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Day 0: I like to start my process by finding and marking the queen in the strongest hive in the apiary (most brood frames) that will become my cell builder starter. Find the queen. Mark her. Clip her wing and replace back into the hive. You can leave this step until later but I prefer to do this at the beginning.
If you cant find her, take a look at this video to help track her down - FIND A QUEEN.
1. FIND QUEEN
Day 0: Once you have marked your queen, place her in a single brood box with as many frames of brood as possible from that starter colony. Between 10-12 frames of brood is ideal.
Add a queen excluder on top of the brood box and place another single empty brood box on top of the queen excluder. This configuration will be used to start your queen cells by boosting the number of young bees!
2. BUILD YOUR STARTER
Day 0: Go around your apiary and select 1 or 2 frames of CAPPED brood from your strongest colonies. You need 10-12 in total so that the top box (above the queen excluder is FULL of capped brood frames. Shake the bees off the frame. You don't want to add bees - just the brood frames. If you cant fill it all with 100% capped brood then just go for the best brood frames you have available. The aim here is to boost the amount of young bees in the hive.
3. FETCH CAPPED BROOD
Day 8: Immediately after destroying ALL the emergency cells, the colony is now hopelessly queenless. They have no queen and no resources (eggs or larvae) to create one.
Add a mated queen, in a sealed queen cage and place between two frames of brood. Do not remove the tab covering the fondant.
4. SWITCH BOXES
Day 10: Go through the frames in the bottom box and find the queen and place her into a cage for safe keeping. Its much easier to do this is if you marked the queen earlier on in the process.
You can also take the queen away and use her to make up a split. She is no longer required for this process
5. FIND QUEEN
Day 10: Once the queen has been isolated from the bottom box, go through every single frame and shake all the bees into the shaker box.
The aim here is to leave ALL the bees from both boxes PLUS the frames from top box and NO queen ALL into a single 10 frame brood box. The box will be bubbling with bees and it looks like they are struggling to fit. This is what you want and means you get good queen bees.
6. SHAKE BEES
Day 10: Go through all of your colonies and find your very best pollen frame that is as full as possible with a nice, fresh variety of bee bread.
You can top this up with pollen sub but nothing beats the real thing. I find good pollen frames throughout the year and store them in the freezer until you need them. You never find the good ones when you are in a rush to find one!
7. FIND A POLLEN FRAME
Day 10: Take a frame of eggs from a breeder queen colony or your very best colony of bees in the apiary. Choose the colony with the biggest honey crop or the calmest bees.
Using a grafting tool start transferring 4 day old larvae into a preprepared cell grafting frame with cups. I prefer JZ-BZ cups and use two rows of 12.
8. START GRAFTING
Day 10: Make a space in the middle of the 10-12 frames of brood - enough to take two frames. Add your pollen frame into the space and then add your frame of grafted cells.
Ensure that the frame of grafted cells is as close as possible to the best side of the pollen frame. Giving them easy access means you get the best results.
9. ADD TO STARTER
Day 10: Close to the colony back up and add a sugar syrup feeder. You must feed the bees during this phase with 1:1 sugar syrup to simulate a flow. The bees will only raise queens under the right conditions.
They need sufficient protein (pollen) and INCOMING carbohydrates (1:1 sugar syrup). Some like to add a cup of Ultra Bee pollen sub into the syrup at this stage. I tend to leave it out
10. ADD A FEEDER
Day 20: Carefully remove your queens cells and split the remaining brood in the colony to create some nucs. You can also have mini mating nucs already prepared with bees.
Add a single capped queen cell to each nuc or mini mating nucs and be careful not to damage or knock the cells. Some like to carefully wrap foil around the cell leaving only the top open to stop the bees chewing them down.
11. REMOVE CELLS
Day 41: After we have placed cells, we leave them alone for 3 weeks before returning to check to see if the queen has mated. If we see eggs laid in a nice pattern its generally good news. But we have to wait until see we a nice pattern of capped worker brood before we know the queen is well mated. Once mated you can use the queen to requeen another beehive or make up some nucs or splits. Raising your own queens is SO much fun. Give it a try!
12. CHECK FOR EGGS
In this video, I show you the method of my beekeeping partner, Richard Stevens. The method that Richard uses is different from mine and is easier to use for people with few beehives. It's a starter/finisher all in one process which is very resource efficient for beekeepers with only a few beehives.
How to rear queen bees using Richard's method
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