Russian Drawn Comb

[TwT]

I have heard alot of people say russians are not that good at drawing out foundation if this is true I might be going in the right direction, see I'm getting 5 packages of cordovan's this month and I wanted to get russians but I cant get the russian until july, I was just thinking of letting the carny's draw out the comb and introducing the russian's queens then , I might leave the carny's in thier hive's and take some drawn out brood frame's to introduce to the russians to give them good comb to start on. would this be over kill, comments???

[Jay]

The only thing you might be careful of is the introduction of the Russian queen.  I heard this for the first time at our club meeting a week ago and had never heard it before. Apparently, Russian queens have a completely different pheremone makeup than Italians, buckfast, carniolians etc. So it can be a challenge to get them accepted into a hive of a different species. This is the first time I've heard anything like this but the guy who said it is a well respected keeper who has provided nucs and packages in our area for years. Maybe someone else has heard something about this or has an opinion.

[TwT]

on the russian queen introduction , I heard it also , been told to put the queen cage in 2 days then pull the cork out and expose the candy.

[Michael Bush]

Or do a push in cage.  That's probably the most reliable.

[Robo]

Or do a push in cage.  That's probably the most reliable.

Micheal,

Is this what you mean by a push in cage?


I tried a couple of these last year,  and had really mixed results.  It seemed that the bees would chew thru the comb rather quickly around the edges and release the queen.  Of the  3 I tried, I think 2 where released with 24 hrs.

Have you had any luck with them?  Maybe I'm missing something here.   I really like the idea of giving her more room and the ability to start laying,  but I haven't seen it yet.

[Michael Bush]

I did buy one of the plastic ones as you have in the picture, but have not used it.  What I've always used is simply made out of #8 hardware cloth.  The idea is to put it over some emerging brood.  That way the emerging bees accept the queen, the queen starts laying in the empty cells that the emerging brood came out of and by the time the rest of the bees chew their way under there is a laying queen with a full entourage of attendants.

http://www.honeyflowfarm.com/beeproject/images/puchincagelarge.jpg

http://members.aol.com/queenb95/QnIntroInstr.html

[Robo]

I'll have to make some out of the hardware cloth and try them.  It seems like they would penetrate deeper into the wax.  I found that the plastic onces have a wide plastic lip that doesn't go into the wax very well.  Thanks for the advice......