Beginner to Beginner Queen Rearing
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The cell needs to be near brood if at all possible and in the center of the nest area. But since each queen needs to mate with 12 — 20 drones a little math shows that it might become an issue sooner than you think. Another reason to raise your own.
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Beginner to Beginner Queen Rearing - Usually if I'm by myself I'll watch the whole video. I suppose none are full proof, but at least there are things to look out for and advice to get which helps you try to make a better choice.
You can learn to produce your own queens using this small, but scalable system. I originally wrote this article in 2011, since then I have continued to keep bees and rear some queens every year. I have tried most of the other popular methods, but this one is still my favorite for the size of my apiary and my needs. As I have learned new things I have incorporated those into this article. This has been my second year raising queens — my third year keeping honey bees. So I am in no way pretending to be any kind of an expert — not only have I made many mistakes, but I expect to make many more next year. As one beginner to another — I think I might have some useful insights into getting started in queen rearing. Things that might not be all that helpful to old hands but have really helped me. The Basic Principle of Honey Bee Queen Rearing Any queenless hive of honey bees will try to make a new queen if it has the resources to do so. The required resources being 1 larva of an appropriate age 2 food 3 A sufficient number of worker bees 4 Drones — male bees — that the new queen can mate with. Most of the time such a hive will be successful in requeening itself. The reason this is possible is that the only difference between a worker bee and a queen bee is the amount and type of food that they eat during the first few days after hatching from an egg. So if you want to raise a new queen, all you really have to do is create a hive without a queen which has eggs or very young larva, and let the bees do the rest. This is called a split and it is a fine way to increase the number of hives that you have. Ever heard that foundationless brood always has lots of drone brood on it? The problem with making a split is that even though your queenless hive will probably make several queen cells only one of them will get a chance to fly out and mate — because the first one to emerge will kill the rest. Also high quality queens must be fully fed, and immaculately cared for from the time they hatch from the egg — any queenless hive will do what they can with what they have, but you want your queens to be raised under the very best of conditions. And that takes a lot of well fed nurse bees — hundreds per each queen. Worker cells lay horizontally in the hive — queen cells hang down vertically in the hive. When nurse bees encounter larva in cells that hang down they tend to treat them as queen cells. This concept is central to most queen rearing methods. Or you can use a similar system to produce a dozen or so good queens for your own use. I would like to point out though, that after rearing queens myself a few times I understand why they are so expensive. There is nothing all that hard about it, but there are several steps, and some of them absolutely must be done on a specific schedule. A few Queen Rearing terms you should know: Grafting — moving very young worker larva into artificial cell cups. Grafting is pretty much the only way the pros use to produce large numbers of queens. Cell Starter — An extremely populous — usually queenless — hive that will begin the process of turning worker larva into queen larva. Mating Nuc — 10 days after grafting, the cells are removed from the finisher hive and each is put into their own queenless hives — mating nucs — which they will emerge into, and fly out from to mate. After mating the new queen will stay in the mating nuc at least until she is laying eggs and fully mature — 3 weeks more or less. I have found that it is very well suited for me to produce a fair number of queens while learning skills that can be scaled up to higher production later if desired. When I first read about it, I thought that it sounded like such a hive would develop laying workers or some other problem because of being queenless for an indefinate time. But, because you give it fresh brood about once a week none of those problems crop up — it just gets really strong and stays that way all season long. This is not a system that is usually used by bulk queen producers. High volume producers usually use a five gallon bucket full of bees in a specialized swarm box as a cell starter, and another big strong queenright hive that is on the verge of swarming as a finisher — to produce hundreds of cells at a time. Those commercial starters and finishers have to be rebuilt very often. As you can imagine this is much more manageable for hobbyists than the way the commercial guys do it. I present exhibit A: A nice queen — just starting to lay — that I produced this past summer. As previously mentioned the heart of this system is a five frame nucleus hive nuc — which you probably already have. Both of us protect the entrance with a piece of queen excluder to keep rogue queens from taking over the hive. So, I changed to this setup — from the bottom — Screened bottom board, queen excluder, 5 frame medium hive body. As you can see, this is an extremely populous hive. Once the bees went back in it got