Cell builder, grafting larvae

I have read many books, articles, blogs and watched countless internet videos on queen rearing. While this is very worthwhile it can become mind boggling. The different methods become blurred and confused. I think that if you want to rear queens and to develop onto bee breeding, you should choose a method, research that method and give it a try. That is to say a few attempts, rarely does a single attempt produce the results show the true potential that can be attained. Lessons can be learned from failure and successes built upon. Then by all means move onto try another method.

I found a number of videos that I found fascinating and informative, Even before I actually had any bees myself. These were on the National Honey Show's YouTube channel. They had invited Mike Palmer from North America to speak. There are a few videos if his talks on their channel, one of these in particular I have watched over and over, this his talk on Queen Rearing in the Sustainable Apiary, Link I decided to base my queen rearing on the method that Mike describes.

Inorder to raise queen cells the cell raiser needs to be strong in numbers of bees, with a high number of young nurse bees and to be congested, that is packed with bees, so many that it seems that there is hardly enough room in the cell raiser to accommodate them all. The video describes how to prepare a colony to be a cell raiser by adding frames of sealed brood to an already strong colony and then to split what has now become a colony that is ready to swarm into a separate cell raiser and a queen right "half" that can be reunited after queen rearing.
After this manipulation of the colony to produce the hopelessly queenless cell raiser, it should be left for a few hours for the bees to realise that they have no queen or larvae with which to raise another queen.

Hopelessly queenless

Packed with bees

Most recently I have used Cupkit cell cups to graft into. On a sunny day with contact lenses and reading glasses too, I can graft quite quickly in the apiary using a stainless steal grafting tool. This takes practice but it's well worth putting in the time. Use whatever vision aids that you need to be able to see young larvae (<12 hours old). These are smaller than eggs! Again there are many videos available on the internet to guide you but practice and trial and error are essential. Success in takes are variable, I have had from 10 - 80% initial takes but have had cells that were initially started only to be taken down by the bees before being sealed. This can be reduced by removing started cells, transferring them to cell finishers. I have not done this yet but plan to do so next season after watching videos posted by Richard Noel Link who has posted some very informative and entertaining videos.

Ten days after grafting it is time to harvest the ripe queen cells, these can be used in a number of ways. I introduce them into either full size framed nucs or Apideas.

Apideas to be transported to the mating apiary.

These are then taken to the mating apiary, where there are colonies of selected desirable bees producing lots of healthy drones with which my new queens can mate. I want to raise healthy, docile, productive near native (AMM) bees but you decide what qualities that you want from your future queens!

Nucs and Apideas in the mating apiary

Queen cells can be checked for emergence a few days later, the queen cell removed and the colony quickly closed and left for the queen to be mated, the nuc then checked for a mated laying queen. This can take 2-3 weeks in the case of full sized nucs but often the queen in an Apidea will begin to lay after about 12 days usually, much sooner than her sisters mating from a full size nuc or hive.

Virgin queens have emerged from these cells

A new queen!

With luck you will have new queens from your own stock that will go onto hopefully, to reward your efforts with gentle colonies that are a pleasure to work, give a good honey crop and give you a great deal of satisfaction. The queen in the above picture gave me my biggest  honey crop in 2018 but unfortunately wasn't as easy to work as I'd hoped! She did her bit though and although I thank her for that she will not be part of next years breeding programme.