Yesterday, I began setting up Bee Glad... for use in queen rearing. I am following the methods outlined by Susan Cobey in an article available on the internet. I did the following things:
1. Confined the queen to the boxes below the queen excluder on the Cloake board.
2. In the box above the excluder, I placed:
a. a couple of frames of open brood.
b. frames of nectar/pollen near where the grafts will be placed.
c. a frame of open foundation.
d. I also inserted the queen cell frame (with plastic cups included) so that the bees would clean these up before I graft.
3. Pivoted the bottom entrance 180 degrees and closed it off. The top entrance above the queen excluder on the Cloake board is now the only entrance open and it faces the direction (south) the original entrance did.
I will let the hive sit and let the bees settle a bit.
This whole process cost me three stings to the head. Somehow, A number of bees got into my veil while doing this and I suffered the consequences.
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