Koss Russian bee setup

[Breeder of queens Koss]

if you are interested, I can tell you about my beekeeping.
I have a multi-body system for 1/2 dadan. 8 frames in 1 case.
I keep a buckfast bee and a carnic.
Every bee has its drawbacks, and buckfast has such a bad reception of larvae
for education. ( compared to other breeds I've worked with) I am working with the starter application.
For grafting, I use a homemade 0.8 mm wide spatula and a microscope. The real quality begins with a larva that is less than 12 hours old
I give the load to the colony - educator of 16 larvae.
This year I have mastered artificial insemination. The percentage of those who died was about 10%, the remaining ones feel well and work hard. This year I inseminated about 10 queens, but using different dosages of sperm and the multiplicity of insemination, I mastered the technology.

 

[Breeder of queens Koss]

 

[Breeder of queens Koss]

Now a little bit about the hive itself. The design was invented by two Ukrainian beekeepers-Mikhail Polivoda and Konstantin Lezin. It is also called "horned" because of the protruding horns above the body. The hive is fingerless. For its production, a minimum set of tools and carpentry skills is required. At first, it was made even from an unstressed board. No milling work. the joints between the housings are closed by horns. the board is 25 mm thick. From one cubic meter of wood, 100 cases are obtained. In my opinion, the design turned out to be just great. There are examples of making such beehives from plywood on the Internet. For better preservation of the material, they can be boiled in paraffin or oil. I just have them covered with water-based paint and have been working for 5-6 years. I hope you were interested

 

[Breeder of queens Koss]

recently, beehives made of expanded polystyrene and polyurethane foam have been gaining popularity. The tree recedes into the background

 

[Trevor Gillbanks]

I like your locking box system. Very clever

 

[Breeder of queens Koss]

A way to introduce new queens into the hive.
These methods are the most proven in practice and the percentage of successfully implemented queens is almost 100% . No method will give you 100% results, because we work with living organisms.
The first and most important rule is no young larvae in the Hive. There should be no eggs and larvae of three days ' age in the colony. ( this is the maximum period from which the bees can bring out a replacement for the queen) And no matter how great your new queen is, bees will always prefer to derive a new queen from their genetics. There are of course tricks when you take an old queen from the hive, and immediately give a young new one, but for this you need a strong flow of nectar into the hive. Or the replacement of queens in early spring or autumn, when there are very few broods in the colony.
So, the classic way.
We find the old queen, kill her. And we leave the orphaned colony for 6 days. On the 6th day, we open the hive and remove all the queen cells that appeared on the frames. You can shake off the bee to make it easier to watch. And we leave the new queen in a cage for a day in the colony. The next day, carefully release the queen on the frame and watch the reaction of the bees. Ideally, they should make way around the queen with the sun. There should be no aggression. (gently release the queen from the cage, without bumps and pushes. Ideally, she should leave the cage by herself. Inseminated queens lose weight very quickly and can fly perfectly) Next, carefully put the frame back into the hive and after 10-15 minutes, monitor the situation again. If there is no fight, then congratulations, your queen is accepted. After 3-4 days, check how the uterus sows eggs.
This method is good if you know when the queen will come to you exactly on time and you can prepare for it
The second method according to Grandpa Ruttner
Take two cases and a small grid, through which the bee can not pass.
In the lower case, you kill the queen. Looking for frames with a brood that has already begun to be born and transfer their upper body without bees!! Only the frames. . There you also add frames with honey and empty frames filled with water. We put a grid on the lower case from above and put the second case. In the second case, there should be no cracks and open holes. You release a new queen on the frame and close the hive. A young bee will never harm the queen. After 7 days, remove the queen cells in the lower case and combine the cases by removing the grid. At the top, the queen will already have a retinue of bees, and the warm air that will go through the grid from the lower family will not let them freeze. In this way, you can introduce special-value queens.
And there is an express method.
We take an empty hive. We put honey frames and empty ones with water there. We take the donor hive and take the frames from the nest where the young bee is located. We shake the bee into a new hive and hang the cage with the queen. We are closing the hive. We take it to the side or take it to another base. The old bee will fly away and we don't need it. The next day, we release the queen and watch how her reception goes in the first version. After a couple of days, we check for eggs, let them disperse a little and you can force a sealed brood from other families that is already being born. We force it until the new hive gains strength.

