Hey! You are both right! Queen and bee cages are made of plastic or sometimes wood and metal mesh. But having protective cells can be useful. If you add a queen-cell in a colony a few days before birth, that queen will almost always be accepted. In case of mated queens, their pheromones are strong enough that they will be often (but less probable depending of the season and presence of young larvae) accepted. Usually we put mated queens in a cage with some sugar so that the bees eat trough it, giving time to the queen to disperse her pheromones. Virgin queens however have the lowest acceptance rate, and it is sometimes better to re-encage them in a (now plastic) cell with a wax cover so that she will be born again. For the foundations, it is a little more difficult than just pressing at the moment, but the size of most of frame-standards would impose the use of huge machines. But it would be less human-energy consuming than the actual method
Hey! I managed to draw a little bit and to solve the cage and cover. The only issue is with the little hinge, but nothing impossible to solve. If you want to, you can always correct my messy stuff if you see improvements ! https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6557850
No existing model, but it wasn't that hard to replicate at the end
Took me a little more (the bottom of the cells are difficlt to draw and there aren't a lot of files with the right bottom), but at least now I'm not scared to solve some stupid issues that always frustrate me by drawing and printing easy solutions!
I know this link existst, but sometimes when it's treatment season those are out of stock, or take forever to arrive. I can print 4 in a few hours, so it can always help to print one at home. Also, I'm not sure, but I think the ecological impact is bigger if it comes through the Aliexpress expedition than through 3D printing using filaments from Vietnam. But the link is valid, and and is way better to order there price-wise than to order it here!
Hi all! Thanks for all the replies ! I played a little bit with Tinkercad and we're close enough. The only part needing perfection is the little lock (le opening piece needs manual help to open), but that's the same thing for the original one. An other solution is indeed passing through a chinese marketplace if the wait is not long enough and the CO2 impact is not important for you. The printer was a little difficult to have it printed, and I had to print it on the side.
I've uploaded it on Thingiverse : https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6557850
So I'm a beekeeper and we have to continuously adapt our tools to change and predators. For the fight against asian hornets, the 3D community has been really helpfull and most of the stuff can be printed at home with a small 3D printer.
However, for other stuff, such as mechanical treatments against Varroa (a nasty parasite responsible for a lot of diseases and death in bee populations), usually you can open your wallet and pay an excessive amount. Because the alternative is death and being a menace for other beekeepers and solitary bees.
There is for exemple a little cage that is usually used to rear queens. One fellow misprinted it, and has noticed that it blocks the development of the laid eggs into larvae (he left 7mm oh developpment height instead of 8mm). This doesn't harm the queen or colony, and blocks reproduction of the parasites. After 28 days, there are no more larvae in the hive, all the parasites are exposed, and we can treat once the population kill off the nasty buggers. It is also an efficient way to sample parasites for the development of varroa-resistant lineages of bees (because we need to infest those with the parasite and then check if it is resistant or not).
Of course, that little cage that was misprinted is now under a patent, and is sold way to expensively for what it is (10 bucks, it's not food-grade certified and the lock breaks way to easily). I do not mind paying for somebody's work, and fair is fair, but slapping a patent on a item that exists since decades because you slightly modified it and selling it expensively while manufacturing it on the other side of the world is a little too much for my liking. I know it's how the world works, but that doesn't mean that I have to roll over.
Anyway, I've got some bought cages, and the patent. How would I go to make a STL file to print it afterwards? It's made of a box with the hexagonal frames and some dead space for the queen, a lid to allow workers to move and a little lock. 3D Scanner? Drawing it from zero on FreeCAD with the patent and the cage next to me? Praying to Chtuluh to send me magically the file with a carrier pigeon? Or am I forced to go looking at an far-eastern webshop with a bad carbon footprint, where they sell it for 3 bucks a piece?
Nah mate. They had to remove mine because is overgrew my gland and was so tight that I would have pee between the foreskin and the gland layong around, and it was impossible to unhook. The alternative would have been to cut it open and have dumbo's ear flapping everytime I'd take my dick out. No partner ever complained, and I don't give à shit about it.
I wouldn't circumsize a kid if it wasn't necessary, but when an operation takes place specifically for medical reasons, it's because there is no other solution. Like when a foot id so gangrenous that you have to remove it or it will propagate the necrosis to the leg.
Fibers or a french breakfast : coffee + cigarette = poo (or in French CCC: clope, cafee, caca). Or if you realy need to, those gels you can put in your bum if you're into that
Don't you hate it when you have another control by the atomic agency just because you had a little meltdown in the garden. All that because the neighbours complained that their grass became fluorescent to the cops. Silly scared people!
She put a little Pedro in there. 30 years later and I still don't know why
The name of a guy that couldn't let go of one girl and was a dick to her innocent kid. Wicked!
Maybe my mom tried to tell everyone about my personality just by giving them my names?
The only way to escape a name like that is to take a phallic rocket to mars and start a new colony
As a guy that has 5 first names, I take offense!
Should have made a joke with "nein", but people would be Fuhrerious about it!
That wouldn't fly with the city clerk in Belgium. But then again, one can always try!
Hello you awesome people,
Friends are having a boy and everyone they know wants to push a name on the child. So I decided to be the best friend they could have and to offer only bad, ugly or horrendous names to the lucky parents so they could have a laugh. I already send them some names and dictators, Smeagol, Steve and Juan-Esteban.
So please, people or Lemmy, give me the worst names you could give a child, so that I can help them as a good friend!
Ps: don't worry, I've already planned some meals to drop off when the gremlin will be there to feed the parents. And some take-out vouchers so they won't get food poisoning