# Using cloake board causing supersedeture?



## blackdog (May 6, 2010)

I raised my first batch of queens the middle of this May. I use a Cloake Board exactly as perscribed by Sue Cobey in her " The Cloake Board Method of queen rearing" article. Every thing went very well i hade a very good success rate. But just after i removed the Cloake Board and put the rearing colony back to normal they superseded thier Queen. This was a one year old queen and she was laying like crazy and in good shape, and i am VERY sure i didn't roll her when i put the colony back to normal.* My question is this, does the agitation caued by using a Cloake board cause the colony to be more prone to superdede thier queen ? *


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## Nichols747 (May 21, 2010)

Bump, because I'm interested in using a cloake board too, and want to know if this is something to consider!


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

I've never had a problem with supersedure usig the cloake board, but then again I use three deeps, so the queen has plenty of room to lay in even excluding her from the top deep, I also have honey supers on at the same time so there is enough room for all. Noramally I wait until the queen is 3 yrs old, so I would think I should get some superseduring, I used one queen for 4 cycles one year, no supersedure but they died over the winter. I have had some swarm with the cloake board on this year.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

I am very interested in this question also. I am looking into queen rearing and possibly eventually queen breeding. At the moment I don't intend to use any cloak board type method. What this question has me wondering is what is the effect of getting a bunch of bees in the habit of making queen cells does for the original queen. How are these bees reintroduced to the original hive?

What I already know. The bees that start the queen cells are only away from the hive for a few hours. Just long enough for them to realize they have no queen and start the cells in order to make one. I have also seen direction for the starter colony that say separate the bees for a couple of days. This allows them to get primed for rearing queens and they have more royal jelly ready when the eggs are added.

Once you motivated bees to make queen cells how do you unmotivate them? Does putting them back in the hive with their queen do that. Do you just let this stater nuc go on and finish a queen for themselves? Should they even be put back in the original hive?

I will also share with you what others have said to me concerning other questions. You can't really take what one hive did one time as much of an indication of what bees do. One hive doing something one time is a fluke. 99 out of 100 hives doing something every time is an indication of bee behavior.

So the only thing I can really think of is maybe you had the starter nurse bees away from the queen to long and they got determined to make a new one. At some point those bees are going to rear a new queen and you cannot return them to the original hive.


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

when I make up a starter, I use bees from many different hives, after they have made up a couple of batches of queen cells( adding more nurse bees for the second round), I leave a queen cell in the starter and give them a couple of frames of brood and they become a hive. with the cloak board the queen is below the slide to make them queenless, when you pull the slide, the reunite just fine. on a side note was helping my partner pull queens out of his starter using cloak board(he only uses two deeps, and this is his first year doing it) and so far has not had any supercede so far. as far as motivating the bees, the lack of a queen, lava of the correct age, and the bees themselves being of the correct age to feed is all the motivation they seem to need, as they get past the age of feeding the lava I guess they would get unmotivated.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

blackdog said:


> This was a one year old queen and she was laying like crazy and in good shape, and i am VERY sure i didn't roll her when i put the colony back to normal.


Well, if you had rolled her they would have had emergency sells rather than supercedure cells. Were the cells emergency or supercedure?

Many people, including authors of recent popular bee books make the mistake of calling emergency cells supercedure cells. They are quite different and built for different reasons.


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## MethowKraig (Aug 21, 2011)

I have had the same experience. 

Last year, I developed a modified system based on the Cloake method. The main difference is I raise cells in the bottom box. Because this is only my second year, I don't have a lot of data. But I have noticed that it seems like the original queen is superseded, or lost, about half the time. 

In my, and Cloake's, system, the hive is split for about 24 hours, with the bulk of the bees in the queenless half. My theory of what is happening is this:

Even though the hive is reunited with a healthy queen, the temporary loss of queen pheromone, by the main force of bees, is interpreted as evidence of a failing queen. I am guessing that a failing queen would have sporadic production of queen pheromone. A one day, complete loss of pheromone, could be catastrophic for the colony.

I am going to experiment with leaving one cell, separated by an excluder to jump start any supercedure. I also am interested in the previous post about using three deeps.

