# Nicot system



## Velbert (Mar 19, 2006)

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g307/vlwbee/100_0721.jpg

When i first got mine a few years back Got 11 out of 16 first try beautifully built

And i learned some things that worked better for me

The second batch was about late Aug put the queen in the grid got about 20 larva they built about 80% then about 3/4 the way after they were sealed the cell builder tore 1/2 of the 80% down out of the remaining 7 or 8 sealed cells went to get them to put in the nuc's they had tore most all down 

The third try the queen had laid about 70 Cups i thought wow this will work great I set up another cell starter finisher in a 5 frame nuc put in about 30 cell cups with very tiny larva 12 hr or under. The next day 24 hrs later NOTHING Zipo not even 1. So I rechecked cell builder for an queen no queen so redid it.

The 4th Try Queen had laid in several cups 40-50 went to collect the cups with tiny larva I had done ck earlier and found plenty of eggs but on the day of transferring the cups nothing, seen some shriveled up eggs and a few freshly laid eggs.

Next Spring started trying it again Some of the thing that happen last late summer. They would start 80-90% then half way they would tare about 1/2 down. It was 2-3 days from hatch I rechecked the they had tore down a few more so I took one off the bar and broke it open to my surprise the larva was a huge big fat larvae it fill the cell fuller than any other queen cell i Had ever seen it Was a Drone Larva.

One day I was setting holding and studying the Nicot grid box trying to figure out some way to get it to work. Then i thought cell size the cell looked close to a worker cell but it is a a bit bigger than worker and smaller than a drone as i was trying to figure it out had a coke i was drink through a straw i had a thought the straw fit down into the cells on the grid perfect. 

So I cut me some Sleeves to fit into the cells most were just below the rime of the hole in the cell grid. That ended the problem of the queen laying drone eggs in the cells.

When I first started using the grid in the late summer the queen had started laying Drone brood in the frames for the fall.and when i used it the early spring was the same the queen was geared up laying drone eggs in the comb sense the cells were a little bigger than worker cell this is what she laid was drone eggs it will not happen every time if you were to use again without putting in the straw sleeve but for me i wanted it to work every time without worrying was i going to have GOOD queens in the cells

Also got where I just left the breeder in the grid it was kind hard on her catching her by the wings every time i placed her in the grid she got where she would really cling to the comb as i was catching her i was afraid i was going to hurt her.

I would collect cups with barely see able larva. then would work the eggs to the outer edges and place the empty new cups in the center would get from 15- 30 some times 50 larva. I might transfer 1day skip a day or two would collect from the outer cups. if larva got big beyond the proper age for good grafts i would remove these cups and put in new ones. Doing it this way you will have to keep closer check on the cell cups for tiny grafing age UNDER 24 Hours larva. 12 Hr or just hatch would be the best


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## olky (Apr 19, 2008)

the nicot system works. i used it for my first batch of queens. getting ready to make a second. i will be using the nicot and grafting.
the only problem i see with the nicot is the beginning steps, poishing cells, finding queen, caging queen, checking for eggs, removing queen,moving cups.
it seems it would be easier to me, and i may be wrong being my first graft didn't take, to find a frame of eggs and brood from donor hive, graft,put in cell builder. grafting seems the easier most efficient way, once you learn to graft. maybe some more experience can chime in, i've just started to learn a queen rearing system this year. good luck


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

I've used the Nicot system several times with good success. If not in a good flow, then feeder needs be used on the queen mother hive, otherwise they will abandon eggs and larva, or eat them, in the cell cage. The cell starter hive must be strong and fed and desperately hopeless, just like in any queen rearing system.

I've found this system to be easy and successful the few times I've used it, after I figured out how to make up a strong cell starter, and when I do it during a flow, it works well. If not in a flow, syrup and pollen must be fed to stimulate them into raising cells, which is a good idea to do even when in a good flow.


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## Velbert (Mar 19, 2006)

I didn't let them polish the cells just blow them out (mouth or Air hose)and keep the top rolled down on your bag of cups so dust will not get in them

If you leave your breeder Queen in the nicot once they get going there usually some larva is in some of the cups ( _before eggs will hatch the nurse bees have to place some royal jelly down around the egg just before they are to hatch the queen is also fed royal jelly this keeps her ovaries producing eggs_) this will keep nurse bees there, also place a frame of eggs and young larva from a Donner facing the nicot on the excluder side. 

If you are only going us it 1 or 2 times with in 4 or 5 days when finished let queen out


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

RayMarler said:


> If not in a good flow, then feeder needs be used on the queen mother hive, otherwise they will abandon eggs and larva, or eat them, in the cell cage. The cell starter hive must be strong and fed and desperately hopeless, just like in any queen rearing system.


it works every time if you do it correctly. the key to raising queens is the starter not how you get the laval there. make the starter correctly any you will get queen cells. i also use the jenter and it works fine too. try using a cloak board on a really strong hive and you will get fine queen cells.


