Nurse Colony (Cell Builder)
Lexikon
The nurse colony is the colony that accepts the grafted breeding larvae, supplies them with royal jelly and rears them into queens.
The nurse colony is the colony that accepts the grafted breeding larvae, supplies them with royal jelly and rears them into queens. The quality of the queens depends directly on its condition.
The requirements are clear: healthy, strong, with many young nurse bees and plenty of food and pollen. The Veitshöchheim Institute for Apiculture specifies a brood chamber with eight well-occupied brood combs and fully occupied comb spaces. A combined brood nucleus is especially well suited, because it has many young bees and no queen.
Two approaches are distinguished. In the queenless nurse colony, the queen is absent entirely, and there the most cells are accepted, up to 25 according to the institute. In the queenright colony, the queen remains but is separated from the nursing combs by a queen excluder or a divider screen. There the number of acceptable cells drops considerably, down to 15 or only about four, depending on the degree of separation.
Two points are often overlooked. First, after removing the queen, at least one to two hours must be allowed for queenless agitation to set in, otherwise the cells will not be accepted. Second, unwanted queen cells in the remaining open brood must be broken out, otherwise the colony rears its own queen and neglects the breeding material.