Queen storage cage

01 · THE SEQUENCE

The gate comes down afterwards, not before

The cage goes into the hive open, with the queen cell mounted in the cell-cup seat: nurse bees pass through the front and rear mesh and tend the cell as if it were still on the frame. Only once the virgin has emerged do you slide the clear gate down, shutting 50 to 70 bees from that same colony in with her, carrying her own colony's pheromone. That is also the moment to load the cone with thick syrup, sugar paste or fondant: the food is what keeps the package going through the move.

02 · TIMING

This is June kit, not March kit

It only earns its place in the stretch of the season when queen cells are running and mature drones are flying, and it covers days rather than weeks: from the cell being close to emergence until the virgin reaches the instrumental insemination bench or goes into a mating nuc. Insemination results are best with virgins five to ten days old, so the window is short — cages are made ready before grafting, not on the day the cell is already sealed.

03 · COMPATIBILITY

The inner seat is Nicot format

The recess is built for a plastic cell-cup holder from the Nicot system: CNE2 holder with a CNE3 cup, which measures about 10 mm across the outside, or a CNE7 holder if you work with natural queen cells. That is the limit worth checking before you buy: a wide-based JZBZ cup, roughly 25 mm, will not sit in that seat, and neither will a cell carrying too much wax around it. If you rear on JZBZ, the larva has to be moved to a Nicot cup.

04 · BEFORE YOU BUY

You get one cage, not the three in the photo: the colour — green, yellow or orange — depends on the batch and cannot be chosen. The unit is the ventilated body with its gate and its cone; the cup holder and cup belong to the Nicot system, so make sure you have one to hand before the day itself. And what it does not do: it will not introduce a mated queen into a production colony, it is not a postal shipping cage, and it mates nothing — without instrumental insemination the virgin still has to go to a mating nuc.