Hi Waldemar, Dee, Mike, Mike & all

 > How about placing the cells in a small nuc?

It has been so long since I did any work on the project that I had
forgotten that this was one of the reasons for the 'cool box' idea.

A damp towel (or a sponge) does work for this purpose, I used a towel to
wrap around frames removed from a hive for grafting to save de-hydration
of larva while the frame was carried to a shady place.

 > Would need to make a screened insert to hold the cells.

Most bee breeders as well as most queen raisers, would have frame
isolation cages available... A good many years ago these were available
from the bee trade as a manufactured item, to suit UK brood frame size,
does anyone have a photo of one of them or know any details (all I have
are some rather faded scribble pencil notes).

But as Mike suggests... Two or three frames of bees from more or less
any hive would make up a queenless workforce. If you were taking the
cells to an isolated mating site, you would have to somehow filter out
any drones from such a workforce, but that is not difficult.


Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY
http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman or http://www.dave-cushman.net
Short FallBack M/c, Build 6.02/3.1 (stable)

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