# Incubators



## marcros (Jan 8, 2009)

What are the advantages/disadvantages of using an incubator for raising queen cells/hatching queen cells? How are they used- I assume that it is purely for the last few days of the sealed stage, until they hatch.

Do people generally adapt a chicken egg incubator, or use a specialist one, such as available from Swienty?

Thanks
Mark


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

I'm toying around with trying to hatch out queens in cages in an upper story of a queen-right colony where the production queen is confined to a bottom box with a double queen excluder. I'm thinking I'll try just a couple or a few to see how it works out. Would set up nucs on the day they hatch and introduce the virgin queens to the nucs 3 or 4 days later. I'll see how it works out.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

RayMarler said:


> Would set up nucs on the day they hatch and introduce the virgin queens to the nucs 3 or 4 days later. I'll see how it works out.


Why wouldn't you want to put the cells directly into the nucs? My experience (admittedly limited) is that acceptance of virgins is substantially lower than queens that emerge in the nuc.


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## WG Bee Farm (Jan 29, 2005)

I find it better to introduce queen cells than virgin queens.
In my expserience, You could lose upwards of 50-60% with vigins.
Average with cells, 5-10% loss.

I'd take my chances with the cells, the only time they are not accepted is when a rogue cell is in the nuc, a rogue virgin is already in the nuc, or a mated queen is in the nuc.
Then the bees will tear down the introduced cell.
With Cells, the new virgin queen hatches and has no scent that could be threatening to the other bees in the hive. It takes several hours for her to acquire the scent of the hive and start her own phermone production.

With a virgin, the existing bees don't recognize her scent and are quicker to destroy her even after proper introduction. Once again, leaving the nuc queenless.
Frank Wyatt


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## ZZZnature (Jul 17, 2008)

Tim Arheit of Honey Run Apiaries would be a source for information on incubators. He once had his copywrited plans for building them posted on his website. I see he is selling digital temperature controllers.


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## wayacoyote (Nov 3, 2003)

Our local queen-rearing guru uses a homemade incubator running off a digital thermostate salvaged from the trash at work. The purpose of the incubator is to help with the organization of his process. Finished cells are in the incubator rather than in one of a half dozen cell-finisher hives. Finisher hives could be, but aren't used for storage. Moving cells to mating nucs doesn't require opening hives, just the mating nucs.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>What are the advantages/disadvantages of using an incubator for raising queen cells/hatching queen cells?

I seldom "hatch" them in the incubator as they survive better if I let them emerge in the mating nuc. But just in case one emerges early or I'm busy and running behind it has a few advantages that way, but then using hair curler cages would give you the same insurance against early emergence. Still, as Wayacoyote pointed out it lets you organize things sometimes because you have them all in one place. It also gives you more first hand observance to work with as you can gather them all up, candle them if you like and make a better prediction of how many mating nucs to set up.

My theory was that it would free up resources for cell builders etc. but it has not worked out that way.

> How are they used- I assume that it is purely for the last few days of the sealed stage, until they hatch.

It can only be from when they are capped on.


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## Velbert (Mar 19, 2006)

*Incubator*

PORTABLE - BABY BIRD AVIAN ANIMAL BROODER INCUBATOR NEW

You will need to do some alterations for queen cells this will be good for moving cells to the out yards


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## BWrangler (Aug 14, 2002)

Hi Guys,

Most I've seen in commercial use are made from a refrigerator carcass. They are very easy to make and consist of a temperature controller, a light bulb, a small fan and a pan of water.

The real advantage to using an incubator concerns production scheduling. With one, cell rearing/mating groups can be worked on a weekly basis.

That's a huge advantage when producing lots of queens in multiple yards. It simplifies scheduling and management. And it allows for scheduled time off.

