When making a split to produce emergency queen cells. Remove all capped cells on day five. These were made from larva which you don’t knows how old they were. Uncapped cells are from eggs. Better queens.
Very important to have all the nurse bees full of pollen so they produce heaps of royal jelly. Mash up a pollen and honey frame a couple of days before making the split. Dribble over bees.
Tearing down cells. Sounds like you had a virgin small queen in that hive as the bees tore down the cells. They don’t tear down dud cells.
We used a swarm to draw out queen cells after caging the queen. Produced 29 beautifully cells out of 30 grafted. All turned out to have black queen virus (black tip).
Such a disappointment.
We had used the dona queen before so must have come from the swarm bees. Lesson learnt by us. Keep swarms separate. Use your best colonies to produce cells. They are healthier.
Frank Lindsay
New Zealand
Sent from my iPad
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