft bees a frame with one or two nice queen cells on it as a peace offering. 

Using a Snelgrove board leaves the original, and the new split part of the colony temporarily living overhead, calm and mostly untroubled by the catastrophe visited upon them. And if you haven't done much splitting before, I find SB-split is very forgiving if you mess the process up in some way. It is easy to rectify mistakes in frame division, or queen placement. It is another piece of equipment to buy, but having a Snelgrove board on hand in the swarm season gives you better options if you see the bees are getting a little swarm-preppy looking, or even if they jump the gun and start making swarm cells. In both cases if you act at once, you can forestall the loss of your bees to the trees (as well as get the doings for some additional queen raising) even if the bees started the party a little earlier than you would have liked. So I see the Snelgrove board as both a rescue device, and something to be used when you are planning to make increases on your own schedule.

However, there are (at least) twice as many types of splits as there beekeepers and most will work just fine. If mass queen replacement remains your goal, then may be a cloake board might be a better choice for you. 

But I return to the issue of why you would want all of your queens to be exactly the same age (with all the life-long consequences of a single queen-larvae raising time-period), and mated with the same cohort of drones? This seems a risky strategy to me, because there are differences from year to year, and likely from week to week in both the optimal mating period, and optimal number of drones available from as many different colonies as possible. That kind of mass queen production works better when the resulting queens will likely not wind up being concentrated in the same apiary. If you want to replace all your queens, I think it would be better to do it over at least two years' time. And I would not replace an otherwise well-performing queen just to get a locally-mated, "Solstice-timed" queens. I'd just let that happen naturally as the bees see fit. 

Even if you wanted to change the apiary's genetic base by installing some particular strain of bees (Russians, Carnis, VSH, northern-raised, etc., or the product of a specific queen breeder) I'd still only do some of the colonies in any one year. You never know if the attribute you choose might be turn out to be a dud for your area. The exception would be if you were in AHB territory and desperate to move those genetics out of your yard, for safety's sake. 

I hope my comments are helpful to you. Although I have grafted (on a very small scale), I have never personally used a cloake board, so I can't help you there. If what I have written is unclear, please don't hesitate to ask questions. I remember struggling through all the (often conflicting) ideas about the best splitting techniques, queen-raising practices, etc., trying to figure out what was the "best" plan. It seemed overwhelming. 

Nancy


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## deepster (Apr 14, 2016)

Nancy

Thank you, this is very helpful.
Do you use Snelgrove board technique on all your strong production hives as the main form of split and swarm prevention? The hive above with the new queen gets to become over winter nucs? 

Thanks
DP


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## My-smokepole (Apr 14, 2008)

You may need 16 queens. But in reality you may need to graft many more to get your 16 queens. So some type of mating nuc make sense. Besides spare queen are all is nice.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

No, I only deploy the Snelgrove board if

a) I want to make a split or,

b) my naughty girls are determined to make a split (i.e. swarm) in spite of all my months-long efforts to dissuade them. The Snelgrove board doesn't prevent a division, it just allows me to take control of the timing of it. 

Plus in the case of a split (swarm) I wanted to prevent, it makes it easier to manage where the bulk of the bees wind up afterward. In the second instance above (b) it's really just a rescue device for a situation that I have failed to avert by other means.

Nancy


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## Tavery (Jun 10, 2014)

Nancy, 
I am enjoying your discussion of the use of SB and swarm/split management
If you were to present swarm prevention/management to a group of New beekeepers at a club meeting would you provide an outline for the talk to include the implementation of a SB please? 
(I have begun using Snelgrove boards in my yard last year)
Thank you, 
Travis


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## deepster (Apr 14, 2016)

Travey,

Please write short account of your experience with Snelgrove board, Did you fins its deployment easy or not?
Thanks
DP


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## Tavery (Jun 10, 2014)

deepster said:


> Travey,
> 
> Please write short account of your experience with Snelgrove board, Did you fins its deployment easy or not?
> Thanks
> DP


Deepster, yes I think the SB are very easy to use. But like a paintbrush it takes practice, experience and attention to get the desired results
I used it as described above for controlling where the bees ended on a swarmy hive.
I have too many hives as it is and my use of it has been for recombination of the split.
Next year I hope to avoid the need but I am sure it will come up and when it does I plan on using it to create a two queen hive. We'll see how that goes.
Travis


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## deepster (Apr 14, 2016)

I have been reading about snelgrove boards for past couple of days, so this thread has transformed from cloak board discussion to snelgrove board. I am all set to build a few this weekend.