Finally, I am going to start another thread about using the Cloake method for fall requeening. See elsewhere.


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

I've been using a cloake board for a while now and finally the original queen swarmed? 
I had been freshening up the top box with frames of larva and eggs from below each time I plan to use it and replacing those frames with the empty small worker cell frames from above. It worked well for a long time, but that hive was packed full of bees and I fed them well the whole time. I kept my eye on them and today I knew when I got into the bottom deep and saw some of the cells between the capped brood had been back filled I'd better remove that queen and make a nuc. Too late-she was aready gone..still lots of bees but that can be deceiving. No eggs and 2 day old larva..a few queen cells started. I just missed her. Drat.
Could have been a supercedure. No swarm cells and queen cells are only about 3 days old.
Broke it up into four nucs and gave them each a nice fat capped queen cell to love.


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## seamuswildflower (Apr 2, 2011)

what is a cloake board?


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## MethowKraig (Aug 21, 2011)

Seamus:

http://threeriversbeekeepers.com/documents/CloakeBoardMethod.pdf

- Met How Kraig


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## curios1 (Jul 2, 2012)

i have a hive that will just not stop makeing queen cells. i have pulled cells every week since june 3rd when i got the nuc. any ideas.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

blackdog- I came up with this routine after I read a thread that Michael Palmer responded to some time back. I happen to have a queen who is a machine gun egg layer. Her daughters are fairly evil, and I believe mama queen is about 1/4 Africanized. Her colony is 5 deeps tall with lots of brood in all the boxes. I have not bred her yet, but I use her for a cell builder, which is a misery I would not wish on anyone.

The first week in Spring that I see hatched drone cells, I put excluders between every box. Nine days later, I know which box the queen is in because there is a tight, fresh sealed brood pattern. I search for her, catch her, and mark her with the brightest color I can find - safety chartreuse green or Nuclear Neon Orange! Don't get the paint on her breathing tubes!

10 days before grafting, I put all sealed brood in the bottom box, and remove all Q.E.'s except the one above the bottom box and the one under the top box. The queen has free run of the 3 boxes between the excluders.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Sorry, that last post got cut off. It was supposed to start out as follows.

Queen cell starters, and especially starter/finishers often swarm after cell building duty. You went and got them all excited about swarming artificially, and they don't know that they are supposed to stay home after that. Even the best of queens is no match for the hive hysteria of swarming, and will often get swarm-cell or supercedure-cell replaced.

Immediately after 2 cycles of cell building duty, break that cell builder colony up into nucs with new queen cells. That is what they want. Keep mama in the same location, with about half or less the original number of bees, and not too crowded. Watch her colony for more Q.C.'s...they will often afterswarm on you.

Now, back to the routine from the above post....

(The part that said, "ten days before grafting..." should have been labeled Day 1)

80 to 84 hours before grafting ( 7 AM on Day 8), I isolate the breeder queen on 3 combs. She could live in a DIFFERENT hive than the cell builder colony.

One day before grafting (Day 10), go through the entire colony and remove EVERY queen cell there is. This step is IMPORTANT!!!!! Any sealed queen cells you find can be used to make up nucs. Destroy any unsealed Q.C.'s. find the queen and place her in a push-in queen cage.

Grafting day (Day 11), in the morning (7 AM), rearrange the hive. Place it behind the original location facing the other way. Place a new bottom board on the stand, and one of the partially-filled supers on the bottom. Place the top brood box on the super. This box was unsealed back 10 days ago, but now it is sealed brood and pollen/honey. It is now the cell builder. Remove the 2 outside frames with pollen/honey, leave the brood. Spread the combs apart, leaving a 2-frame gap in the middle. Add a frame of super fresh pollen (Michael Palmer shakes pollen into an empty comb!). Place it in the middle. You should still have a 1-frame gap left for the grafts.

Shake bees from 5 to 7 frames of open brood from the queenright stack through an excluder shaker box and into the cell . Excluder ensures you don't shake any virgin queens (or mama if you didn't find her yesterday) into the cell builder. Place any more supers on other colonies. You need to feed thin syrup to the cell builder and you don't want it in the supers. continue to feed until the Q.C.'s are sealed.

