Poly Hive
Queen Bee
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2008
- Messages
- 14,094
- Reaction score
- 395
- Location
- Scottish Borders
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 12 and 18 Nucs
Simple Queen Rearing.
Objective: To rear better queens.
In order to achieve the target the mission needs to be broken into these steps.
1. Obtain suitable material
2. Move said material from comb to bees.
3. Have enough bees to “start” cells
4. Have enough hives to tend started cells
5. Have enough hives to provide enough material for mating nucs.
Clear enough? Thought not.. so let's take a further look.
Suitable material. This is a biggie, arguably the most difficult decision to make.
Have you got something special in your hives to breed from? If not do you know anyone who has?
Consider making a group. Also consider not using just the one source, but say three to get some variety.
Before we consider moving larvae I am going to urge you not to do the easy cop out which is using swarm cells. Breeding from swarmy hives perpetuates swarminess and that is exactly the opposite road to ours. If you consider you are in a side road and at a “T” junction you want to be going right not left. Right is heading towards supercedure.
So... if you can select colonies that are in their third year with no sign of swarming you have the ideal. Chances of that are slim right enough so if it is a two year old with no swarm history it's a start.
Moving the grubs. It is very tempting to try the shut in the queen and get her to lay up the cups idea in the little box, (Jenter type system) but in my experience she is nae so daft as to make your life easy, and will happily (and no doubt chuckling) hoppity skip past all the plugs. Rendering the system pretty useless. Sure it will work at times but I found it unreliable. And dear beekeeper we need reliability.
You can work with foundation for the bees to draw and the queen lay and then zig zag cut it and yes it works but... handling the cells becomes an issue and given with my method you will be handling them several times, possibly as many as 4 times then it is something to consider.
Which takes us to grafting. It is NOT difficult if you load the odds in your own favour.
First decision what tool to use. Try a fine brush or a Chinese grafting tool, I prefer the double cranked stainless tool but that is the most expensive option but try them all and find what works best for you. I prefer my steel tool as I can press it into the wax cup base to ease off the grub. Others will argue that the grubs slide off a brush better so it is a personal decision.
To ease the handling of my cells I make several items, please see pictures.
I make plywood strips with 18mm holes to take the “top hats” to which the cups are glued to with a drop of bees wax.
The cups should be made using 9mm diameter dowel. Wet the former, dip it in cool wax and theninto the water, back to the wax and repeat several times until you have a decent thickness, and then twist it off, if it crumples it was not thick enough. Cups can be made over winter.
The top hat is two thicknesses of dowel cut and glued together. I get the dowel from the Richard Burbidge racks in B&Q. A 10mm piece of 22mm diameter is the base and 15mm x 18 mm diameter is the leg. Glue and pin both together and ensure they fit the 18mm hole in the rack. Wiggle the drill slightly
I offer the bees 24 or 36 grafts at a time so the brood frame which holds the racks is modified for that. Which is to say there are blocks on each side to support three racks in total.
The frame in the picture has aluminium slots for the racks to sit on made by B. Mobus. A simple little block with a notch recessed into it works just as well.
All of these items are shown in pictures.
Bees. I go through my colonies and ensure I know the queens are. Best is if you are using a double brood box and she is either below the excluder or put there.
I lift out the brood frames, shake lightly to lose flying bees then spray with lightly perfumed water using a pressure spray. A hand plant sprayer will do the same job. As I am collecting from several colonies this is a simple way of avoiding fighting.
I want enough bees so that the five frame nuc that I use is over crowded, so I am not saying shake x frames I am saying get enough bees. As a rough guide you need at least five well populated frames worth of bees, at least. The nuc box should be kitted out with a frame feeder with light syrup in it, 1:1, a pollen comb next, then a gap, then a stores comb then a pollen comb. Leave this box of bees over night so by morning they are well fed and fully aware they are queenless.
Tip. Shake the bees in to the empty nuc box then add the feeder and combs when you are finished. Makes the shaking a great deal easier if you can have at least part of the comb in the nuc box whilst actually shaking the bees, and it is gentler too.
The acid test is this. When you lift the roof or the crown board of your nucleus box there should be a heavy beard of bees hanging from it, if not, well guess what: you didn't get enough bees...
Grafting.
Always pick the smallest larvae you can see, and you can change the odds in your favour by having a strong light, I use an anglepoise with a 100w bulb, and relax. If it is your first time dinna expect wonders. If you get one accepted it's more than you had yesterday aye?
