Laurence Edwards reviews two Abelo metal queen cages: a sealed introduction cage for isolating new queens during acceptance, and an open-bar excluder cage for controlling egg age during queen-rearing. Both are galvanized, well-welded, and reusable.
Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. In this video, I'm going to review and show you 2 queen cages. So thanks to Damien at Abello, he sent me these free of charge. In this video, I'm going to give you my review and recommendation for both of these products. So you might think these look very, very similar. They're not. These are 2 different cages. For 2 different purposes. And the reason I'm combining them in this video is I'm just going to do a really short, quick review of both of the products. They're similar, but they both serve a very different purpose. So this cage here first, this is a queen introduction cage. The spacing on the frames here means that the bees cannot pass through, and obviously the queen cannot pass through either. So if you put this into any nuc or any colony, whatever you've got inside there cannot interact with the colony at all. It's completely sealed off. It's its own little mini colony. Whereas this one here, the spacing on the bars along here will allow worker bees to go through, but it won't allow the queen to go through. So 2 very different products here, but we'll combine them together for this review. So these products here, first thing I have to say about them is they're really, really well made. It's a metal construction, so these aren't welded with poor quality welds. And you can see where they're put together. These are going to last for ages and ages. Same construction on both. They obviously come from the same company. Really no defects on these whatsoever. Nice even lines on the cages that go around them. Really nice folding on the metalwork as well. So no horrible snaggy edges. So what might you use both of these cages for? So this one's quite a simple one. It's a queen introduction cage. So if you're introducing a queen to a colony, We've been through this before. You can introduce them in the little cages that they come with. Some people don't like doing that. You can use a plastic pushing cage. Again, some people don't like doing that. This is the belt and braces method of introducing a queen to a colony. All you would need to do is if you've got an already existing colony on frames, you can take out a frame of brood, you can put the queen in there with the frame of brood, And you can put that into the colony. The 2 colonies are going to get used to each other's smell, and you can leave them in there for a good few days before you start to do anything different to aid in that queen introduction. So this here is nothing more than a sealed box within your hive, and obviously the smells can interchange between the 2, but it's nothing more than that. This is really handy though if you're introducing, say, like an expensive breeder queen, Something where you really need to make sure that the colony has accepted the queen before you go on to do any sort of release. So this is a product review. I'm just talking you through the products in this video. Later on in the season though, I'll show you these products in use, give you a full demo on how to use them. Now this cage here is slightly different. You're not using this as an introduction, you're using this to stop the queen getting out. So it is effectively just a big queen excluder, and you can use this, and a lot of American people use this for queen rearing. And I'll definitely be rearing some queens using this method because what you can do, you can take an empty frame that's got no eggs in it, place that into this cage, make sure that the queen's in there, put the lid back on, and then when you go back after a certain number of days, you know how old the oldest eggs are. So if you leave it for 4 days, you know that the oldest larvae or eggs in that colony, they can only be 4 days old because you've put frames in that don't have anything in with a queen, she must have laid them. So it's really good for getting the correct age larva to graft from when you're doing queen rearing. So that's it for the video. I just wanted to give you a snapshot of these 2 products that Damien from Abelo kindly sent me to review. I really like them. Nice, easy, simple products. I know they've got a lot of this stock in at the moment, so as usual, I'll stick a link up if you want to buy them. You can go direct to Abelo's website and take a look. What I will say though is the quality, the fit and finish is really good. It's solid metal, galvanized, so it's going to last for ages. Make sure you're buying the correct one. So you've got a queen introduction cage and then you've got a queen excluder cage. They do 2 different jobs. Make sure you're buying the correct one for you. I'll stick a link up there with the price. They're relatively inexpensive. You don't need to buy loads and loads of these. If you, if you've got a big operation, you might need to buy a few, but you can kind of use the same one over and over again. They're easy to clean. And they're a nice neat tool to keep in your beekeeping shed. So as always, thanks for watching. Please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time. Bye.