the same inner cover, feed shim, and tele cover as in the previous picture. The truth is, that the weather this April was very unsettled, and not the best for queen mating flights, but the early start allowed me to get a little practice in before the prime queen production season — the month of May through early June. Think about that when you order a commercial queen for early spring delivery — what was the weather like when that queen was trying to mate? Another reason to raise your own. The center position is where you will be putting your cell bar after you graft. You want this hive to be very populous, so either shake in lots of nurse bees, or you can do what I did and set it up in a spot from which I just removed a strong full sized hive. That way most of the foragers from the big hive that was there before all crowd into the new cell builder — but make sure it also has plenty of nurse bees too. After the initial setup the cell builder will stay strong — even get stronger — from the frames of brood that you swap in every week. The open brood on those frames along with the grafts and other open brood that you add to the cell builder keep it strong and stable. How I and you can Finally produce Big Cells I tried fruitlessly almost all of this year to produce big cells like others that I had seen on the internet. That will insure that your nurse bees get into feeding mode by the time you add your grafts. My experience is that if I skip this step I get much smaller cells. Joseph Clemens produces nice big cells without this step, because he is continously using his cell builder — so the bees stay in feeding nurse bee mode — while I was only adding grafts to my cell builder every week or two. At that time also check the other frames for queen cells. If you ever let one emerge it will ruin any cells that are currently in the hive — and you might have a hard time finding a virgin lose in such a crowded hive. I just spoon it in through the hole, and cover it with the jar lid. This is 8% protein mega bee mix with enough syrup to make a paste that is thick enough to not fall through the frames. Grafting Once you have your cell builder set up, fed, and it has had a frame of eggs and open brood in the center for 4 days it is time to prepare your grafts. I use a , but the Chinese tools are probably more popular among hobbyists. Really experienced hands can do it with a paper clip or toothpick — some favor a very small artists paint brush — there are lots of options available. Note — if you use a modified self spacing Hoffman style frame like the one in the picture after your cells are built and capped the bees will almost always build lots of burr comb on and around your cells, and nothing that you do will make much of a difference. It works like a charm. Also of course you will need a frame of brood with appropriately young larva to graft from. As you can see in this great photo by Jeff LaSorsa You will most easily find the best larva for grafting by looking at the ones between unhatched eggs and larva that are too old. The larva that you want to graft are the ones that look like milky smudges of royal jelly — as young as possible after they have hatched. If you look really closely you can see them in there — not much bigger than an egg, but larva have segments. Unless your eyesight is really excellent you can probably benefit from some supplemental light and magnification. At least choose a place to work that has good light. The comb may tear some instead of cutting cleanly but it will still work. This makes it much easier to see what you are doing and to get to the larva with your tool. The bees will fix up the damage when you return the frame. This will really speed up your grafting and subsequently make it more successful. Inside your car for example — if nowhere else is handy. Second best is old dark colored brood comb. Soon maybe, if you stick with it. Finding the right style for you might make a big difference. After the cells are capped on day 5 the larva starts consuming the stored royal jelly. Once the cells are capped it will help to prevent the bees from building burr comb all over them if you take out a frame of food and give them a frame of foundation — or even better barely drawn foundation — to build wax on. You can also curtail feeding as long as there is a flow on. After the cells are capped the developing queens are very fragile and you need to leave them alone until you remove them on the 10th day after grafting to move them into mating nucs. An 8 frame medium hive body converted into 2 four frame mating nucs — The bottom is flat, and this design uses a standard telescoping cover as a lid. Also this particular design is more complicated to make than it needs to be. Mating Nucs Ten days after you graft you have to move your queen cells into already prepared queenless mating nucs — as previously mentioned if they are still all together when they start emerging then the first one out will kill all the rest of them. Warm temperatures can accelerate the maturation process a bit. Mating nucs are the most resource expensive part of queen rearing. If you have 2 good 20 frame hives to work with you could conceivably produce hundreds of good queen cells, but it would take everything you have to make up 20 full frame mating nucs using 2 frames each — if you had a perfect balance of brood and food frames. You probably would not want to do that. My current version is made so that 2 of them can winter together on top of a strong hive. I have only used mating nucs that use full sized