Regards
BWrangler


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## HVH (Feb 20, 2008)

You can get used, high end scientific CO2 incubators really cheap when the CO2 sensor goes bad. Since you don't need CO2 for queen incubators this works well. These incubators are normally used by research labs for cell culture work and are thermostatically controlled, insulated and water jacketed. They can be found at scientific equipment auctions and e-bay. I snagged two of them for free and have been hatching queens in them for a couple of years. 
I am now convinced that the bees need something when they emerge that the bees give them and it is not as simple as honey. If you release a newly emerged virgin onto a frame of bees (flying bees removed by relocation of the nuc) they seem to be received much better than expected. The virgins usually go straight to an open cell of nectar and take a drink. Workers give her a sniff and otherwise go about their business. The thing is, that if left in the incubator the queen seems to go downhill pretty quickly and a drop of honey is not enough to get them perky. In fact a drop of honey or piece of fondant (plus humidity) can be their death. They get a wing sticky and it lays up against the cage where she struggles to get free. 
I like to emerge the queens in an incubator to make marking easier. I usually remove the queen cells from the finishing colony on the 14th day and translocate the queen cells into hair roller cages that have been adapted to receive the cells. These are placed in the incubator and each queen hatched into her own cage. I like to mark the queen within a few hours of emergence and place in nucs already relocated a day or two earlier to new locations (gets rid of antagonistic field bees). I pick up a frame of bees with brood and plop the queen right onto the frame and watch. From what I have read the queen was supposed to be attacked and killed, but I don't think the virgin poses any threat to a queenless nuc without field bees. The only time I have seen a virgin attacked is when I made the nuc up the same day and it still had field bees or when a queen was present that I missed when making up the nuc. Again, virgin queens fade pretty quickly in an incubator (in my hands and confirmed by others) so any management using an incubator to emerge queens should have a tight schedule for introductions. If anyone else has a different experience here, I would love to hear about it.

This might be more than anyone wanted to read but queen rearing is my favorite job in beekeeping - so I get carried away.


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## adamf (Jan 28, 2006)

*Virgins in incubator with attendants*

Incubators:

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic...eeping/general/management/queen.incubator.txt

Snag a used one as a previous poster said, if you're lucky.

We often emerge virgins in cages, in our incubator: 
*each cage has 5 attendants, candy, and the queen cell.*
You might need to replenish attendents--the virgins like to kill them off sometimes.
Make sure you use newly emerging works as attendents!
Virgins fade really fast alone. They can easily live a week or more caged w/ attendants; 
not that you'd want to keep them caged that long unless you were performing II on them.

Bottom line: an incubator is a great tool when queen rearing!

Adam Finkelstein
www.vpqueenbees.com


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## Trevor Mansell (Jan 16, 2005)

Look around in the farmers market bulliten for a used GQF cabinet incubator. they are pretty nice . Pretty much all the queen breeders Ive delt with use them.


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## Allen Dick (Jan 10, 2009)

> What are the advantages/disadvantages of using an incubator for raising queen cells/hatching queen cells? How are they used- I assume that it is purely for the last few days of the sealed stage, until they hatch. Do people generally adapt a chicken egg incubator, or use a specialist one, such as available from Swienty?


I've used the styrofoam egg incubators and built an incubator from an old fridge, too. Both worked, although there is no substitute for having a waiting nuc for ripe cells.

Getting good temperature control is the issue. Controllers tend to wander a bit and overheating is the danger. Being a little on the cool side is less damaging. Any amount of overshoot on the high side can be fatal.

What if the ambient (room or outdoor) temperature goes above 100 degrees? 

When I was working with queen rearing and using incubators, I had trouble finding really good information as to ideal temperature and humidity, tolerances, etc. That was quite a while ago, and now there must be good info on the 'net. Anybody have some really good URLs for those who have not worked with incubators much?

An alternative to using ripe cells with all the timing issues involved is to introduce cells to nucs earlier and not worry about them. They can be introduced as soon as they are sealed.

There is also a technique for two-celling nucs, which gets both queens mated and makes better use of the nucs. 

Maybe someone here recalls the details.


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## marcros (Jan 8, 2009)

Thank you everybody for their advice.

To change this thread slightly, has anybody got experience of the Carricell products? The New Zealand website is very good, and they look a useful product, given some peoples preference to distribute cells to nucs...

Thanks
Mark


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## BWrangler (Aug 14, 2002)

Hi Guys,

I've had much the same experience with virgins in a incubator HVH. Hatching virgins will provide about an additional 24 hours of flexibility. But the virgins do better when done the natural way. I think there are pheromones, substances, stimulation, attention that they get when in the hive that is lost in the incubator.

And virgins, which run, fly, hide, get sticky, etc. are much harder to handle than queen cells.