Travis
When you split to prevent swarming, do the bees in the upper hive make Queen cells? I am primarily interested in increasing my hives and also getting couple of QCs to move into my Queen castle as per Nancy's description. 
Thanks
DP


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## Tavery (Jun 10, 2014)

Yes, they have everything needed to make QC assuming you've moved eggs or or just hatched larvea. You'll want remove them down to 1 or2 QCs or break it up into your queen castle/mating nucs on day 6 to 10. I prefer letting them make a 1 good queen and letting the maturing bees join main hive to catch the flow but then I have too many colonies as is. Maybe I should say that perhaps not all colonies need this manipulation or response well to the disruption in their plan to succeed. I used it on 2 vigorous colonies before swarming just to learn and 5 others that had swarm cells as a way of keeping the bees together for the flow. 
I have swarmy bees due to having brought so many captured swarms into apiary is my thinking. If I were to begin requeening 5 or 10 per year with purchased virgins In 3 years I might have less swarmy colonies and still retain locally adaptive traits. It's risky business in my mind as virgin queens can be hard to get accepted and expensive. 
There are beekeeps who requeen every hive that swarms to control the problem on a larger scale than my 30 to 50 colonies. 
Still interested in Nancy's outline on preventing swarming plan. I think she is ahead of the curve on that subject.
Travis


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

DP,

The best way to learn about how to use the a Snelgrove Board as a swarm-management tool is to Google "The many uses of a Snelgrove board by Wally Shaw." This is an excellent summary.

The most important thing to take away from the document above is that the procedure for setting up the split is completely different depending on whether you have charged queen cells, or not. I can't emphasize this enough, if you have cells and set the split up the way you would if you didn't have cells, you will have a failure, and most likely lose a swarm. Many people who complain SB don't work as advertised simply haven't read deeply enough about the significant management variations to appreciate the differences. (In their defense, a lot of the info out there about using a SB only describes one method, i.e. how you would make the division in the absence of cells. But's really only half the story.)

I keep a laminated copy of Shaw's paper push-pinned to the inside of bee-shed to make sure I get the details exactly right, each time. depending on the circumstances I find in the hive at the time.


@Tavery,

I'm not sure I have the time to write up an outline for an anti-swarming presentation. And I would hesitate to do that for a climate different from my own. But if you want to read about how I do it, herein northern NY, if you search on my user name you will certainly find recent descriptions of my swarm-deterrence practices. I know I have written about it, in depth, at least once since the beginning of the year, though probably not in January since I was too sick to be doing much online at that time. See what you can turn up, if you find nothing, I can try to recall t he thread. Remember, any timing notes about what I do, and when, is for my area, which is a Z4b/Z5a icebox. YMMV. If you have questions about what I've written, I'll be glad to try and answer them.

Nancy


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## deepster (Apr 14, 2016)

Nancy

I have down loaded Show's paper and your own description of show's when QC present, in another thread. reading and also I have started building some snelgrove board, for sure will be giving them a try. 
Going back on your question "Why I am thinking of replacing queens on all my hives?"

I have lost four good size hives to the winter, this is after Building them quilt box, giving them sugar candy for winter, oxalic acid in July and September and feeding syrup in late fall. However most of my nucs survived, also hives with new queens in midsummers appear to have survived. It is not 100% but it appears the percentage of hives with post solstice queens are lot higher, I really would like to know if everyone else is having the same experience.

Thank you
DP


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## Tavery (Jun 10, 2014)

Deepster, I would say that there is an entire group that believe this queens raised after summer solstice is an important key to successful beekeeping
( I am not yet among them due to not having proven any of it for myself, but it is a very intriguing means of cycling queens through the yard and always having new queens) 
but do a search for Melvin Disselkoen / Mel's method/ very interesting application of a Snelgrove board. 
Travis


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

I am not a big proponent of queens raised "after the Solstice" just for the sake of the calendar in the Northeast. I think it is more important to have queens raised so that throughout their entire young lives they have lived in healthy, extremely well-fed colonies, without temperature stresses, and have access to a lot of drones from a variety of local apiaries, with good mating weather and low predation risks.

