One of the first methods that we tried was the Haskins board. This method, when used with National hive, requires a special board to accommodate a brood frame above a strong colony. A hive that is rectangular can accommodate a horizontal frame held length-ways, in that case a super or brood box can be used to house the frame used for queen rearing, supporting the frame on pieces of wood or something similar to give enough room between the comb and the top bars below for the bees to draw out queen cells.
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| Haskins board |
Indeed, we didn't use any supports in the centre of the comb, perhaps we should have done. In the photo below you can see that the weight of the comb coupled with the heat from the brood nest below had caused the comb to sag.
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| Comb is sagging |
Despite this we were able to harvest about a dozen queen cells.
Our next session would be grafting into plastic cell cups.
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