Pitch you grafting tent right near the cell builder colony. Let mama queen out of the push-in cage, cover the box with the old queen, reduce the entrance. You left enough bees to care for the brood. Go get lunch across town, and come back just before 3 PM.

In the afternoon, (3 PM), 80 hours after you isolated the queen, get the 3 combs that you isolated the breeder queen on out. Take them over to the tent and graft them out of the 3 combs and into your fake queen cell cups. Before they start to dry out, spray them with purified water from a spray bottle. Place the queen cell bar frame into the cell builder box right next to the super-fresh pollen frame.
This cell builder can easily handle a queen cell frame with 3 bars of 16 cells each.

Five days after the graft (Day 16), the Q.C.'s are sealed. Gently remove the cell builder from the stand, place the queenright box back on the stand, uncover and add an excluder on the queenright section. Place the cell builder on top of the excluder. Stop feeding. 

Day 20 (the day before you harvest the q.c.'s) count them. Make that many nucs up. Suppose you have 40 cells, make that many nucleus colonies, give them their queen cells the next day. Q.C.'s are ready to cut apart and plant in nucs 10 days after grafting (Day 21).

The colony is out of honey production for 21 days and can go right back into it when it is done, but I prefer to break it up for nucs. If you keep it together, watch it for swarming / supercedure in the next several weeks.

Go ahead and figure up a calendar for next year - make it without numbers, just boxes for the date and queen cycle day, and one linear calendar of events in order for the queen rearing activity. Make copies for each breeder queen. It works out fairly well 1 to 5 breeder queens a day for 10 days, depending on your speed.

Also put time (12 to 15 days) for judging brood pattern in your calendar. My total cycle is 50 days. I usually do 2 breeder queen/cell builder colony setups a day for 9 days, then stop. After the nucs are moved out for mating, I start up again (about Day 30). It will get denser when I'm running more colonies.

Credit for this goes entirely to Michael Palmer, who posted it back in January of 2011. Good luck!


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## MethowKraig (Aug 21, 2011)

Charlie, I'm confused:

From the first post, one day before grafting, "I put all sealed brood in the bottom box, and remove all Q.E.'s except the one above the bottom box and the one under the top box. The queen has free run of the 3 boxes between the excluders."

From the second post, one day before grafting, "go through the entire colony and remove EVERY queen cell there is. This step is IMPORTANT!!!!! Any sealed queen cells you find can be used to make up nucs. Destroy any unsealed Q.C.'s. find the queen and place her in a push-in queen cage."

"Met-How Kraig"


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

If the bees started queen cells CNN e S's ides the grafts above the cloak board you could well have missed them, leading to supercedure or swarm.


Michael Palmer said:


> Many people, including authors of recent popular bee books make the mistake of calling emergency cells supercedure cells. They are quite different and built for different reasons.


I always get a bit nervous when I read something like that....but I don't think I'm guilty of this one.
Mike, when is your book coming out? I'm looking forWard to finding the mistakes 

Deknow


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Sorry, Kraig - the wifi keeps kicking me off. I re-wrote that at least 10 times in two different locations.

If I am using that queen for breeding, I slip her in under a push-in cage so I can find her. If that colony is a strong, badly behaved colony of bees that I'm using ONLY as a starter/finisher and that I plan on breaking up after one or two cycles (ie. a queen I'm NOT breeding), then she gets full run of the 3 boxes.

My bad!

Deknow - I don't quite understand the first sentence regarding not finding supercedure cells...and I, too would like to see what MP has to say.
I tend to use mostly 3-box tall colonies for breeding, and I go through very thoroughly. Anything remotely resembling a QC gets hacked out.
I may have forgotten to say that I do this on BOTH colony rearrangements, and, when using the queen from the starter/finisher, on day 8 when I isolate her. Sometimes things go wrong and every QC you can get becomes precious! I do prefer my intentional queens over the bees will when I can, but I have to go with theirs sometimes. I do hope to eventually get good enough at breeding that a great % of my bees are the result of selective, controlled breeding, and known parentage.


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