I prefer to have my queens just reaching adulthood at the Solstice, not afterwards, but that is driven by my local conditions, some of which may apply to you. Mel's apiaries are in an part of the US that while not as dissimilar as, 
say, Tucson, has some differences from CT and eastern NY.

Without late season treatment, it's likely your big colonies were loaded with mites in the critical period in the fall when viruses and winter bees are the concern. Big colonies that are left untreated, or undertreated late in the season (post Labor Day) seem to be more prone to the consequences of mites (viral loads, poor health and shorter lives of winter bees) and perhaps also starvation from chow not being where they need it to be in the winter.

Were all the queens from the big hives that died from the same source, and of the same age? If you made splits from them that were open-mated from your yard, you already know the solution. Just raise your own queens, not with the idea of routinely replacing them either because of their age, or to get after Solstice queens, but simply because you want ones that are locally mated. And I would never consider replacing all of them at once, nor all from a single outside source. Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Can you refresh my old brain with how many colonies you have now and their status and your goals (Aside from requeening them all in _en masse_? It's the mass requeening them all that I have the most concern about. I don't think it will give you the solution you are hoping for.)

Small-scale queen-making is lots of fun and easier than it may seem before you try it. But you should _try_ it, before betting the farm on it. Walk before you run.

Nancy


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## deepster (Apr 14, 2016)

Nancy

No the queens age and source was not the same just the fact they were all good size hives. I have eight hives now two of which are in ten frame the others all in nuc boxes. 
I didn't do any post Labor day OAV treatment, is that critical? 
Another issue that concerns me is the way I fed them fondant, I had given them lot of syrup so I thought they have plenty of reserves for the winter and only need a little bit of fondant just in case, I put only one inch of it on top I realized fondant brought them up from inside. so I am concern maybe they didn't cluster properly because of the fondant when the real cold came around and they lost touch with honey in the hive, who knows!!!
Do you feed fondant and how do you do it? 
Thanks
DP


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## deepster (Apr 14, 2016)

Has anyone combined Snelgrove board splitting and OTS for queen rearing. Would be great to hear heir experience, all sold on this idea. It appears that using this technique one can continue pulling honey in May/ June time frame, split the colony to avoid swarm and raise queens, all at the same time ?!

Thanks
DP


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## Tavery (Jun 10, 2014)

Deepster, 
That is how I used snelgrove boards last season on 2 hives. I did it a bit backwards perhaps.
I moved queen and brood up above the board to let my OTS queen emerge in bottom with the main hive, 
bleeding flyers to below for 2 weeks. 
Did this right before main flow. 
I ended up with average amount of honey by fall and two over wintered hives. And 2 Nucs 
Doing it this way I 'feel like' it lowered the activity level of main hives a bit. Some call it 'demoralized' them. Not sure though as it was just 2 hives and one season.
On the same 2, This year I am thinking to do it other way. OTS queen and brood above. Queen and frame of brood left below as on standard snelgrove fashion.
Now that I am sure of the age of queen in those two hives. The two Nucs from last year have the original queen in them so will evaluate how she is doing. 
What I liked about it was the ability to eadily recombine of a queen failed, only needed one top and one bottom. No need to make up a nuc,
What dreaded about it was lifting the single top off to check the bottom hive. (Too tall to begin with)
Kind of like a 2 queen set up but bees are seperate. Not sure if that helps but theres one guy's little bit of experience. 
Btw those new queens were raised before the solstice, wasn't concerned with that. Just the timing of the main flow that particular year.


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## spunky (Nov 14, 2006)

Thanks Tavery I was going to give that a try this spring

regards
Brad


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## Tavery (Jun 10, 2014)

Another thought that is worth thinking, is to OTS above a snelgrove till you have 2 queens laying (original below and new above) then, simply use a queen excluder and let it be a 2 queen hive. I really believe this will yield better results over all with fewer manipulations. It could get too large if left past the main flow for my taste. really depends on the bees you have and the kind of season we get. 
and keep those mite loads in check. 