medium frames. If you are raising queens to increase your apiary that may the best way to do it — that way you never have to move the queens once they are mated. However, I believe that nucleus hives do better in general when they are a little bit crowded in smaller boxes — it seems to me that they can defend and control the environment better. Specialized full frame Mating Nucs — If you are interested in queen rearing for more than just expanding your own hive count you will probably want to use some kind of specialized mating nucs — full frame mating nuc boxes can be made to contain from 1-5 frames. There are advantages and disadvantages to any of them. But the bigger the nuc is the more self sufficient and easy to manage it will be. During the main flow any nuc will grow and fill up — especially once they have a laying queen — and you will have to remove bees and resources from them to keep them from swarming. During the main flow full frame mating nucs produce valuable resources — drawn comb, brood, stores, bees — that can be used anywhere in your operation. Last spring I was using mostly 4 frame nucs, and I could take a frame of bees and brood from each of them about once a week — resources that I used to start new mating nucs. Later in the season I tried 3, 4, and 5 frame nucs, and at this time I think I prefer 4 framers as being a good balance between being big enough to be self sufficient, and yet small enough to be practical as mating nucs. When a 4 frame nuc gets too strong and needs a frame or two removed the part that is left is still a pretty strong little hive — more so than when you steal a frame or two from a 3 framer — just my experience. Setting Up Mating Nucs — Whatever size box you use you can set up good full frame mating nucs with just two frames of resources — one frame of brood, and one frame of food — and of course the bees that are clinging to them. You should always fill the remaining space with something — frames of empty foundation, foundationless frames, drawn comb, whatever — if you leave it empty, before you know it the bees will build wild comb from the inside of the cover — making a wasteful mess. Also a frame of foundation right next to the tiny colony of bees will shelter them a bit and make it easier for them to control the temperature around their nest area. There is a need to be enough bees to cover and take care of the brood — if in doubt shake in some more. Keep in mind that any foragers will return to the hive that they came from — so shake bees off of brood frames in the middle of the day when most of the foragers are out if possible so as to get as many nurse bees as possible. There is no need to close up the nucs or move them to a remote location — they will start foraging in a few days. The frames and bees can come from multiple hives. Needless to say, you need to be sure to not accidentally put a queen in one — if you do she will probably be killed by the virgin which emerges from the cell — Newly emerged virgins are queen killing machines. Prepare mating nucs the day before you will be installing cells. A ripe queen cell installed in a mating nuc — all you have to do is push the cell into the comb like this — preferably near brood. On the tenth day after making grafts — Placing the Queen cells is almost anticlimactic — just stick the cells to the brood frames as in the picture above. If you are not using plastic cell cups, just use your finger to make a depressed spot on the comb and gently stick the cell to it. The cell needs to be near brood if at all possible and in the center of the nest area. At all points handle the cells as carefully as possible. The queen will emerge within a day or two, and after a few days of hanging out in the hive — hardening up and being cared for by the resident house bees — she will fly out to mate. You may be able to detect eggs in 10-12 days, but unless you have a rather good eye for eggs it is probably best to wait about 3 weeks after placing the cell — at which time you should be able to easily see large open brood — or even capped brood. Waiting a bit longer also gives the queen more time to fully developed without being pestered. It certainly makes it much easier to make the call as to if you have a laying queen or not. Mating Nuc Management — If it is during the main flow, and you make up your nucs on the day before installing a cell as I have outlined — with a good frame of brood, and a good frame of food, and plenty of bees — the hive will get stronger over the next couple of weeks as the brood emerges. If it is successful in making a queen, then it will develop quite nicely with little intervention. Mostly you will just need to keep an eye on them to keep them from getting so strong that they swarm — as mentioned before you may need to remove brood frames with bees on them almost once a week during the peak season. And of course, you will have to remove the resident queen before you can put another cell in it. Robber Screens — I highly recommend that you fit all of your mating nucs or any nuc for that matter with. They are cheap, simple and easy to make, and they work — especially if installed right when the colony is first established. After much experimentation, I can state without reservation that queens have no problem flying out and returning from mating nucs with robber screens. The numbers actually are better with them, because of the reduced stress from robbing. Any that are queenless need to either get a new cell or be combined back with a queenright hive. Before a queenless nuc gets a new