# OTS Question



## BeeAttitudes (Dec 6, 2014)

Thinking of using the Doolittle version of OTS in my best hive to raise a replacement queen for one of my other hives. I'll notch cells from my best queen and leave them in my strongest hive to build the cell and cap it. In the OTS book, 1 week after notching cells you move them to the new, queenless hive. I want to minimize impact to the hive I'm re-queening so I'm thinking of waiting till day 14 or 15 to kill the old queen and move the queen cell from the strong hive to the hive I'm re-queening. 

Does anyone see a problem with doing this? Don't want to cause a problem in the strong hive or the hive I'm re-queening.

Edit to add: For clarity, the notched cells would be placed above a queen exclude in the strong hive. It already has a queen exclude with 3 honey supers above it (2 completely full of honey). Any suggestion where to locate the notched frames above the excluder?


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## BeeAttitudes (Dec 6, 2014)

To be more specific let me point out what may not be obvious. At some point I will need to move a frame of brood with the queen cell(s) from the strong hive to the hive where I'm replacing the queen. Will this be a problem? Should I shake off all the young attendant bees before moving or just leave them on to transfer to the new hive?


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## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

If you are going to notch a frame of brood and you have a strong hive. Why not pinch the queen off and place the frame in the intended hive. Since you have a strong hive you have resources to bolster the hive as needed. 

If you do move a frame with a cell move it with the bees they will be accepted.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

After you get the frame with eggs laid, I believe you will have to isolate it by distance from the queen in order for them to start cells. I would say to put it above the three supers. I use a screened division board above 2 supers and have always had cells started. No need to clear the young bees off before transferring; for sure dont shake queen cells!

I just requeened a hive by putting a frame with started cells in the hive without finding the queen. You could find her and take her out if you can find her *and* if you want to keep her, otherwise they will treat it as a supercedure and the new queen (if she successfully mates) will take care of the old queen.


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## BeeAttitudes (Dec 6, 2014)

Thanks for those replies!

I will pinch the queen eventually......though I was thinking of pinching her right before I placed the queen cell in the hive. What does it buy me to pinch the queen early in the process?

Frank, thanks for the advice on locating the cells in the hive. A question, if I place the frame in the 3rd super (above the excluder), will I have any problems getting enough bees up there to keep the cells supplied with with plenty of royal jelly? Is a "screened division board" a screen that prevents any traffic between the frames?

The supercedure option is intriguing. Do I risk a mini swarm if the original queen leaves the hive or will she always be killed?

Thanks again!


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## thehackleguy (Jul 29, 2014)

BeeAttitudes said:


> I will pinch the queen eventually......though I was thinking of pinching her right before I placed the queen cell in the hive. What does it buy me to pinch the queen early in the process?



If you get rid of her then once all of the brood in the hive is capped the bees will concentrate on putting on honey, they won't have any youg brood to feed and only need to incubate the capped brood until the new queen starts laying.


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## BeeAttitudes (Dec 6, 2014)

thehackleguy said:


> If you get rid of her then once all of the brood in the hive is capped the bees will concentrate on putting on honey, they won't have any young brood to feed and only need to incubate the capped brood until the new queen starts laying.


Good point. The downside though is that there are more days with no eggs being laid so it hurts the population. The hive I'm planning to re-queen was started on Easter Sunday this spring and I'm not going to get any honey from it so honey isn't my main concern for this year. Maybe building the population then getting through winter should be my focus for this hive which gives me the best chance for honey next year. At least that's the way I've been looking at it.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

If you pinch the queen early you are putting your eggs all in the basket of successful emergence and mating. The timing and conditions have to be just right I think to take advantage of no queen for a month. I accidently lost a queen on May 27 and just saw the first new brood today. The weather has been stinky anyway but they sure did not make honey or brood in this time period.

I put the split box with eggs above the excluder and one or more honey supers for 2 days and nurse bees come up to cover the frames. Have not seen cells started during this time, but they seem to appear quickly after you place the populated frames above the double screened division board. This is without notching which should be easier to track the would be cells location. I would not try to have the split raise a lot of queens . You certainly could thin them down according to your needs and the number of fully covered frames of nurse bees.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

If you've got a laying queen I'd say put her in a cage and wait until at least a bit farther along in the process before you give her the axe. Being queenless at a critical time (not saying it is critical right now for you) stinks. Queens in reserve is a powerful thing.


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## BeeAttitudes (Dec 6, 2014)

Thanks for the replies everyone. I think I'll give this a try. I have very little to lose if I move eggs/young larvae from the bottom of the hive up into the 3rd super (which is mostly empty though the two honey supers below are full of honey). If they don't draw out good queen cells, I can move the frames back below (after removing any queen cells). If they do, I'll wait till after they are capped and around day 14 move the frame with queen cell into the hive I'm re-queening. If I find the queen, I'll put her in a queen cage as a backup. If not, I'll let nature takes it's course........as long as this won't cause the old queen to swarm.