You want a larvae from a cell that has a good blob of royal Jelly on the cell base. Not one that is sitting looking dry.
You want the smallest one you can see. Or smaller...lol, and certainly not older than 24 hours, yes yes you can use them but you want them to be fed as queens for as long as possible to ensure they are going to be quality queens.
I leave the grafts for 24 hours, and you can see waxing on the lip of the cups that are accepted, and they should be covered in bees. It is harder ironically to see on wax cups but very obvious on plastic ones.
If wanted you can leave that nuc starter box with a started cup to take through as their queen and you have gained a nuc, or split it in two at this point and have two nucs. Or you can offer them another batch of grafts, and if your first acceptance was poor it will be because your grafting was
imperfect and or the bees were slow to realise their job. A 2nd batch is often more successful.
If your results are poorer than you would wish first look at the weather. If it is cool and damp dinna expect wonders.
I once grafted every day for ten days getting pretty much nothing but certainly honing my skills... on the 11th day the weather changed and I got my best ever take, 32 from 36. Never underestimate the role the weather plays in our beekeeping.
Persevere, you are learning a new skill and the only way to get better is to practise. And if you wanted to you could pull a suitable frame and do just that, practise grafting and do it for several days doing say 12 a day and you will find the little tricks that make it easier, tilting the frame, turning it, looking for the clusters of suitably well fed larvae, and learning to spot the ones that are useable.
Now we have started cells what do we do with them?
I put them in to the top supers of strong colonies and let them finish them off. Once sealed I put them into “nursery cages” and again keep them in supers.
Tip. I have a brick on every colony and when I was raising a lot of cells I had painted bricks. Blue meant sealed cells in cages, red were unsealed, and green meant virgins in residence in cages.
You really do not want to lose track of what is what and have a super of virgins on the warpath. That is not good beekeeping....
And that is it really, when you have virgins or ripe cells you can think about using five frame nucs or mini nucs to get the virgins mated.
The most satisfaction I get from my beekeeping is seeing a colony with three or four supers of honey on it and know that is there because I had a tiny larvae on my grafting tool.
There are many methods of achieving the desired result, a well bred well mated queen. This is but one way, but... given the weather it works.
Good luck and have fun with it.
PH
Objective: To rear better queens.
In order to achieve the target the mission needs to be broken into these steps.
1. Obtain suitable material
2. Move said material from comb to bees.
3. Have enough bees to “start” cells
4. Have enough hives to tend started cells
5. Have enough hives to provide enough material for mating nucs.
Clear enough? Thought not.. so let's take a further look.
Suitable material. This is a biggie, arguably the most difficult decision to make.
Have you got something special in your hives to breed from? If not do you know anyone who has?
Consider making a group. Also consider not using just the one source, but say three to get some variety.
Before we consider moving larvae I am going to urge you not to do the easy cop out which is using swarm cells. Breeding from swarmy hives perpetuates swarminess and that is exactly the opposite road to ours. If you consider you are in a side road and at a “T” junction you want to be going right not left. Right is heading towards supercedure.
So... if you can select colonies that are in their third year with no sign of swarming you have the ideal. Chances of that are slim right enough so if it is a two year old with no swarm history it's a start.
Moving the grubs. It is very tempting to try the shut in the queen and get her to lay up the cups idea in the little box, (Jenter type system) but in my experience she is nae so daft as to make your life easy, and will happily (and no doubt chuckling) hoppity skip past all the plugs. Rendering the system pretty useless. Sure it will work at times but I found it unreliable. And dear beekeeper we need reliability.
You can work with foundation for the bees to draw and the queen lay and then zig zag cut it and yes it works but... handling the cells becomes an issue and given with my method you will be handling them several times, possibly as many as 4 times then it is something to consider.
Which takes us to grafting. It is NOT difficult if you load the odds in your own favour.
First decision what tool to use. Try a fine brush or a Chinese grafting tool, I prefer the double cranked stainless tool but that is the most expensive option but try them all and find what works best for you. I prefer my steel tool as I can press it into the wax cup base to ease off the grub. Others will argue that the grubs slide off a brush better so it is a personal decision.
To ease the handling of my cells I make several items, please see pictures.
I make plywood strips with 18mm holes to take the “top hats” to which the cups are glued to with a drop of bees wax.
