queen cells, about detatching them from comb?

[bayareaartist]

Hi,
I have a large hive that has up to 12 to 16 queen cells and I am interested in removing some of the cells to have the queens.

I think I removed the queen on the 26th and I checked the hive on the 31st of august and most of the cells were capped.
When can I start to remove the cells without damaging the queens inside??

Thank you.
Donn

[Michael Bush]

I usually don't even try, I just put each frame that has some cells in it's own nuc and call it good.  But if you want to cut out queen cells without killing the queen you'll have to meet several criteria.

1)  It can't be on plastic comb or you'll never succeed.

2)  It will have to be far enough along that the wax is brown and papery looking and not soft like putty.  This is probably a two day window between say day 13 and 15 that this will have to be done.

3)  You are very gentle

4)  You have a VERY sharp knife.

[Joseph Clemens]

If you're determined to cut queen cells from one comb and insert them into another comb, don't forget that the slightest damage could be disastrous for the young queen. Carefully detaching them from their parent comb and carefully reattaching them to the receiving comb is an operation I prefer to avoid. It is much easier to do as Michael Bush has said, use the entire comb with queen cells attached.

I recently used one of my nucs with a Cordovan Italian queen open mated with local drones, afterwards I repopulated it with bees and brood from other similar queens, it has become a strong nuc again, since it was repopulated, queen cells were developed on three different frames, but only one frame contained eggs from a 100% Cordovan Italian mother queen (the queen mother of choice), so I carefully destroyed all other queen cells. Presently there is a nice looking Cordovan Italian virgin queen, hopefully she will soon be open mated and laying away.