Corpularva Cassette System

Selecting and picking up larva of the correct age of 18 to 24 hours old takes skill and good eyesight.  This cassette system takes out the guess work and allows the beekeeper to raise queens without having to master the delicate art of grafting larva.   The cassette is usually fitted into an existing frame after a suitable hole is cut in the comb.  The cassette is best introduced to the hive with the queen excluder front panel removed at least 24 hours before it is used to allow it to warm up and obtain the hive smell.  The manufacturers suggest filling each cell cup with a drop of honey but not everyone does this.  You can spray with sugar syrup but this can make the brown cell cups more difficult to remove as the sugar glues them in place.

The queen is confined to the cassette for 24 hours and then released.  Three days later the eggs will hatch so if the beekeeper returns 4 days after introducing the queen, larva of the correct age will be found.  Feed continuously both before and throughout the process for best results.  The cassette takes 110 cell cups but not all of them need be used.  If the queen does not lay in the first 24 hours she can simply be left for another day.  Failure to lay can be down to a sudden change in the weather.

Removing the cell cups can be a bit fiddly but it is much easier if you use the cream coloured socket from our queen rearing kit.

Please note the cassette is supplied empty, cell cups, cages etc., will be needed.  These are all listed elsewhere in this Section.

Additional Instructions:

Instructions for the use of this kit are a bit thin on the ground.  The instructions provided by the manufacturer are somewhat cursory but the system is very similiar to the Jenter kit for which a bit more information is available on the web if you Google its name.  However, the general principle is to fit the cassette into a frame of drawn comb after you have cut out a square hole all the way through the comb into which the cassette will fit.  Cut the hole directly below the top bar and fix the cassette to the underside of the top bar with a couple of small screws (not supplied).  The front of the cassette is like a queen excluder and should be removed first.  It can be a tight fit so lever it gently up using the hive tool.   Fit brown cell cups to the rear of each artificial cell in the cassette.  It is not necessary to use all 110 cells, cells which are not required can be left empty.   Place the frame with the front of the cassette removed but with brown cell cups in place in the centre of the colony to be used for queen raising.  Opinions differ about how long it should be left there but we suggest a minimum of 24 hours.  The manufacturer recommends several months but we have heard of plenty of people having success with only 24 hours.  We normally leave it in for 2 or 3 days.  The cassette can be sprayed with a weak sugar solution and/or honey placed in the cell cups if desired.  This will assist with the acceptance of the frame by the bees. 

When the time comes to start the queen rearing process refit the front queen excluder section of the cassette and then catch the queen and place here inside the cassette.  There is a stoppered entrance on the front to allow her introduction.  After 24 hours the queen should have started to lay in the cell cups and at this point she can be released.  If necessary leave her longer.  Timing is critical from this point onwards.  If the queen was introduced on day 1, the eggs were laid by Day 2 so the larva will be the correct age for grafting at Day 5.  For example, if the queen is introduced on Tuesday and released on Wednesday the larva are the right age on Saturday.  Some variation in the age of the larva is inevitable as each day is a full 24 hour period and the eggs may have been laid over the first full 24 hours.  The larva to select are those which are barely curved.  If they are curved into a semi-circle they are too old.

Suitable books on queen rearing include Queen Rearing by Vince Cook and the extensive Queen Bee: Biology, Rearing and Breeding by David Woodward.  Northern Bee Books can supply these and other guides.  The latter has a very short section on using the Jenter system.

The BIBBA timetable on queen rearing using a Jenter and mini-nucs can be found here.  The dates on this timetable will need to be adjusted to suit your own timetable.