Hi All The promised commentary on the Cloake system did not happen as things did not develop along the lines that I had planned. (the queen I thought was a "good" bet for breeding turned out to produce workers that were horrible when they were working "BioDiesel" Rape (Canola). We have not had much of the crude version of this crop for many years and so it's toxic effect had not been noticed in the previous generations. Slight progress has been made in my re-building program, I now have four colonies and we have a spell of good weather, so I may yet do a Cloake queen raising job but we are running out of time to build the resulting nucs into colonies for wintering. Regards From:- Dave Cushman, G8MZY Beekeeping and Bee Breeding, http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman IBList Archives, http://website.lineone.net/~d.cushman