there was some talk of requeening with cells and I
want to share that we use a couple thousand cells in
our Florida operation every year, mostly in Feb, March
and a bit in April. Works great.

We ship about 700 to 800 hives down in Nov. for
breeding stock. About 2400 stay north(I'm wondering
why sometime, we leave any north, after last year). We
split the hive in two and leave the original queen in
the original site with a couple of combs of bees and
honey. The top story is set off and screened on a new
pallet until the end of the day then moved to a new
site. Any unsatisfactory queens are killed and we
introduce cells into all queenless hives and wait
about 18 days to check back. Usually we get 80 to 90
percent take. We also make up 4 frame nucs as we split
with the overflow of brood. We end up with about 1500
singles with new queens in over half and 500 nucs with
new queens. Cells are great for us. All the hives are
shipped north to Michigan in the middle of April. We
always sell some. This year we will raise some cells
and queens of our own.
Kirk Jones  www.sleepingbearfarms.com

=====
Kirk Jones     www.benzieplayboyz.com
                    www.sleepingbearfarms.com

greetings from Northern Michigan!

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