However, it seems ridiculous [...]]]> Every spring I re-queen my strongest hives in order to reduce swarming. A colony is less likely to swarm when the queen’s pheromones are strong, and the pheromones are strongest in a first-year queen. In fact, according to most sources, a new queen is the single best deterrent to swarming.

However, it seems ridiculous to take your very best queens, kill them, and replace them with others. And if the new queen is rejected, you are left with nothing.

So a few years ago I started keeping those queens instead of killing them. To do this, I remove the queen along with a frame of brood and a frame of honey and put them in a two-frame nuc. Then I introduce the new queen into the hive. If anything goes wrong with the new queen, I can always re-introduce the old one . . . or I can keep her “in reserve” for some other purpose.

For example, one of the swarms I caught last week appeared to be queenless. The swarm built comb in which it stored only honey, and when I sifted the bees through a queen excluder, I found nothing. So I took one of my reserve queens and introduced her. Once she starts laying the colony will probably supersede her, but without her to get things started, the whole swarm would die.

When I first started saving queens, I wondered what I would do when the two-frame nucs got too populous. But I found that these small colonies tend to expand to fill the available space and then remain constant. When you think about it, they aren’t big enough to swarm or even to abscond. So they just stay small. In the past I’ve kept these “reserve” queens all summer long.

Sometimes I just put a swarm cell, brood, and honey in the small nucs. It seems to take forever, but the bees eventually produce a laying queen and I just leave her there . . . in case. If one doesn’t succeed, I just start another. Since I’m using her only as a backup, it doesn’t really matter how long it takes.

Rusty

Most of us who rear queens do it to provide serviceable queens for ourselves or others. We need queens to replace those that are failing or those that have [...]]]> A tweet from the Sheffield Honey Company reminded me that I should clarify the difference between queen rearing and queen breeding–and they are absolutely right.

Most of us who rear queens do it to provide serviceable queens for ourselves or others. We need queens to replace those that are failing or those that have died. We need queens to increase the number of colonies or to re-queen defensive hives. We are usually happy with a queen who produces a good brood pattern and gives rise to gentle workers. Sometimes–especially when they are scarce–nearly any queen will do.

But breeding queens is much more complex than simply rearing them. Breeders select stock based on genetic traits they want to enhance. Breeders usually have a specific goal in mind. They may want to increase honey production, decrease propolis collection, improve overwintering, or increase disease resistance. Recently, many queen breeders are looking for breeding stock that is resistant to the ravages of the Varroa mite.

In addition to selecting good queens, breeders must also select drones from colonies with specific traits. A “sperm donor” with desirable traits is just as important as the queen herself. Controlled crosses between selected queens and drones is beyond the capabilities of most beekeepers, so we rely on the breeders to do the laborious work of producing better bees.

The work breeders perform should not be underestimated. Breeders must select and maintain breeding stock, keep meticulous records, and record statistics about the offspring of the crosses. In addition, they must guard against inbreeding and always be on the lookout for negative as well as positive outcomes.

Most breeders use instrumental insemination to assure that the desired crosses occur. Instrumental insemination requires special equipment and training in addition to adequate time and financial resources. It is not easy.

So while most of us can raise a few queens as we need them, we must keep in mind that the unique lines with desirable characteristics that appear every so often are the result of dedicated breeders with special knowledge and resources, and most importantly, the wherewithal to succeed.

Rusty

Artificial insemination (or instrumental insemination): The manual [...]]]> Before you begin queen rearing, it helps to understand the lingo. Authors of queen-rearing instructions often use a variety of synonyms which make a confusing subject even more difficult. Below are some of the most common terms—and their synonyms—I found in recent publications.

Artificial insemination (or instrumental insemination): The manual transfer of sperm from drones to the genital organs of virgin queens.

Banking box (or holding box): A queenless colony used to hold caged queens until they can be used to re-queen different queenless colonies. With plenty of nurse bees, honey, and pollen, queens can be banked for several weeks.

Banking frame (or queen cage holder): A special frame designed to hold multiple queen cages in a banking box.

Breeder colony: A colony having desirable traits that a beekeeper will use as a source of eggs for queen breeding.

Breeder queen: The queen of the breeder colony that will lay the eggs used for raising new queens.

Cell (or peanut): To a beekeeper, a cell is the peanut-shaped structure that contains a developing queen. It is short for “queen cell” and should not be confused with the normal hexagonal cells found in wax combs.

