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Jim Paysen lives here while he builds Queen Cell Cups & Cages
This story is about the development of the JZs BZs line of parts for Queen Raisers.
In about 1985, most queen raisers were using either hand dipped wax cups or a rather crude plastic cup made in Mexico. We were running out of cups and tried to borrow some to no avail. All other cell raisers were running low also, except one, (Mr X) who had 100,000 cups made in Korea. They were beautiful cups, but the bees just would not accept them. Mr X didn't know what to do with them so we purchased 50,000 to line the front of our Convention display booth. That really worked good.!!
Because we had thoughts of having a die built $$$, it became obvious that we should find out why the bees didn't like those beautiful cups. For starters, We put an AD in the Bee Journal offering to pay $5.00 for every superceedure Queen cell anybody would send. We received 27. We tested everything!! (All trade secrets) and finally produced a cup the bees absolutely love.
At that time we were producing about 850 nucs a day on our assembly line. It took two men and a truck going around two days later just to plant cells in those nucs. That provoked an economical cell protector which could be planted as the nuc moved down the assembly line. It also gave us an opportunity to test a molding concept, which the molders said was impossible, to be used on our contemplated queen cage.
Some beekeepers didn't like the extra work of spreading the frames to put the cell close to brood, so we provided the Top Bar cell protector.
Many beekeepers use this protector as a re queening device. Her majesty, in the hive, has a given amount of vigor. The cell protector protects the new queen until she emerges, who also has a given amount of vigor. Neither Queen likes another woman in their house, so they have a serious dispute and the one with the most vigor wins. Usually it's the young queen and the hive has just been re queened. If the old queen is victorious, she generally deserves to head the colony for another year.
Then came the queen cage; Didn't like the burr comb the bees would build in the gap which resulted when the old style three hole wood cage was placed between the frames. Took more time to prepare for use, put the cork in the hole, pack the candy, position the sheet of plastic and the screen, and finally the staples. And then, when you're picking queens, where's that cork? Cost more to ship because they are heavier.
The JZs BZs queen cage eliminates most of those objections. Soon another revision will feature a removable candy tube which can be packed by automatic machinery. This will permit the user to receive the candy tubes in a sealed plastic bag, snap them in position and the cage is ready to go.
Then came the storage bar which provided a means to store queens in a hive until shipping day arrived. Then the bar and 46 queens can be transferred from the storage hive to a Mann Lake type shipping carton. The small shipping carton is provided when small shipments are made. Also used for shipping queen cells.
Now we have a plastic cell bar which eliminates grafted cell cups from falling out of the cell bar without the chore of adding wax to improve cell retention. That cell bar is designed so that with the aid of a simple fixture, all cells may be installed and removed by a single stroke.
Also new is a Queen cell shipping protector
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