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## Drew Martin (Jun 9, 2010)

I am having a issue with my new Nicot. I got my new Nicot mounted on a Medium Frame and stuck it into my bottom brood chamber of the breeder hive for 24hrs to be cleaned. I then return to the breeder hive to cage the queen, and leave her in there for another 24hrs to lay. The next day i take a look and she has laid all the cell cups and i then release her. I come back 3 days to find that the eggs have not been feed and not at the larva state.?? :scratch: " this would be the 4'th day"

Should i leave my Queen caged longer to attract the nursers to start feeding the eggs? I have a small flow kicking not really understanding what is going on. I have seen the Nicot System fail where the workers will clean them out. But not leave them and not feed them. Do i just wait it out?? When do I say ok time to try again :doh: and reload cell cups to be prep for another go at it.

If anyone would have any advice i would appreciate it!

Thanks,
-Drew-


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

figuring out when to pull the plugs(# of hours) is interesting the first few times, depends on when the queen started laying, if you came back the next day, i'm sure they eggs would have hatched.


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## Drew Martin (Jun 9, 2010)

Nicot works well. I did have an issue the other day where it looked like the nursers weren't going to feed the eggs. But i re-entered and all was well. Got about 80 that were feed well. Seems that once the Nicot is broke in "smell of the hive" it'll crank them out


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## EastSideBuzz (Apr 12, 2009)

We did our first round with the Nicot system and got nothing. We left her in 2 days and we found 15 or so cups with eggs. We found 5 in one cup so I moved 4 of them to other cups and moved them to individual. We checked to day and they had emptied out the cups and they were all clean. not a cell built out of 20 we had in the frame. Not sure if we are going to try again this year. Dont know what happened.


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## Drew Martin (Jun 9, 2010)

Did you load all the cell cups? If not that is why.


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## EastSideBuzz (Apr 12, 2009)

Drew Martin said:


> Did you load all the cell cups? If not that is why.


So we filled all of the cups in the nicot box that we put the queen in. Then we moved only the ones with eggs into the frame. I have frame with 2 rows of 16. We only did 20 of the 32 since we did not have enough cups with eggs. Was that wrong.?


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## Kingfisher Apiaries (Jan 16, 2010)

I have no experience with the Nicot system, but I have Dadant's kit. I have a friend that is in Germany with Carl Jenter right now, this friend swears by the Jenter kit, any others have any luck with it? 

Kingfisher


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## Velbert (Mar 19, 2006)

It wont work with eggs on your cell bar you have to let them hatch in the nicot that is why i leave the queen in the nicot box it will keep some nurse bees there to attend to the queen and then some of the nurse bees will tend to the eggs so they wont dry our. Also i cut a sleeve from a straw to make the cell a little bit smaller id you were to check the cell in the nicot are bigger than the average worker cell and smaller than a drone cell


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## Drew Martin (Jun 9, 2010)

The cell cups need to be left in the Nicot if eggs are present to be feed to hatch into larva "3days". If you take the cell cups which are just eggs NOT feed with jelly, and a fix them to your cell bar and in a cell builder they will be rejected. The eggs have to be feed and hatched. 48/66 Hrs. this process can take for a hatched egg.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

There is no point transferring eggs. They will just remove them. It takes four days from when the queen is confined to when you have larvae. This is what you want to transfer. that's four elapsed days. In other words, the day you confine the queen is 0 elapsed days. The next day when you release her is 1 elapsed day. Three days after that is 4 elapsed days. To put it another way, if you confine the queen on Sunday, you will have larvae on Thursday.


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## EastSideBuzz (Apr 12, 2009)

OH Ok. I guess I did not follow the instructions enough. Might be too late to try again this year. I think the jener and nicot systems are basically the same. Mine was the Mannlake kit.


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## Drew Martin (Jun 9, 2010)

EastSideBuzz said:


> OH Ok. I guess I did not follow the instructions enough. Might be too late to try again this year. I think the jener and nicot systems are basically the same. Mine was the Mannlake kit.


Mann Lake kit = Nicot


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## AramF (Sep 23, 2010)

Does one really need to fill in all of the cups into the cage? Seems an awful waste to place 100 cups only to use 10. Looking for any information about minimum number of cups, placement pattern and any other hints. I considered taping shut unused holes with clear tape and only leaving a central square, maybe 5 by 4 for a total of 20 cells for queen to target. Is that workable or is she likely to lay multiple eggs in each cell.

Maybe I can allow the queen to lay in all of the cells, but then clean the extra ones before hatching with water so that they can be used again?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

You want the queen to get her butt taped to the bottom of the cell? If you leave them out and don't plug them they will crawl into the box behind the plugs where they don't belong. Also, if you had less for her to lay in she will lay more doubles and those are more problematic. You can reuse the plugs. Just leave it out of the hive for a couple of days and then put it back and they will clean out the eggs for you.