Cell bar: A horizontal bar made to fit inside a regular frame. A frame may hold two to three cell bars, each designed to hold 15-20 cell bases. Once fitted with cell bars, the frame is called a cell holding frame or rearing frame.

Cell base: Cell bases are made from plastic or wood and are permanently mounted to cell bars. They are designed to hold cell cups.

Cell cup (or queen cup): This is the beginning of a queen cell. It is called a cell cup when it has a spherical shape—before the bees start to build it into a peanut shape. The term “cell cup” is also used to refer to plastic or wax artificial cups that are used for queen rearing.

Cell finisher (or finishing colony): A very populous queenright colony used to grow queen cells that have been started in a cell starter colony. The growing queen cells are separated from the queen with a queen excluder and kept in the cell finisher until they are capped.

Cell holding frame (or rearing frame): A regular frame fitted with cell bars for supporting cell bases.

Cell protector: A plastic or wire covering for a queen cell used to protect it from attack by other bees or the resident queen.

Cell starter (or starting colony or cell builder or swarm box): These are queenless colonies containing a large number of very young bees and brood. When the beekeeper is ready to “start” a new batch of queens, he removes the frames of brood and replaces them with frames of queen cups containing young larvae. The nurse bees will feed royal jelly to the larvae and thus get the queens “started.” The queen cups are removed after 24 hours.

Cloake board: A Cloake board is a piece of equipment that allows one populous hive to be used as both a cell starter and a cell finisher with minimum hive disturbance.

Grafting: The manual transfer of young larvae (12-24 hours old) from brood comb into cell cups.

Laying box (or comb box): In no-graft systems, a laying box is a plastic box in which the queen is confined with a series of plastic cell cups in which to lay eggs. Once the eggs are laid in the cell cups, the cups are removed to a cell starter and the queen is released.

Mating nuc: Each capped queen cell is put in a mating nuc, which is a small queenless colony. Here the queen will emerge and eventually take her mating flights.

Swarm cell: A swarm cell is a queen cell that was built in preparation for swarming. Multiple queen cells are usually found hanging from the bottoms or sides of combs in the heart of the brood nest. The old queen will leave with the swarm and a virgin queen from one of the swarm cells will become the new queen.

Virgin queen: an unmated queen. Virgin queens hatch 15-16 days from the time an egg was laid, or 11-12 days after grafting. A virgin makes her first mating flight about 7 days after hatching and will mate with about ten drones.

Rusty

Plastic cell cups and the back of a laying box.

Larvae used for grafting must be between 12 and 24 hours old. These [...]]]> Grafting is the process of transferring young larvae from worker cells into special cups used for raising queens. Larvae used for grafting are selected from the offspring of a “breeder” queen, that is, a queen whose genetics appeal to the beekeeper.

Larvae used for grafting must be between 12 and 24 hours old. These larvae are about the size of the egg they hatched from and are extremely delicate. They must be transferred using a special tool aptly called a “grafting tool.” Grafting tools range from simple implements, such as modified toothpicks or artist paint brushes, to specially manufactured tools with retractable springs and mini-scoops.

Grafting requires a lot of practice and a steady hand. Beekeepers often hone their skills on random larvae before their first attempts at queen rearing.

This simply is not true. If you install [...]]]> Many beekeepers believe that you must remove attendant bees from queen shipping cages before you introduce a caged queen into a hive. They believe the queen will more likely be killed by the receiving hive if both the attendants and the queen have a foreign odor.

This simply is not true. If you install the caged queen properly, the attendants will cause no problem. Before long the queen’s pheromone will circulate throughout the hive. All the bees—as well as the attendants—will then smell the same.

You can install the queen and her attendants by simply putting the shipping cage near the center of the brood nest or cluster. For best results, the hive should have been queenless for at least 24 hours prior to installation. You can then just stick the shipping cage into the wax comb on one of the frames with the screen side open to the bees. Make sure the candy end is up and the cork end is down.

After several days, the worker bees will chew away the candy plug and release the queen into the hive. By then, the pheromone will be well distributed and the attendant workers will be absorbed into the colony along with the queen.

The bigger risk to the queen—especially by inexperienced beekeepers—may result from trying to get the attendants out of the queen cage. Queens have been lost, injured, or killed by well-meaning beekeepers who wrongly believed the attendants were a threat.

For more information on queen introduction, Strachan Apiaries, Inc. has a succinct little write-up on its website. Their instruction sheet specifically states that it is not necessary to remove the attendants. And you can trust them. After all, they are in the business of providing quality queens to beekeepers . . . and they don’t want them destroyed.

Rusty