Queen rearing 2011

[GRIZZLY]

I'd do a course in Lindau am Bodensee, its is just a hop a skip and a ryanair / easyjet flight flight away.
Queen raising with Jenter system, queen raising in a queen right colony and drinking german beer.

NOW we're talking Calum.With such an inducement - who could resist?.
Seriously tho' we're so widely scattered here in the s.w. and have so many beginners that I think we would rather attend someone elses course if only we know where they will be held.Given a venue etc etc I could probably round up a few like minded souls but to form a local group might prove impractical. Yes I do know John Mellis but at a recent visit to his set up I got the impression he raised queens / requeened from swarm cells rather than grafting.Belfast could be an option if we got in touch with Jon.

[Jon]

Hi Grizzly.
Give me a chance!
(Thanks for volunteering me Gav!)
Belfast is probably handier than Perth and I believe the ferry is a bit better than it used to be.
It's at least 20 years since I was last on it.
I don't have my own group set up properly yet.
The stuff we did this year was informal and I still have to establish a few rules and regulations - or more to the point, delegation of responsibilities.
Bear in mind that I am also a first year grafter so no expert in that area.
I intend to speak to Mervyn Eddie, Norman Walsh, Alan Jones and some of the local Bibba folk over the next week or so to thrash out a few guidelines.

PS. Who wants that German froth when you can get a decent pint of Stout in Belfast

[Jimbo]

Hi Grizzly,

How about this for an idea. You shop at Tesco wait until they send you the Tesco cash vouchers. Go onto their web site and trade them in for 4 times the value for a free trip to Belfast on the Stena line. We did this few years ago and went to Ireland with our car for a holiday.
If you like the German offer use the vouchers for Eurotunnel. We use them all the time for our trips to Europe

[Jimbo]

Hi Jon,

We set a group up a few years ago but it no longer functions as a bee breeding group.
The biggest problem was there was a lot of interest but the beekeepers were not that experienced at beekeeping. The majority of the group had only been keeping bees 1 - 2 years
At that time it was also difficult to find a bee breeding workshop in Scotland to get bee breeding experience.
The Fife breeding weekend solved that problem for me as it helped me get the right experience and I picked up many ideas
I put that experience into practice this year and managed to raise queens in apideas for the first time after a few years of trying and failing

[GRIZZLY]

Hi Jon,

We set a group up a few years ago but it no longer functions as a bee breeding group.
The biggest problem was there was a lot of interest but the beekeepers were not that experienced at beekeeping. The majority of the group had only been keeping bees 1 - 2 years
At that time it was also difficult to find a bee breeding workshop in Scotland to get bee breeding experience.
The Fife breeding weekend solved that problem for me as it helped me get the right experience and I picked up many ideas
I put that experience into practice this year and managed to raise queens in apideas for the first time after a few years of trying and failing

Thats what we need to do again!!!

[Jon]

The biggest problem was there was a lot of interest but the beekeepers were not that experienced at beekeeping. The majority of the group had only been keeping bees 1 - 2 years
At that time it was also difficult to find a bee breeding workshop in Scotland to get bee breeding experience.
The Fife breeding weekend solved that problem for me as it helped me get the right experience and I picked up many ideas
I put that experience into practice this year and managed to raise queens in apideas for the first time after a few years of trying and failing

That's the same experience I have.
The people who have shown the greatest interest are all relatively new beekeepers.
Unfortunately, a lot of the older guys who have kept bees for many years tend to snipe from the sidelines.

This summer I ended up doing practically everything myself, but next year I want to plan the thing so that there is much more participation from all involved.

Part of the problem is that it is hard to do queen rearing if you are nervous around bees and wear heavy gloves.
Apideas really need to be worked bare handed or with just nitrile gloves, and queen cells are fiddly to manipulate.
You need the dexterity to take cells off the cell bar and place them in apideas without damaging them.

There are other general problems such as the many beekeepers who say they can never find the queen.
With a queenright system like I use, you have to find the queen once a week without fail when you rearrange the frames between the upper and lower box making sure that the queen always stays in the bottom box below the excluder.

Everyone gets hung up about grafting but that is the least of your worries.
If you graft and check a few hours later or the following day you will see which larvae have disappeared. The trick is to graft again and replace them as soon as possible.

What I am thinking of at the moment is getting 20 people to chip in a tenner each which would enable bulk buying of cell cups and roller cages and all the bits and bobs.
Patricipating individuals would be responsible for buying their own Apideas and group members would get as many queen cells as they wanted.
Apideas could be taken away or left for mating in the association apiary or a couple of others which have decent drones.

One of the first steps would be to teach participants how to fill apideas as I had people arriving last year with brand new Apideas with the frames unassembled inside.

Further down the line the problem is requeening and queen introduction as a lot of beekeepers seem to have problems with this.
That's the most frustrating part.
You graft a larva, it emerges as a virgin queen 12 days later, mated two weeks after that, lays 2 weeks in an apidea - then gets balled on introduction to a nuc.
If nothing else beekeeping teaches you patience.

[Trog]

A course in Helensburgh would be easier to reach by folk in Oban and Mull, perhaps, than one in Perth or Fife. It's at least on the main railway line to Glasgow. Likewise, folk from anywhere near Mallaig or Ft William could get to Helensburgh.

[Alvearium]

There are other ways to organise a queen -rearing course. Set straight forward objectives and keep it a smaller affair. You could split into a couple of different days.
a) one day for relatively inexperienced beekeepers showing and doing a couple of simple opportunistic manouevres using swarm cells/swarm control methods to make increase by nuc production. This would help to increase the number stocks in the association area. We had a couple of new beekeepers in their 2nd year making nucs for complete beginners.
b) Invite someone to come along to do a grafting procedure on a queen right stock. This should only be attended by those likely to use these skills the following year. The numbers would be limited and very much 'hands on'.
This would be far easier to arrange than the Fife Queen Rearing weekend course.
Did you know that 30 years ago Craibstone was providing grafted queens in their hundreds for associations in the north and east of Scotland. These were from selected breeder stocks of local bees. Sometimes started larvae were collected and transported and sometimes virgin queens and also mated queens from mininucs. I would like to see this happen again......it is quite possible!
Alvearium

[ian]

Hi Grizzly.
read your post the other day.I am a member of the Ayr club and was on a Queen Rearing course last year at Stoneleigh run by Clive De Bruyn and Margaret Thomas.Last night the club had a lecture on why does the be do what it does,by Margaret Thomas.After the lecture i asked if she was willing to run a Queen Rearing course at our club apiary near Ayr,and she said yes she would possably in June.No prices or numbers were mentioned but that will be arranged later.
Hope this is of help.
Ian

[GRIZZLY]

Hi Grizzly.
read your post the other day.I am a member of the Ayr club and was on a Queen Rearing course last year at Stoneleigh run by Clive De Bruyn and Margaret Thomas.Last night the club had a lecture on why does the be do what it does,by Margaret Thomas.After the lecture i asked if she was willing to run a Queen Rearing course at our club apiary near Ayr,and she said yes she would possably in June.No prices or numbers were mentioned but that will be arranged later.
Hope this is of help.
Ian

Hi Ian,I would certainly help to swell the numbers if a course os run.Perhaps get one or two other bodies from our Ass'n involved as well.
John