If it works well, I'll use a similar method to split my strong hive after the honey harvest in July.


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## Thershey (Mar 12, 2014)

Fwiw...the Dolittle method of Mels has seen mixed results for many who have tried it including myself. You might want to check the frame a few days after isolating it to see if they are pulling cells. If not, some have had luck with adding a sheet of newspaper under the QE to help isolate the queens pheromones. Others have had better luck pulling the notched frames and a shake or two off to a Nuc for 24-36 hours to make sure they start qcs. Once started you can put back over the QE to utilize the hives resources to feed and draw premium cells.

All that said, since you are reading/ following Mels methods it's almost time to dump both of those queens, no point in having a boomer hive through the dearth. More bees are great for the flow but more bees after the flow just eat more stores that could better be used for wintering. If you can't bring yourself to kill good queens you can always do a pre-swarm like maneuver and accomplish the same thing while also forcing a broad break on the primary hives.


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

jwcarlson said:


> If you've got a laying queen I'd say put her in a cage and wait until at least a bit farther along in the process before you give her the axe. Being queenless at a critical time (not saying it is critical right now for you) stinks. Queens in reserve is a powerful thing.


x2 

I'd take three frames of brood, bees, a frame of honey (from somewhere) and put the old queen in a nuc with them. Do your OTS and once your new queen is laying right then kill the old one...or not. 
Don't count your queens before they are hatched, capped, mated, and have laid a couple weeks minimum.


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## BeeAttitudes (Dec 6, 2014)

Great advice, thanks to everyone!


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Do a google on Taranov Swarm. I have done it a number of times and it is a good way to get the queen and a bunch of new bees extracted from the hive if you cannot find her. Those bees will stay in a new location because they are not oriented. It would be a problem if you hives are not up on blocks or a rack but I think the idea is worth exploring for the understanding it gives about bee behaviour.


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## BeeAttitudes (Dec 6, 2014)

Thanks Crofter. Interesting idea for splitting the hive and I like it because it's difficult to find the queen sometimes.


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

BeeAttitudes said:


> Thanks Crofter. Interesting idea for splitting the hive and I like it because it's difficult to find the queen sometimes.


When I have a hive with two or more brood boxes I separate the boxes during my queen search. Going thru the one on top might chase her down and then she comes up back up onto a frame I already searched. Have seen it happen. I also use an excluder if I ever put a brood box onto a super even for a minute or simply don't stack brood onto honey. 
Accidently putting a queen into the honey supers would suck real bad. It really helps to search box by box rather than just going down thru a hive.


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## texanbelchers (Aug 4, 2014)

aunt betty said:


> Don't count your queens before they are hatched, capped, mated, and have laid a couple weeks minimum.


I'll second that. With small numbers, 2 attempts- 2 queens and 6 queens respectively, I've seen 100% emerge rate, but only 50% mating return rate.

Maybe my wife is feeding too many birds? Maybe it is too many cars around? Maybe it is just nature? I don't know; it must be mites!


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## thehackleguy (Jul 29, 2014)

BeeAttitudes said:


> Thanks Crofter. Interesting idea for splitting the hive and I like it because it's difficult to find the queen sometimes.


+1


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

texanbelchers said:


> I'll second that. With small numbers, 2 attempts- 2 queens and 6 queens respectively, I've seen 100% emerge rate, but only 50% mating return rate.
> ot happy
> Maybe my wife is feeding too many birds? Maybe it is too many cars around? Maybe it is just nature? I don't know; it must be mites!


This year I've had couple hives do weird stuff on me. Installed a package from Georgia that either I killed the queen (not likely) or they did. There were two types of bees in one box and they just were not happy. They made cells so I split them up. Yes, I split a 3# package about 8 days in.  

For some reason I had to have a top bar hive. The bees I put in there were happy happy for about 6 weeks and then decided it's succession time or I killed the queen (I dont think so). 

The Georgia split: One side made a queen hasty quick and the other side...still trying. 

The top bar split three ways: All three mated. 

Another nuc: Started a split with two frames of bees. (bad idea) 
Those guys made queen cells but did not mate one so I found a virgin somewhere. She disappeared. Got another virgin, same results. So finally I took two more frames from the mama hive and whalla, nice mated queen.

Point is, you gotta watch em and don't give up. 

Last Saturday I followed another way more experienced beek around doing OTS. 

In case y'all are wondering...I'm a full-time beekeeper. No job to speak of.


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