My use of an incubator involved pulling capped cells on day 11 and nucing them on day 14.

Regards
Dennis


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## Allen Dick (Jan 10, 2009)

> To change this thread slightly, has anybody got experience of the Carricell products? The New Zealand website is very good, and they look a useful product, given some peoples preference to distribute cells to nucs...


We looked long and hard at this and almost bought one. We then realised that the problem is not just chilling, but also overheating in the sun while in the vehicle or inserting cells in the yard. We used styro coolers with water bags instead, and had a cheap thermometer on top to monitor the temp.

However, the best cell carrier is a nuc. A screened four frame nuc full of bees and some brood will keep the cells within a degree or two. It is tough to find or build a portable cell carrier that can do that well, and has cooling as well as heating capaility. When opening the nuc at yards, some bees will fly, but most return. No big deal.


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## HVH (Feb 20, 2008)

BWrangler said:


> Hi Guys,
> 
> I've had much the same experience with virgins in a incubator HVH. Hatching virgins will provide about an additional 24 hours of flexibility. But the virgins do better when done the natural way. I think there are pheromones, substances, stimulation, attention that they get when in the hive that is lost in the incubator.
> 
> ...


I've also worked with recently capped cells but as an obvious word of warning, the nucs need to be well provisioned with bees to keep them warm. I thought I would be smart once and placed about 50 recently capped queen cells in curler cages and placed them back into a finishing colony. I thought all was lost because the queens didn't emerge on day 15, 16, 17, 18, and then they started to emerge. My belief is that the bees couldn't keep them warm in their cages so development was slow. I didn't follow up on these queens to see the long term outcome.


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## Allen Dick (Jan 10, 2009)

> I've also worked with recently capped cells but as an obvious word of warning, the nucs need to be well provisioned with bees to keep them warm. I thought I would be smart once and placed about 50 recently capped queen cells in curler cages and placed them back into a finishing colony. I thought all was lost because the queens didn't emerge on day 15, 16, 17, 18, and then they started to emerge. My belief is that the bees couldn't keep them warm in their cages so development was slow. I didn't follow up on these queens to see the long term outcome.


This is a real problem. A hive or nuc that appears to be totally full of bees in the daytime may only have a basketball-sized cluster somewhere in the middle when it gets cool, especially at night. Unless the cells are in that cluster they may be chilled. 

This a reason that the end cells on a bar of grafted cells may not be successful, and an indicator that the hive needs more bees and/or wrapping.

Depending on the stage of development, a little chilling may not have noticeable effects, however chilling is to be avoided. 

Bees naturally control temperature near brood within a half-degree if they can, so if cool weather is expected, placing cells near brood ensures appropriate temperatures. 

In baby nucs, the bees pull down from the top bars at night, so placement of the cells right in the brood area can be critical in cool regions.


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## HVH (Feb 20, 2008)

allend said:


> This is a real problem. A hive or nuc that appears to be totally full of bees in the daytime may only have a basketball-sized cluster somewhere in the middle when it gets cool, especially at night. Unless the cells are in that cluster they may be chilled.
> 
> This a reason that the end cells on a bar of grafted cells may not be successful, and an indicator that the hive needs more bees and/or wrapping.
> 
> ...


Good info, thanks. This has been a good dialog.


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## Allen Dick (Jan 10, 2009)

> I thought all was lost because the queens didn't emerge on day 15, 16, 17, 18, and then they started to emerge. My belief is that the bees couldn't keep them warm in their cages so development was slow. I didn't follow up on these queens to see the long term outcome.


I've heard some queen suppliers use this effect to time emergence to their convenience.

I have never been smart enough to have any confidence in the procedure, or try it on purpose, although I am sure the pros know what they are doing.

I ahve purchased queen cells that had to be transported (several thousand in one case) and we controlled the temperature very carefully. Still the emergence was all over the map. Other times, when sent by bus, we had some cooled ten degrees during overnight shipment. They never did turn out too well. Nothing like home-grown cells IMO.

For those with too much time on their hands, http://tinyurl.com/bv72ju leads to a record of a few of our thoughts and experiences with cells.

Incubators are in there somewhere too. Oh, yeah. If you do go there, you'll have to search the pages with Ctrl+F and type "cells"


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