Now In Stock: HiveAlive Fondant is valuable all year round, including while temperatures are too low to feed syrup.
Based on the the principle that nurse bees deprived of a queen and brood will create queen cells to create new queens.
$79.95
This box can be used in the first phase of the Doolittle method of raising queens.
Start by shaking about 5 pounds of nurse bees from frames with open brood, pollen and nectar frames. Grafted larvae are added a few hours later.
Nurse bees will then start the cells which are transferred in 24 hours to a finishing colony and the nurse bees transferred back to their hive.
One well-stocked swarm box can start around 100 queen cells.
The use of the swarm box is described in Successful Queen Rearing by Marla Spivak and other queen rearing texts.