Brad , this is a comment on your large hives you lost. I have stopped letting hive get super-sized. I believe this was already addressed but my 2 cents is try to keep them to equivalent of 1 Deep 10 frame box for brood. Add and remove honey super as needed. Add or remove frames of brood to equilize hives for flow (if mites are under control). 
Enjoy your bees!
Travis


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## Tavery (Jun 10, 2014)

Another thought that is worth thinking, is to OTS above a snelgrove till you have 2 queens laying (original below and new above) then, simply use a queen excluder and let it be a 2 queen hive. I really believe this will yield better results over all with fewer manipulations. It could get too large if left past the main flow for my taste. really depends on the bees you have and the kind of season we get. 
and keep those mite loads in check. 

Brad , this is a comment on your large hives you lost. I have stopped letting hive get super-sized. I believe this was already addressed but my 2 cents is try to keep them to equivalent of 1 Deep 10 frame box for brood. Add and remove honey super as needed. Add or remove frames of brood to equilize hives for flow (if mites are under control). 
Enjoy your bees!
Travis


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## deepster (Apr 14, 2016)

Travis,

I am going to give this a try, OTS queen and brood on top, queen on the bottom. I hope to harvest several additional QC's to cut them out and put them in my queen castles. 
If you leave your honey super till fall how do you manage mites? I take mine off in mid July to I am do the OAV.
Thank
DP


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## Tavery (Jun 10, 2014)

DP
If I felt that OAV is a must while flow is on, which has not occurred for me in July/August. I would Remove honey, apply one OA treatment (1gram from bottom 1 gram from top). Put supers back on next day..
There are other treatment options to consider. 
I haven't had a problem (that I know of) with mites till after fall honey removal that OAV didn't take care of.
We are not leaving honey on hives for very long, harvesting several times during the season due to SHB issues.
Leaving them just enough to work on depending on the bees and the flow.
It has become a necessary chore to remove any capped frames, extract and put back on if needed because of these nasty little beetles. 
So a deep brood box under 2 mediums with a brood box above is plenty of space. 
Remember that true OTS will include a brood break that is central to Mel's method of mite control(which is not achieved by keeping a laying queen in the box). 
You could remove queen to a nuc creating the nuc you wanted. Some call that 'banking' the queen
Then OTS top and bottom, giving a brood break to main hive. Plus giving you 2 new queens in a 2 queen hive.


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## deepster (Apr 14, 2016)

Travis,

I woke up this morning to a real winter snow, when this winter ends!!!

1) The only concern I have in banking the queen and OTS top and bottom in early part or middle of the fellow is reducing the number of foragers and its effect in total honey accumulation, does this concern you at all?

2) Do you make only one notch in each hive and keep just two QCs in each or do you attempt several notches and harvest the QCs for your other nucs?

Thanks you, It has been real informative.
DP


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## Tavery (Jun 10, 2014)

Concerned about not enough foragers?
Nope, our true honey flow (not build up flow) is brief. Remember your hive is full of emerging bees with no brood to care for. What are they going to do? Raise a queen and Put away honey. 
2) Do you make only one notch in each hive and keep just two QCs in each or do you attempt several notches and harvest the QCs for your other nucs?
I Notch 5 or more with hive tool on two frames facing each other just to make it easy to find(the ones pushed furthest apart). In about 9 days, You choose what to do with what they did. If QC on both and want a nuc? Remove one of the frames, place in queen castle and feed. 
You've already made 1 nuc with mother, right? Be careful not to split hive up so much it won't function. Also i am wanting just 2 good queens and a strong work force for the flow, asking so much from one hive requiring constant intrusion might not be in anyones best interest.
If no increase is taken tear them down to 2 or 3 best(they usual only decide on 2 on each frame face anyway it seems.

Thanks you, It has been real informative.

It iced and froze and snowed and rained on our parade as well here in Missouri yesterday, oh well. More time to get those 10 frame lids made up I didn't get around to.


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## deepster (Apr 14, 2016)

It sounds with this plan one can prevent swarm, raise new queen for two splits, set up a Nuc, break the Verroa cycle and get couple of QC for matting nucs all while pulling honey! that gives me every motivation to try it.


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