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## AramF (Sep 23, 2010)

Thanks Mike. Actually, I wanted to tape it on the top of the cells, not on the bottom, but your concern is well noted. Thanks for the insight.


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## Buckybee (Jan 24, 2011)

I always spray a little sugar water on the grid and place it in the hive for 24hrs before queening the box. They will slick up all the old eggs. If they start filling cups with honey, set the box on outside of hive and let them clean it up..then install your queen and place back in the hive.


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## Cordovan Italian Bee (Oct 27, 2009)

Michael Bush said:


> There is no point transferring eggs. They will just remove them. It takes four days from when the queen is confined to when you have larvae. This is what you want to transfer. that's four elapsed days. In other words, the day you confine the queen is 0 elapsed days. The next day when you release her is 1 elapsed day. Three days after that is 4 elapsed days. To put it another way, if you confine the queen on Sunday, you will have larvae on Thursday.


Hi, Mr. Bush or any other person please answer. We split our queen rearing hive it will be 15 days ago the same time we tried to get eggs to raise the queens the first time. My question is,with that hive being without a queen now for 15 days,will they still raise queens if we put four day old larvae in there now or do we need to make another hive queenless to raise the queens ?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>We split our queen rearing hive it will be 15 days ago the same time we tried to get eggs to raise the queens the first time.

Where there drones flying?

> My question is,with that hive being without a queen now for 15 days,will they still raise queens if we put four day old larvae in there now or do we need to make another hive queenless to raise the queens ? 

You made them queenless 15 days ago. I would expect a laying queen in about 9 more days. She probably emerged about five days ago and you just haven't seen her. Giving them eggs and larvae is good insurance if you are worried. It they are indeed queenless (which I doubt) they will start queen cells.


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## Cordovan Italian Bee (Oct 27, 2009)

Mr. Bush,yes there are drones.We made the hive queenless with no brood or eggs to rear queens from a nicot system.They only have bees ,honey,and pollan.The first round of trying to make queens we only gave them fresh eggs. The bees are now without a queen for 15 days,we now have 4 day larvae,will the still raise the queens ?


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

What I do when my cell builder's bees begin growing too old for typical nurse bee duties: Move the box to a previously unoccupied location, add more nurse bees by shaking them from other colonies (make sure not to get any queens - an excluder can help with that). Add frames of emerging worker brood, the emerging brood soon become nurse bees. I prefer doing all of the above, if the resources are available. Relocating the hive will soon eliminate many of the older bees, which have become foragers. They will go out to forage and then return to the old location. Once they are gone there will be more room for additional nurse bees. The concentration of nurse bees and availability of quality food are two of the most important ingredients for growing exceptional queen cells.

----------------
As concerns the Nicot system. It is way too easy to raise queens using several other techniques that require no gear of any kind. And grafting is way too easy, even for me, and I'm nearly blind, and have a pinched nerve in my neck that causes my hands to spasm.

Now, if someone would like to donate any of these kits, I'll be happy to try them.


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## MethowKraig (Aug 21, 2011)

One problem with Nicot, Jentner or similar systems is the queen is reluctant to lay in plastic cups. In theory, if you come back in 24 hours there should be eggs. Maybe, Maybe not. 

I find that spraying the cage with sugar syrup helps. The bees clean up the syrup and leave the cell "polished" and the queen usually starts laying in 12 hours or so. 

I used to spray the cage and install it for polishing, then come back the next day to install the queen. But I found I can eliminate the added trip by installing the queen directly into the wet cage.

Several other tips:

1. Unless you know there is a flow on, feed, feed, feed.
2. Do not transfer eggs. The larvae must have hatched. 
3. The closer you know the age of the larvae, the better. Others may not agree with me but I try to transfer the youngest larvae I can. 
4. I base my calendar on the assumption the queen starts laying in 12 hours. Can't prove this but it usually works. So if the queen is installed in the afternoon, I assume she starts laying the next morning. If I install in the morning, I assume she starts laying that afternoon or evening.
5. It requires some experience to guess how young the larvae are. Sometimes there will be both eggs and small larvae. This means the larvae are really young. I assume they are 12 hours or less. If I inspect and find only eggs, I come back the next day and will find larvae. I assume they are 12 to 24 hours old.
6. 36 hour old larvae is the oldest you should use. I try to stay under 24 hours for a margin of safety.

There are many systems of "starting" and "finishing" the cells. Search other threads to get tips on those parts of the process. The cage is just the first step. I use it instead of grafting because my eyesight is not that great and I have a tremor in my hands (all the males in my family have this to some extent or other.)