cell it is probably best to give it a new frame of brood as well — you may not need to give it any more bees because it should already have a workforce. Actually, the location will have a workforce. If you move a hive — any hive — to a new location, the foragers will all go back to the old spot. And then they will beg into a nearby hive. You can use this behavior to your advantage at times by swapping locations of strong and weak hives to equalize the populations. But when you do it every week, and multiply it by 10 mating nucs or 20, or 30 it may be a bigger job than you think. Another reason to start small. Summer Queen Rearing — Everything gets harder after the spring flow ends. All of those things can be managed of course. Those are important aspects of queen rearing of course, and well before you get to the point of producing hundreds of queens per year you will of course need to learn a thing or two about those matters. However if you are only learning or dabbling, or just want to raise a few good queens for yourself — you surely will take grafts from what you believe to be a worthy queen, and chances are there will be enough drones available during the Spring season to properly mate a dozen or so queens at a time. But since each queen needs to mate with 12 — 20 drones a little math shows that it might become an issue sooner than you think. Parasites and Disease — It should go without saying that every hive that donates resources to your queen rearing effort needs to be healthy. Mating nucs made up with mite ridden brood are not going to get your the results you want. The same goes for European Foul Brood and other diseases. Learn to recognize the symptoms of common honey bee maladies and only use resources from healthy hives. Other than my very first try I have always had at least 50% success rate at grafting and getting them built into cells. Before too many times I started averaging about 80%. My first few years once I placed cells in mating nucs only about %50 of them ended up becoming laying queens — I know that most of them emerged because of the condition of the empty cells, but from the beginning of the season all the way through August it was consistently about 50%. I was never very happy with that. Although at 10 days the cell is relatively robust. Warm weather speeds this up. Update… I wrote this article several years ago now and every year it gets revisited and I think it has helped several people get started in queen rearing. Since then I have tried other methods to raise queens but this one works best for me and I use it at some scale every year. You can get good results with this system on the first cycle, but the real advantage to it emerges when you use the same cell builder several times without having to rebuild it — and it actually gets better for several cycles as its population of foragers build up to keep it very well fed on its own — I still feed continuously though just for good measure. Just by doing some fairly simple maintenance on schedule you can produce up to a dozen or so high-quality queens or as few as you want every 11 days — more or less depending on the particulars of how you manage it. Most of the brood on those frames is now capped and a good bit has emerged and the cells back filled with honey or syrup and pollen — those stay in the hive until nearly all of the brood has emerged. On day 10 when I pull the current cells to put them in mating nucs I inspect for wild cells again and replace the cell bar with the frame I want to graft from. By now most of the open brood on the brood frames has been capped so the bees will be able to give my grafts plenty of attention. I arrange the hive so that there is plenty of fresh pollen next to where the grafts will go. On Day 11 — grafting day for the next batch — the larva are well fed and stocked with royal jelly. After grafting I return that frame to the queen mother hive and replace it in the cell builder with my cell bar frame. The only time you can slack off for a day or two is between pulling finished cells and grafting the next batch. This routine uses 2 sets of mating nucs for continuous production and the queens stay in the nucs for 22 days before you use them which is just about perfect. By the time you need to place the 3 rd set of grafts in mating nucs the first set of queens is ready to use or sell — making the first set of mating nucs available to receive the new cells. After that, you can harvest queens every 11 days for the rest of the reproduction season if you keep it up. To make this system of queen rearing economical you really need to use 2 sets of mating nucs although it could be as few as 4-6 total mating nucs to keep the cell builder in use, and you need to produce at least 2-3 queens per mating nuc. Otherwise, if you count the cost of honey, brood, and feed that it takes to set everything up — and what that costs you in honey production — you would be just as well off financially to just buy queens — or to produce queens by splitting or some other simpler method. However, you may very well produce better queens than you can buy — so there is that. So get out there and do it! There are other ways to go about it but this routine has been working quite well for me, and with 2 sets of mating nucs you can keep it up as long as you have something to do with the 22 day old queens. Other Resources — Discussion on Beesource Queen rearing forum. Graftless Methods of Queen Rearing — If you have really bad eyesight or unsteady hands, any of these methods can produce high quality queens.