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Saturday, May 30, 2015

2015 ECWBA FIELD DAY by beekeeper Fred

It was a little wet at the 2015 field day, but the participants witnessed the basics of queen rearing.  Three methods were reviewed; allowing the bees to raise their own queens using a queenless split in a nuc box, manual grafting of larvae into queen cells, and queen rearing using a commercial queen rearing kit.  We will report next week on the yield of the commercial kit process.  Twenty cells were started.  Any bets on how many will get capped?

Aside from queen rearing we also looked a homemade telescoping swarm catcher, a hive mounted swarm queen catcher and an innovative winter feeder.  Thanks to all participates who braved the intermittent rain showers.  I think I can say we all had more fun and learned more than if we stayed warm and dry inside at home.

                                          Clubmember Vicki trying her hand at hand grafting

                                               Did I really catch one of those tiny larvae?

                                      Jon explaining the multiple features of his winter feeder.

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