Good Luck

"Met-How" Kraig


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>We made the hive queenless with no brood or eggs to rear queens from a nicot system.

I'm not clear on the exact sequence of events. Here is my calendar for the Jenter/Nicot:
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesqueenrearing.htm#calendar

>They only have bees ,honey,and pollan.The first round of trying to make queens we only gave them fresh eggs.

I'm not sure I follow. You got the queen to lay in the box? You gave eggs to them to get them to draw queens? Eggs do not work. They will only use larvae and only freshly hatched larvae. They will remove eggs.

> The bees are now without a queen for 15 days,we now have 4 day larvae,will the still raise the queens ? 

Now you have the issue that there are no nurse bees as there is no larvae. I would give them some open brood first for a day so they can get back into feeding larvae and there will be some nurse bees. Then put the queen cells next to the open brood so the nurse bees will be there.


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## Cordovan Italian Bee (Oct 27, 2009)

You can't just shake bees from one hive in another.


Joseph Clemens said:


> What I do when my cell builder's bees begin growing too old for typical nurse bee duties: Move the box to a previously unoccupied location, add more nurse bees by shaking them from other colonies (make sure not to get any queens - an excluder can help with that). Add frames of emerging worker brood, the emerging brood soon become nurse bees. I prefer doing all of the above, if the resources are available. Relocating the hive will soon eliminate many of the older bees, which have become foragers. They will go out to forage and then return to the old location. Once they are gone there will be more room for additional nurse bees. The concentration of nurse bees and availability of quality food are two of the most important ingredients for growing exceptional queen cells.
> 
> ----------------
> As concerns the Nicot system. It is way too easy to raise queens using several other techniques that require no gear of any kind. And grafting is way too easy, even for me, and I'm nearly blind, and have a pinched nerve in my neck that causes my hands to spasm.
> ...


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## Cordovan Italian Bee (Oct 27, 2009)

My thanks to all.


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

Cordovan Italian Bee said:


> You can't just shake bees from one hive in another.


Sure you can, I do it all the time. Generally, I'm working with nurse bees, used to boost weaker hives/nucs and for growing queen cells. They can easily be separated from older bees. For instance, if you shake bees into a screened box with no cover, the nurse bees will accumulate/cluster in the box, and the older field bees will fly away home. Nurse bees don't know where their origin home is. Nurse bees are universally accepted in any hive, and they will rarely bring harm to a resident queen, if one should be present.

Another way to quickly add nurse bees, is to open the receiving hive by removing its cover, then cover most of it's top with a cloth, leaving a gap a few inches wide somewhere, where bees being added can enter the hive. If you shake bees from other donor hives onto this cloth, the field bees will quickly take flight and return to their original location, all nurse/house bees will remain. They are easily accepted by their new colony and I've never had them cause trouble for a resident queen. But be sure not to overlook a queen that may be introduced this same way, that's almost assured to cause trouble.


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## elovvorn (Mar 30, 2013)

I had great luck with this system. I put in all of the cups and my queen filled out most of all of them. I only had room for 20 cell cups so I picked the ones with the most royal jelly in them. I also used the cloake board to make a starter hive and a finisher hive. This worked very well and I checked today to see how many queen cells were capped. 18/20!!!! yup that s 90% for my first time. I'm having to make nuc boxes to hold that many. 
Good luck, this system works very well coupled with a cloake board for drawing them out.


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## elovvorn (Mar 30, 2013)

elovvorn said:


> I had great luck with this system. I put in all of the cups and my queen filled out most of all of them. I only had room for 20 cell cups so I picked the ones with the most royal jelly in them. I also used the cloake board to make a starter hive and a finisher hive. This worked very well and I checked today to see how many queen cells were capped. 18/20!!!! yup that s 90% for my first time. I'm having to make nuc boxes to hold that many.
> Good luck, this system works very well coupled with a cloake board for drawing them out.


Update: Two days ago, I installed two queen cells in a 5 frame nuc with 1 frame of capped brood w/nurse bees and a frame of pulled out comb with a feeder. Today after a cold spell I checked them and only 3 nucs are still alive...... What in the world happened? The weather didn't freeze, it had dropped to 39 degrees. I looked inside the dead nucs and found in each one all of the bees balled up and dead. 
What is the trick here folks?


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## Velbert (Mar 19, 2006)

Sounds like they couldn't reach enought stores they can die with honey on the ends of the frames when it gets cold they tighten up and not being able to access stores.


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## elovvorn (Mar 30, 2013)

Velbert said:


> Sounds like they couldn't reach enought stores they can die with honey on the ends of the frames when it gets cold they tighten up and not being able to access stores.


That makes sense. There weren't any stores around their little ball they made. I'll have to chalk that one up to another Beekeeper Error!


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

elovvorn said:


> I'll have to chalk that one up to another Beekeeper Error!


The lessons are painful.....but they stick.


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