The Buzz Newsletter

Page 6

Raising Your Own Queens

I’ve been asked to elaborate on my spring work and in particular my queen rearing methods. I live in N.E. Iowa not too far from Prarie du Chien, WI and I tend about 900 colonies a year. Maybe I should first talk about why I’m raising my own queens. I’ve been raising queens for the last few seasons and prior to that I was continually becoming more dismayed at the amount of caged queen rejections, or accepted and then supperceeded.

I’m not going to blame the queen producers so much. They want to put out a quality product but the pressures on the to fill orders are tremendous with the weather maybe not cooperating, mites, viruses, diseases, chemicals and on and on… you just can’t always be sure that the queens you’re getting were raised under good conditions and were properly bred. So one of the things that drives a person to raise their own stock is control. The same negative factors can affect your own queen rearing experience but with practice, you can determine what things are important and what you need to pay attention to in order to achieve good results.

The 2002 and 2003 seasons were good honey years for N.E. Iowa and I produced lots of good looking cells. I was quite proud of myself for getting a high percentage cell cup acceptance in my builders and growing nice large cells. But I’m not sure I really knew why I was having good luck until 2004 came along and showed me the importance of having builders that are busting with bees.

In my area, May of 2004 was a cold and rainy month with very little dandelion flow getting into the hives. I had a very hard time getting my builders strong enough. With plenty of good weather in May the two previous years, my builders were always hanging out due to high population. Last year I don’t remember any ever hanging out. I would add brood to them from other colonies to bolster their population but it just seemed to be a losing battle. The time came to graft, so I said “good enough” and hoped for the best. My cells, for the most part were sub standard and quite disappointing. I wasn’t quite sure why things weren’t turning out. Then I talked to someone who told me of a different way of manipulating your builder to get the maximum amount of bees in the box where the newly grafted cells are to be placed.

I used to put my newly grafted cells into a starter hive, a queenless very populated single story hive or 5 frame nuc, for 24 hours prior to placing them into the builder but they took time to maintain so I started not using them anymore. Instead I would put the newly grafted cells directly into the strong cell builder.

Good acceptance and beautiful cells can be grown this way but you shouldn’t give them more than about 25 newly grafted cells at one time whereas you could give them 35-40 cells that were started in a separate starter.

With this new way of manipulating the builder – it’s like utilizing a starter and builder on the same hive. You start by finding the queen in on of your stronger colonies and placing her in the bottom box under a queen excluder with honey, pollen, several frames for her to lay eggs in, and the youngest brood frames. It really doesn’t matter what the old queen is like, just so she seems healthy and is not on her last legs. Put the other brood box over the queen excluder with the oldest brood frames in it.

This year I’m going to concentrate on getting the cell builders built up early. Maybe about April 15th I’ll start adding frames of brood from other hives to the second box. Keep adding a couple frames every 2 or 3 days. Then by the first week in May, after having filled the second box with capped brood you add a third box on top with more frames of capped brood. The hive will be quite populous. If you were not going to raise queens until later on in May, then you would probably not need to bolster the hive with extra brood.

When the time comes to graft, check the bottom box that has the old queen for swarm cells. Move some of the old frames of brood up to the top box along with a frame or two of young larvae and give the old queen empty frames to lay in. The top box should now have a couple of old frames of brood on each side, then the open frame of honey and pollen, and young brood frames toward the middle. The grafted frame should go between a young brood frame and a honey/pollen frame. You can either have one grafted frame with 3 cell bars of 12 or 13 cups on each bar or have two grafted frames with 2 cell bars on each and about ten cell cups on each for a total of 40 cell cups.

With your builder ready to receive the newly grafted cell cups you perform the following maneuver. First, you already have made up a bottom board with a regular front entrance but it’s totally flat on the underside. In other words, no cleats. Put an empty deep box on the ground for a stand and lay this bottom board on top of it. Then take the top box of the builder and put it on the bottom board. Then take another empty deep or medium box and put it on top of that box. You then take each frame from the second box still sitting on top of the queen excluder and shake the bees off into the top box with the empty shell on it which is to catch the huge amount of bees being shook into that top box. When this is done and all the frames are back in the second box, you place the specialized bottom board with the top box full of bees, on top of the second box. After removing the top shell and coaxing the bees down into the top box.

That special bottom board now acts as a lid for the bottom two boxes and with the entrance pointed in the same direction as the bottom of the hive the older bees in the top box can freely fly back down below if they want.

You now do your grafting and place the grafted frame or frames into the space that you left between the young larvae frame and the hone/ pollen frame and then put the hive lid on. In 24 to 48 hours you can then take out the upper bottom board and reunite the second and third stories.

I was having poor luck with my queen rearing last year, but when I did it the way I just described on my last graft of the season my results were much better. I put a frame of three bars with twelve cups on each bar and I got 34 out of 36 really nice looking cells. Although this was done when the weather was warmer in later May, it still gives me hope that I can get started earlier in May so the new queens get going.

These new cells can be installed into newly made up nucleus colonies or used in splitting strong hives that you feel are going to swarm. I realize you can’t expect surplus honey from a small nuc started in May from a queen cell but it really works nice to raise queen cells in late May or early June and put them with weak singles you’ve made up with one or two frames of brood. They’ll grow into nice hives for next year.

But splitting a strong two or three story in May and placing a queen cell in each split can yield a lot of honey. I always seem to end up splitting into June but then it’s always a battle to be organized and stay ahead of the game. Most of the time I started out behind and never catch up.

Submitted by Dave Fassbinder