The cups should be made using 9mm diameter dowel. Wet the former, dip it in cool wax and theninto the water, back to the wax and repeat several times until you have a decent thickness, and then twist it off, if it crumples it was not thick enough. Cups can be made over winter.
The top hat is two thicknesses of dowel cut and glued together. I get the dowel from the Richard Burbidge racks in B&Q. A 10mm piece of 22mm diameter is the base and 15mm x 18 mm diameter is the leg. Glue and pin both together and ensure they fit the 18mm hole in the rack. Wiggle the drill slightly
I offer the bees 24 or 36 grafts at a time so the brood frame which holds the racks is modified for that. Which is to say there are blocks on each side to support three racks in total.
The frame in the picture has aluminium slots for the racks to sit on made by B. Mobus. A simple little block with a notch recessed into it works just as well.
All of these items are shown in pictures.
Bees. I go through my colonies and ensure I know the queens are. Best is if you are using a double brood box and she is either below the excluder or put there.
I lift out the brood frames, shake lightly to lose flying bees then spray with lightly perfumed water using a pressure spray. A hand plant sprayer will do the same job. As I am collecting from several colonies this is a simple way of avoiding fighting.
I want enough bees so that the five frame nuc that I use is over crowded, so I am not saying shake x frames I am saying get enough bees. As a rough guide you need at least five well populated frames worth of bees, at least. The nuc box should be kitted out with a frame feeder with light syrup in it, 1:1, a pollen comb next, then a gap, then a stores comb then a pollen comb. Leave this box of bees over night so by morning they are well fed and fully aware they are queenless.
Tip. Shake the bees in to the empty nuc box then add the feeder and combs when you are finished. Makes the shaking a great deal easier if you can have at least part of the comb in the nuc box whilst actually shaking the bees, and it is gentler too.
The acid test is this. When you lift the roof or the crown board of your nucleus box there should be a heavy beard of bees hanging from it, if not, well guess what: you didn't get enough bees...
Grafting.
Always pick the smallest larvae you can see, and you can change the odds in your favour by having a strong light, I use an anglepoise with a 100w bulb, and relax. If it is your first time dinna expect wonders. If you get one accepted it's more than you had yesterday aye?
You want a larvae from a cell that has a good blob of royal Jelly on the cell base. Not one that is sitting looking dry.
You want the smallest one you can see. Or smaller...lol, and certainly not older than 24 hours, yes yes you can use them but you want them to be fed as queens for as long as possible to ensure they are going to be quality queens.
I leave the grafts for 24 hours, and you can see waxing on the lip of the cups that are accepted, and they should be covered in bees. It is harder ironically to see on wax cups but very obvious on plastic ones.
If wanted you can leave that nuc starter box with a started cup to take through as their queen and you have gained a nuc, or split it in two at this point and have two nucs. Or you can offer them another batch of grafts, and if your first acceptance was poor it will be because your grafting was
imperfect and or the bees were slow to realise their job. A 2nd batch is often more successful.
If your results are poorer than you would wish first look at the weather. If it is cool and damp dinna expect wonders.
I once grafted every day for ten days getting pretty much nothing but certainly honing my skills... on the 11th day the weather changed and I got my best ever take, 32 from 36. Never underestimate the role the weather plays in our beekeeping.
Persevere, you are learning a new skill and the only way to get better is to practise. And if you wanted to you could pull a suitable frame and do just that, practise grafting and do it for several days doing say 12 a day and you will find the little tricks that make it easier, tilting the frame, turning it, looking for the clusters of suitably well fed larvae, and learning to spot the ones that are useable.
Now we have started cells what do we do with them?
I put them in to the top supers of strong colonies and let them finish them off. Once sealed I put them into “nursery cages” and again keep them in supers.
Tip. I have a brick on every colony and when I was raising a lot of cells I had painted bricks. Blue meant sealed cells in cages, red were unsealed, and green meant virgins in residence in cages.
You really do not want to lose track of what is what and have a super of virgins on the warpath. That is not good beekeeping....
And that is it really, when you have virgins or ripe cells you can think about using five frame nucs or mini nucs to get the virgins mated.
The most satisfaction I get from my beekeeping is seeing a colony with three or four supers of honey on it and know that is there because I had a tiny larvae on my grafting tool.
There are many methods of achieving the desired result, a well bred well mated queen. This is but one way, but... given the weather it works.
Good luck and have fun with it.
PH