 

[Breeder of queens Koss]

Hi all, I thought I'd continue to tell you about my beekeeping. The season started very promisingly in February with the arrival of fresh pollen and warm days. There was some brood in the hives. But then the weather changed and we had sub-zero temperatures all of March. The bees didn't have time to change and the families weakened quite a bit. It was only towards the end of April that I started to do the first work on hatching queens. Now it is May, there is a lot of work, but the weather is still not good - strong winds and low temperatures of +10+15°C.
Today I did the transfer of the larvae and took a little photo shoot for you. I am working under a microscope and a homemade Swiss-like spatula. I try to take the larvae that are on the border where the eggs and larvae are. The larva is smaller than the egg and is fed with clear royal jelly. Usually, this royal jelly is very small and can only be picked up with a Swiss spatula, you can't do that with a Chinese spatula

 

[Breeder of queens Koss]

In this photo, the larva has just hatched and has not yet been fed

 

[Breeder of queens Koss]

And this one has already started to be fed.

 

[Breeder of queens Koss]

It is the difference in colour and the amount of milk the larvae receive, depending on their age.

 

[Breeder of queens Koss]

I want to make it clear that this frame is from a breeding family and a larva is constantly being taken from it, so in the photos you can see larvae of different ages side by side. Classically, the Queen moves and lays eggs in a spiral. By the way, these larvae are from a Queen with VSH genetics. By paternal and maternal. I will make combinations with my material and try to test them - specifically infect varroa and count resistance. It's good that there are so many mites and you don't have to look for them)))) if anything, you can also ask the neighbours))
That's all, I hope you found it interesting

 

[Maggie]

Fab photography Koss. Yes, your comments are interesting.

Do you work for a research facility, beekeeping company or just by yourself?

 

[Breeder of queens Koss]

Fab photography Koss. Yes, your comments are interesting.

Do you work for a research facility, beekeeping company or just by yourself?

Thank you for your kind words, Maggie. My wife and I have a small apiary and we specialise in raising queen bees. I am a member of the national association of beekeepers where I participate in various projects and share information and interesting material.

 

[Breeder of queens Koss]

On the way to the apiary, a field of rapeseed is in bloom. It looks very spectacular. I couldn't resist taking selfies))
Rapeseed blooms for about 30 days. The bee develops very well on such a flow of nectar. The honey from it crystallises very quickly.

 

[Maggie]

Canola is a very common crop in Mid Canterbury, a late November flow. Once it's capped you need to get it off the hive promptly, and you don't want it sitting at the extraction plant. A drop of two degrees temperature with variable weather or at the extraction plant, it quickly granulates and is not extractable, and clogs up your good comb for the white clover crop. But it does have value as a light coloured honey for blending.

 

[Breeder of queens Koss]

today there was a relocation of queens to micronucleuses. Before setting up the uterus, I usually open it. There are two photos in front of you. What do you say about these two queen cells?

 

[Breeder of queens Koss]

Probably the quiz format is not suitable for our communication 😁 The correct answer was that these two cells differ in the amount of royal jelly. With the same transfer time of the larva, the same shape and size of the cell, one colony raising future queens provided enough food to the larva that she still had food left. And the other colony ( in the upper photo ) she did not provide the larva with enough food, and the larva was starving, which affected her lag in development. This is one of the many factors in the quality of queens. The queen in the top photo was rejected.

 

[Mummzie]

Probably the quiz format is not suitable for our communication 😁

I was not sure what you were asking. Even without crossing languages, sometimes the intent of a question is missed.

Before setting up the uterus, I usually open it.

I would like to clarify some translations here. You use the term uterus- which to me is the internal reproductive organ.
A queen, unmated, we refer to as a Virgin Queen. After mating, she is either 'The Queen' , a mated queen or a laying queen.

Are you saying when you place the queen cell in a small colony for mating, you open the cell? You don't leave her to emerge by her own means?

Your photos are very clear and detailed. But is that a varroa in the first queen photo?

 

[Breeder of queens Koss]

I would like to clarify some translations here. You use the term uterus- which to me is the internal reproductive organ.
A queen, unmated, we refer to as a Virgin Queen. After mating, she is either 'The Queen' , a mated queen or a laying queen.

Sorry, I write this term out of habit. It denotes a female bee with a full-fledged reproductive system. In communication, it is very often used and you write this word on "autopilot". But I will try to write "queen" and "virgin queen" so that you would understand.

 

[Breeder of queens Koss]

was not sure what you were asking. Even without crossing languages, sometimes the intent of a question is missed.

I will definitely take up my English in the winter😊