Hi Claude

> When confined to the Jenter cage, she would lay in 102 to 106
> plugs of the 112 when placed there at 5 pm and released at
> 1 pm the following day.

If it happened like this, I would have no problem, but in UK the laying can
be anything from immediate to a week. We try to work to a pre-arranged
schedule and so this wide variation cannot be tolerated.

> one beekeeper friend of mine suggested putting two cells
> per nuc to increase the odds of success.

I have a page on this...
http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/qc2.html
but in reading it, please bear in mind that supersedure is a strong trait in
the bees that I breed (AMM).

> Would this 80mm rule also apply
> when moving cells to the finisher?

As far as I know it would, It also applies to drone raising colonies.

I go further by providing pollen in troughs that are built into the cell
frames. and also packing trapped pollen into empty combs.

Medhat mentions the end positions on cell bars, in UK I now ignore the
endmost positions completely, as only small scrubby cells were ever produced
in those positions. This may not be related to cluster size (although AMM
clusters are smaller) but may be another manifestation of this 80 mm pollen
transport effect.

> As far as the jenter kit goes, I use new plugs and cups for every batch.

I find greater success with old cups that have been cleaned up by the bees
themselves... I used to go to great lengths to clean up the old cups, but
about five years ago I was told by Albert Knight that he was getting better
success with cups that had any dried residue scraped out then cleaned up by
the bees.

In fact any new plastic fittings are now 'dirtied' by placing a small chunk
of old honey comb (30 mm dia, no cocoons) into water that is hot enough to
melt it. Then the plastic parts are dipped through the resulting wax film
and given to the bees to clean up.


Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY
http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman or http://www.dave-cushman.net
Fall Back M/c, Build 6.02 (stable)

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