Cloake board use

[Kate Atchley]

I have used a Cloake board to create a cell-builder then cell-finisher hive and this has run successfully.

My concern is the drones in the lower brood area of the hive – reference to them seems to be absent from all the guidance I've come across.

The drones have been sequestered in the lower brood boxes (there are 2 below and 1 above the Cloake board as this colony is huge) since the slide was first put in and the 'back door' at lower level closed. If I leave the queen cells until they go into their mating nucs, with the Cloake board in place, the drones will not have flown for 10 or 11 days.

Does this cause them any harm? These are some of the drones I hope to inseminate some of those fine young virgins as their sisters are such prodigious foragers.

[mbc]

I have used a Cloake board to create a cell-builder then cell-finisher hive and this has run successfully.

My concern is the drones in the lower brood area of the hive – reference to them seems to be absent from all the guidance I've come across.

The drones have been sequestered in the lower brood boxes (there are 2 below and 1 above the Cloake board as this colony is huge) since the slide was first put in and the 'back door' at lower level closed. If I leave the queen cells until they go into their mating nucs, with the Cloake board in place, the drones will not have flown for 10 or 11 days.

Does this cause them any harm? These are some of the drones I hope to inseminate some of those fine young virgins as their sisters are such prodigious foragers.

I use cloak boards but I open a small back entrance and leave it open. Four days after grafting theres also no need to leave the bottom front entrance closed as the cells will have received all of their food so extra bees are unnecessary.

[Kate Atchley]

That's really helpful mbc. Many thanks.

I had guessed it'd be fine to open the lower entrances again (cells capped Saturday) but was keen to hear from someone who has done this. I'll open them today, no doubt to the relief of those trapped drones!

[Kate Atchley]

Horrors! Opened the lower entrance at the front yesterday lunchtime and today found a big pile of dead bees out front – mostly workers plus some young drones.

They're on a mesh floor so I think that rules out suffocation, and I saw a few bees fighting as I left the hive yesterday. It's on three brood boxes, all full, and I wonder if the bees in the bottom box simply lost pheramone connection with the bees in the top box and they no longer experienced each other as colony mates?

Any ideas? :(

[Dark Bee]

Should the entrance to the bottom not have been reversed when a Cloake board was in use? Was the entrance closed with something solid? Mesh should never in my view be used to close an opening through which the bees are accustomed to travel. If it is they invaribly pile up behind it attempting to get through and muchwork will be generated for the local firm of apian undertakers!
Three boxes is a big hive, they are unlikely to be AMM, I think you are likely correct in your hypothesis, the violence resulted from a breakdown in family relationships. It is unlikely to have been caused by a cast or robbers.
It would have been exacerbated by a flow ending or general lack of forage.

[mbc]

Horrors! Opened the lower entrance at the front yesterday lunchtime and today found a big pile of dead bees out front – mostly workers plus some young drones.

They're on a mesh floor so I think that rules out suffocation, and I saw a few bees fighting as I left the hive yesterday. It's on three brood boxes, all full, and I wonder if the bees in the bottom box simply lost pheramone connection with the bees in the top box and they no longer experienced each other as colony mates?

Any ideas? :(

It sounds from your previous question like there was no bottom entrance at all while the front one was shut. I think if you'd shut in a few tens of thousands of humans for a few days they would have a few corpses to cart out once released, and humans have a much longer lifespan than bees.
The object of the exercise in closing the normal entrance with a Cloake board system is that bees leaving by the unusual rear entrance will try and return to their usual front entrance but get diverted to the front top entrance instead, thus strengthening the queenless cell starting portion of the hive with the returning flying bees and also diverting the nectar and pollen towards your queen cells.

[Kate Atchley]

Thanks Black Bee.There is a back entrance on the lower floor and that was used when the Cloake board was first set up for queen cell building/finishing. But the instructions I have suggest that is closed when the slide goes in (no mention of opening or reversing it again. I have a floor adapted to have with back and front entrances.)

They're on a mesh floor with wooden entrance closures but yes, the bees may have been trying to find an exit on the base having seen light there. However, I think the death were caused because family relationships broke down, as you say. Good way of putting it!

I won't use such a huge colony for this again ... and yes, these are hybrids as are all my bees ... about 50% Amm and we'll be breeding to increase that next year.

[Kate Atchley]

It sounds from your previous question like there was no bottom entrance at all while the front one was shut.

Yes, that's how the hive was from the day after grafting, once the bees had accepted queen cells for building. I was following (too carefully!) the day-by-day instructions printed in the American Bee Journal April 2005 (and I believe re-printed at some point in Beecraft). The workers from the lower box were supposedly to have reorganised themselves to use the entrance above the queen excluder leaving only the drones without an exit. But I was not at all happy about this which is why I put the question up here.

A lesson learned!

In retrospect, I reckon the most reliable Cloake board guidance is here: http://www.honeybeesuite.com/using-the-cloake-board-method-to-raise-queens/.

[Dark Bee]

I got my inspiration for the Cloake board from "Sixty Years with Bees" by Donald Simms.
A book worth reading.

[Kate Atchley]

I have the book but didn't realise he'd written on Cloake Boards. I'll revisit him and yes, a wealth of good material in there.

[Dark Bee]

Donald was a quantity surveyor and the book is written like a bill of quantities! One has to keep flicking from the preliminaries to the bill proper, something that detracts not in the slightest from the worth of the book. I pencilled a note in the flyleaf of my copy showing it was bought by me at the BBK spring convention at Stoneleigh in 2002, eleven years ago but it only feels like five or six. Time does fly.
Incidentally Donald died almost immediately after he had completed his book.

[Black Comb]

After Hooper my first "proper" book. I agree it is good and very readable.