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Thread: Ben Harden Queen Right system of queen rearing

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    Default Ben Harden Queen Right system of queen rearing

    Has anyone tried this method? Any experiences to relate or advice to give?
    This features in the Beekeeping in a Nutshell series no. 59.
    You use 2 wide dummy boards to narrow down the space above the brood chamber and bring up 3 frames of pollen, open brood and then add a grafted frame.
    Alvearium

  2. #2
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Hi.
    This is the main system I use for rearing queens although I keep the supers between the two boxes.

    The Ben Harden Method is based on this paper by Wilkinson and Brown.

    Dave Cushman’s site also elaborates.

    The beauty of it is that any strong colony can be set up quickly to rear queens.
    I have a colony and a nuc at the bottom of my garden.
    The colony swarmed on Friday afternoon and the clipped queen made her way back in. I did an artificial swarm moving all the brood bar one frame to a second brood box and placed this above the supers on the top of the stack. ** The queen was confined to the bottom box with an excluder.
    I grafted larvae from the nuc into it a couple of hours later and on checking yesterday morning 10 cells had been started.

    The beauty of this is that it also helps with swarm control as it is like doing a Demaree where the brood is constantly taken away from the queen and drawn comb returned.

    That swarm I had in the garden is my first this year from a dozen or so colonies.

    If there is enough brood and pollen frames I use more than the 4 or 5 frames recommended by Ben Harden. If you have ten or eleven brood frames well covered with bees, it’s all the better. Ben’s logic is that a lot of AMM colonies have a smaller brood nest and not enough bees to fill a complete second box.

    Some things to take into account are:

    -You must be able to find your queen so that she can be confined to the bottom box. You could I suppose shake all the bees through an excluder but better to just learn how to find her.

    -I find that after a week of bad weather the bees are in no mood to start cells and you might find they only start 2 or 3 grafts from 20 offered. It is better to offer the frame of grafts after a few days of good weather.

    -If there is no nectar flow, feed a pint of 1:1 syrup per day in a feeder above the top box. Some people always feed irrespective of weather but little and often is the key to avoid getting syrup in the supers. Feeding is especially important for the 4 days immediately after grafting when the cells are open.

    -Cage the cells with rollers 2 days before hatch date as an early hatcher will pull down all the other cells and be very hard to find in a brood box and a couple of supers packed with bees.

    -If you are doing continuous grafting, the colony has to be rearranged every time a new frame of grafts is introduced - to put the brood up above with the larvae. Ideally there is a frame of open brood either side of the graft frame as this is like a magnet for nurse bees which will then start queen cells from the larvae in the cell cups. I find this takes about 40 minutes each time but is worth it to produce 10-20 queen cells per week from your best colony, or someone else’s.

    -If you use an incubator you can transfer the cells as soon as they are sealed by day 5 after grafting.

    **EDIT Actually just remembered I put the brood on its own floor in this case but the cells would have been started anyway a la Ben Harden due to the separation from the queen. I was goint to introduce a queen but changed my mind and gave it a frame of grafts instead. The queen can go in next week when I remove the queen cells.
    Last edited by Jon; 28-05-2013 at 01:02 PM.

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    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    I used the Ben Harden method (exactly as described by Dave Cushman, with no supers between the queen/brood and the cells) very successfully this year. It was very straightforward and I had mated queens by mid-May (in Kielers) and got a couple of supers of OSR honey from the same hive. I didn't feed them but agree with Jon it would be necessary with no flow on. The cells were drawn out very quickly and the only issue I had was brace comb being built between the cells.

    The only possible drawback I'm aware of with the method was pointed out to me by an advocate of queen rearing in double brood box with a Cloake board - these can be broken up into several two or three frame nucs for mating the queens, whereas with the Ben Harden system you use the cells in mini-nucs or nucs prepared from other hives, so tying up more hives for rearing rather than honey production. However, I was very happy with the results and will use it again with confidence.

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    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by fatshark View Post

    The only possible drawback I'm aware of with the method was pointed out to me by an advocate of queen rearing in double brood box with a Cloake board - these can be broken up into several two or three frame nucs for mating the queens, whereas with the Ben Harden system you use the cells in mini-nucs or nucs prepared from other hives, so tying up more hives for rearing rather than honey production.
    But that is only a problem if you want to sell nucs. If you just want to rear queens someone else can make up the nucs and use the queens. You could easily keep 50 apideas going from a single colony you graft into and get 2 or 3 mated queens out of each over the summer. Breaking up one decent colony would fill about 80 apideas at 500 bees per apidea.
    I leave my queens in the apideas for almost three weeks and then remove the queen and split the brood to populate a second apidea just as it is starting to hatch. a new queen cell goes in right away.
    Filling about 30 apideas on a rainy day at the start of the season is one of the worst jobs in beekeeping

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    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jon View Post
    But that is only a problem if you want to sell nucs.
    Agreed ... or making increase.
    Quote Originally Posted by Jon View Post
    Filling about 30 apideas on a rainy day at the start of the season is one of the worst jobs in beekeeping
    I can imagine ... but at least once the mini-nucs are populated you can keep them going by uniting and/or splitting as you describe to keep usable numbers throughout the season.

    Another of the worst jobs is explaining to the wife why the garage is full of bees after my first attempt at queen cell introduction ... I now do it in the dark using a red head torch - much easier

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    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by fatshark View Post
    Another of the worst jobs is explaining to the wife why the garage is full of bees after my first attempt at queen cell introduction ... I now do it in the dark using a red head torch - much easier
    Just got an image of Derek and Clive there. I fill my apideas at the allotment to avoid any home based strife.

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    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Here's hoping that the bees don't have a similar homing ability to the lobsters.

    D, if you used Apideas with the neat perspex cover and hole for the Q cell, and had a water mister by your side, no bees at all would be lost during the operation.

  8. #8

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    I agree that this is an excellent method. I've used it for five years and keep multiple queen-right queen raisers on the go through the season. Good acceptance rates, repeated grafting cycles, with minimal numbers of queen raising colonies. It's the method I teach on queen raising courses too.

    I find a third brood box above the supers is very useful for removing stores-clogged frames from the 'working' brood boxes.

    As Jon says you have to consider that the re-arrangement is an integral part of the process if you're doing successive grafts. I think of it as a progressive cycling of brood and space between top and bottom box; get the picture clear in your mind and rearranging becomes instinctive.

    I think Jon needs a kick up the arse though - I rearranged two such colonies and did 36 grafts between them, including finding suitable grafting material in each and caging the queens for safety, in about 40 minutes total this afternoon!

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    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Removing stores-clogged frames?!!!! Oh, you're in DEVON! That explains it. Haven't see a stores-clogged frame in a long time!

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    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dan View Post
    I
    I think Jon needs a kick up the arse though - I rearranged two such colonies and did 36 grafts between them, including finding suitable grafting material in each and caging the queens for safety, in about 40 minutes total this afternoon!
    That is good going Dan but gimmie a break! I did this for the first time last year! Both the grafting and the rearranging. I am still getting the hang of it and I am sure we can go head to head in a couple of years re. the speed trials. This is my hobby rather than the day job!
    I have 30 hatching Friday and another 10 next Wednesday.

    Nice cells I reckon. What do you make of those?

    two good cells.jpg

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