Stupid Question.. If I want to get started...

[drumgerry]

This last few weeks (at our association apiary) we've had our first go at queen rearing with yours truly setting the pace. Talk about a steep learning curve! I've had one go at grafting and learned a few things in particular. First was I didn't like the grafting tool I had - a cranked one from Thornes which was far too fiddly. So I've now bought a nice Swiss one from Buzzybeeshop which is tailored to me being a leftie which is nice. Also I've gone off using the wax cups I made - they were a faff and too easy to knock off the cell bar when getting organised for grafting. So the next attempt will be with the JZBZ cups which have the oval stalk on the end. By all accounts the bees like them every bit as much as the wax ones.

I've been trying to document the process at our blog http://www.moraybeekeepers.co.uk/blog/ but haven't put the latest instalment in yet. We checked yesterday and my first set of grafts resulted in 6 sealed queen cells from about 20 larvae grafted. When we had looked 24 hours after grafting the acceptance rate looked better than that but the bees only went ahead with the 6 larvae. A bit disappointing but onwards and upwards!

Gerry

[Calum]

Two tips:
put a queen excluder in front of the hive raising the queens. (prevents stray queens flying in)
Before adding the queen cells to be raised place a frame of young larve in the queenless colony to really get the juices flowing. (increases uptake rate)
Oh, and feed.

[Neils]

Thinking about it, the one thing we didn't cover at the recent workshop is what to do with the cells once they're going.

So lets assume I've grafted a bunch of cells in that whatever method I choose (cupkits, cups on a frame etc) and they've taken. Now what do I do with them?

Do I wait until they're capped?

How do I move them off the frame of queen cells into an Apidea? is there a special frame or do I just basically wedge it into a bit of comb where it wont fall out and then leave it?

As a slight offtopic I've heard (that should have people slapping heads already) that apideas aren't great for the quality of queens that result, is this curmudgeonly beekeeper rumour?

[Jon]

They are capped after 4 days and they will hatch 8 days after that.
Two days before hatch date put rollers over the cells and put them in the apideas 1 day before hatching. If they go into the apideas too early they get chilled and don't hatch.
The apidea has an inner cover with a flap in it and the cell is inserted through this hole and the lugs of the cell cup hold it in place between the two frames below.

The people who say apideas produce poor queens are generally the beekeepers who are clumsy and cannot manipulate 12 hour old larvae or mini nuc frames. Some queens will be good and some will turn out poor no matter what method you use. There are a lot of variables such as weather, and nutrition and age of grafted larva, and the quality and quantity or drones encountered, etc. Some of my best and biggest queens were grafted into artificial cells and mated in apideas. looking at the current batch of 10 queens mated in apideas there is one not much bigger than a worker but some are as big as any queens you are likely to see.

If you get a colony to start and rear 5 queens they will be bigger than if you get the colony to start and rear 30.

[Adam]

I've grafted into the little brown cups, rather than make wax ones with dowelling, however this year I used the cupkit kit and it works well. Age it taking it's toll and as I need glasses to graft - which is a faff under a veil - and there is a risk that you'll get a big larva (cos it's easier!) it's cupkit for me from now on.

If you graft into cupkit cups they can be stuck onto a bar with wax and cut off with a stanley knife with a wax tab to jam into some comb. Queens close to emergence are much more hardy than larvae so they should be kept in the 'big' hive until nearly done. I haven't yet left it too late and had a mass of virgins all over the place!

Screw cupkit onto a frame top bar and add something at the sides (I used hardboard with wax splodged over it).
Put cupkit into hive for a day to be cleaned up and prepared by the bees.
Then put queen in under the excluder. A day (or two) later the queen will have laid in the cups (you can see through them enough to see the white egg)
Release the queen and push the cups into the holders that are on a frame bar. it seems a shame to waste the other 90 eggs....
Place in a queenless colony or - as I have done place in a hive with queen in bottom brood box. Then excluder. Then a super or two. Then the remaining brood in the uppermost brood box. Lots of young bees, a pollen frame and feed syrup. (Queenright queenrearing).


In summary, the cupkit is a doddle.

[Adam]

Mini-nucs are fine to get queens mated. I think it correct that you'll lose more than in a nuc though where there are more bees.
The quality of the queen will be no less in my view.

[Jon]

I checked some more apideas this evening and found another 7 queens laying, 5 of mine and two from other members of the queen rearing group.
Of the first 16 apideas I set out with queen cells, I have got 15 mated queens so there is certainly nothing wrong with the mini nuc as a way of getting queens mated.

[Jimbo]

Hi Nellie,

To help you get the timings right in producing queen cells using the cupkit system you can download an Excel sheet called Tom's Tables from the BIBBA web site. It is easy to produce the queen cells the problem is what do you do with them. I place the queen cell a day before it is due to hatch into mini nucs as opposed to nucs as you use less bees to get the queen mated.On my first attempt using mini nucs I got a 70% success rate last year.

[Jon]

Last year my success rate with the apideas was under 50% as a lot of queens went missing.
I have them at my own apiary this year so can keep more of an eye on them.

[Neils]

Thanks for the advice, the shopping list is coming together nicely though a bit too late for this year.

So in terms of mating Nucs/Apideas are there any particular ones that people feel are good or bad.