NICOT vs JZBZ – The Best Queen Rearing Cups and What You Should Be Using

In this video, I'm going to show you my queen rearing kit for 2022, and I'm also going to tell you why I'm moving away from the Nikko Queen Cup system. So this is what I'm going to use in 2022. It's a little bit of a mix, this system, and I'm going to talk to you about the different components, why I've put them together, why I think they're a relatively good fit with each other, and why I think there's real scope to improve the queen rearing system in the UK and across the EU. So first off, talk to you a little bit about the Nikko system. I know everyone uses an ecosystem. Personally, I really don't like it. Not a fan of it whatsoever. I find it fiddly. I find that there's lots of work involved, and I just find it's not very efficient or effective in terms of the components, the way they fit together, and the faff factor when it comes to rearing queens. Now, I'm not talking about cages here where you seal the queen in and try and get her to go and lay eggs in some cages. I don't use those anyway, so I'm not commenting on those. I'm talking specifically about the cup holders, The cups, the way that system works, and the roller cages at the end. Now there's no denying it, the Neko system does work. You look at everyone, they use the Neko system, they get it to work for them. I just find it really, really frustrating. The things that I don't like it, the main thing I don't like about it is the fact that there's so many different components. So you have kind of like the base plate that you need to pin on with really awkward gimp pins onto a bar, and then you have the little beige piece that clips onto that, and then you have the cup that clips onto that, and then you have the roller cage. So you've got these 4 different components, and I just think, why make it so complicated? You look at the JZ/BZ ones and it's just a single cup with a pressure fit into a slot of wood. I love that system. However, there's no suitable roller cage for that system. So when I was doing my research and looking into alternatives this year, I've come up with what I believe is a relatively okay compromise. That's what I'm going to show you in this video. It's definitely not perfect though, right? First thing I'm going to show you here is the Abello Queen rearing frame. I really do like this frame. It's a nice simple system. The only slight negative that I thought about it is that you've only got the 2 grooves on either side. I thought maybe you could squeeze 3 on there, but really you don't actually have to. So the next thing you add in is these little bars, and as you can see, you're rebated there. Takes the JZBZ system, and it's just a really simple push-fit system. Quite amazingly, you can get 16 cells to a bar like that. On the Abella website, it shows that you can only get 12, but it easily takes 16. With 2 bars, that means you've got 32 cells per frame. So this is what they look like from the top— standard JZBZ cell cups. Really do like those cell cups. And then a simple groove just to put them in, and then you've got the rebates at the edge in order for it to fit on the frame. And as I said, what I love so much about this— and it's going to be near impossible to do it one-handed— is is the fact that the cell cup just fits in there via a compression fit. So there you go, simple as that. You don't need to nail anything to the frame. You don't need 3 components to do one job. It really is as simple as that. Fits in, doesn't come out when it's shaked. Really good compression fit. I really like this system. So this is what the frame looks like once you've got all of your cells in there. As you can see, it could probably take another one at the bottom. And when I first looked at it, I thought, wow, it's annoying. It seems like a little bit of a missed opportunity. You could move that top bar up a little bit, the middle one can stay where it was, and then you could fit another one at the bottom. But in reality, I've got 32 cells on a single frame. That's more than enough to get the bees started on, and then I can move them over to the finishers as and when I want. So my plan is I'll put these frames into the starters, I'll get the cells started on here, I'll take out this frame, I'm gonna connect a little T-connection. You've seen that on Richard Knowles, so it twists round like that, so then I can just balance this frame in between 2 frames in my finishing nukes. And what's really nice about this system, any duds, I can just pop them out, no problem at all. I think it's a really nice all-round system. So going back to the fact that there's not a perfect system here, for me, that's straightforward. This system here, again, looks like that. It's so much better than the Nikko system. It replaces 3 separate components, with one single molded component. It means you don't need to do the silly twisty bars either. You've got nice balanced bars on the Abello frames. But the reason I say it's not a perfect system is that when you try and get a JZBZ hair roller cage or something similar, it doesn't exist. They don't do cages that kind of clip on and fit onto that system, which is really frustrating because up to that point, that is the system that I really, really love and I find it so much easier to use than the Neko system. However, what I'm gonna do this year is I'm gonna use an amalgamation of the two. So on the Nikko system, when you take your hair roller cage, you can lift it up like that and it clips onto that outer casing. Try and do that with the JZBZ, and obviously they're not made to connect with each other, so it's not going to work. But what you can do, and my incubator allows you to do this, is if you've got a way of propping that hair roller cage upwards like that— and as I said, my incubator comes with trays to allow you to do this— you can take the JZBZ cup like that And lo and behold, it just fits perfectly on the top. It's only balanced, and you do need a system that's actually going to hold that in place for you. But if you've got that via a tray, or you can make yourself a tray, then the combination of the JZBZ cup and the hair roller cage is actually quite neat. That's the system that I'm going to use this year. So there we go, that's my system for 2022: JZBZ cups, a Bello Queen rearing frame, and then I'm going to use the Nico hair roller cages. Sat on my incubator tray for moving the cell cups into the incubator to get the virgins mated. Have I missed anything out there? Is there a solution that works better than that? If you think there is, definitely stick it in the comments. If you think the Neco system is better than that as well, stick it in the comments as well. I am yet to find a perfect queen rearing solution. I like to try different things though, and with the incubator that I've got, I think this is going to work really well this season. If you want to take a look at how I rear my queens using the 10/10 Mike Palmer method, check out this video here showing the full queen rearing process.