The Rose method of queen rearing

[Rosie]

Hi All

You might be interested in my queenright queen rearing method. I tried it last year with a double queen hive but this year I have used 2 different single queen hives and it seems to be working even better.

It consists of a normal national hive with 2 half width brood boxes used above the queen excluder and below the supers. Queen rearing can start as soon as the bees start to put nectar in the half width brood boxes. I have played around with it and now have quite a simple routine that seems to work well even when the weather is awful.

day 1: Find a frame of young brood and another of pollen from the brood box and put them in one of the half boxes with a dry grafting (cell cup) frame between them, making sure that there is nectar in the other 2 brood frames (the half box takes 5 frames).

day 2: slip a plastic sheet under the half box that contains the brood frame and pollen frame.

day 3: Graft into the grafting frame.

day 4: remove the plastic sheet.

9 days later transfer the queen cells into mating nucs.

After fiddling for a number of seasons and achieving poor success rates with different queenright systems this one seems to work like a charm. In fact I am getting better results than I often achieve with queenless systems.

Here's a picture of the set-up with the supers removed.

P1000589.jpg

Rosie

[Jon]

Hi Steve
Good to see the system working. I have never understood why your bees struggle with the basic Ben Harden/ Wilkinson and Brown queenright system.
I get the odd cell raiser colony which wont start more than 2/20 grafts but I had one last week start 20/22 grafts and they were really good cells as well.
I do the grafting for our group and we have produced well over 200 cells this year for apideas of group members and cells taken home to requeen problem hives.

There are about 100 apideas at the mating site so the drones have got a full time job.

What do you reckon is the difference between your system and the basic Ben Harden or wilkinson/Brown in terms of cells started?

[Rosie]

I haven't tried Wilkinson/Brown but the best I have achieved with Ben harden is about 7 out of 20 although I have not tried it for about 4 years. With my new system I just got 16 out of 18 and the one in the picture had 14 out of 18. I know that Ben's system is aimed at non-prolific bees but, from your earlier posts, I get the impression that your colonies get bigger than mine. The one in the picture, for example, only had about 5 frames of brood as I did this round of grafting after I had robbed the colony for nucs.

Rosie

[Jon]

Very rare for any of mine to need more than a single national for brood although I have the odd one needs more space.
At the moment I have colonies with ten frames of brood and others have reduced to about 3 or 4.
A lot of my queens have reduced egg laying during June due to bad weather and poor forage but I have still managed to get a reasonable number of cells started.
I was at the association apiary earlier this evening and got 15 more cells into apideas and another 5 or 6 went away with group members to requeen colonies.
I put a dozen cells into my own apideas earlier today.

[prakel]

Rosie, have you tried the Hybrid Cloake Board method used by John Kefuss? You seem to have similar thinking in the sense of concentrating cell raising in a nucleus sized box above a queen right colony. You're method of course allows for concurrent supering while his H-C-B reduces the lifting to get to the cell builder box/frames of brood in the queen-right section and probably also concentrates a higher percentage of bees too. Two approaches with great similarities but also quite different working methods.

[Rosie]

I'm not familiar with John Kefuss's method but I know about the Morris board technique that uses a special board and a split brood box on the bottom. The Morris board seems complicated to me and involves a fancy board with fiddly slides and doors.

Rosie

[prakel]

Just to elaborate a little on John Kefuss's 'Hybrid Cloake Board', he's basically taken the standard Cloake Board with it's usual method of use but made the one adjustment of blanking off a part of it so as to allow the use of a single nucleus box for the cell raising rather than a second standard brood chamber. Concentrating the bees in a smaller cell raiser and reducing the weight of lifting when accessing the bottom brood chamber for harvesting further combs of brood.

[nemphlar]

I've used the Harding method for a few years, and only ever get 4/6 cells taken up, but then when they swarm there are never more than this number of cells. The one time this year I had more (12 out 20)was a hive with a prolific early build up and I used this to rear some early cells from a more reliable steady queen. When this queen did catch up I find grafting from the frame of brood which will then take its place in the bh box along with the pollen frame very quick and easy with minimum of disturbance. Getting them mated and laying more difficult this year sitting around 35%.
As an aside managed to find someone selling apideas more reasonable priced thanT, what a clever little design, filled them last Sunday.

[Jon]

Buzzy Bee shop is miles cheaper than Thorne for everything.

Re the Ben harden method, some colonies just don't take to it I think but most of mine are fine.
I have been grafting 80 at a time into 4 colonies and if i get 40 or 50 cells that's more than enough for our group.
I grafted 20 into one colony at weekly intervals and it never started more than 2 or 3 at a time so I set up another exactly the same way and it started 20/22.
My set up is graft frame in the middle, frame of larvae either side, frame of pollen outer side of the frame of larvae then pack out the rest with the sealed brood. If weather is bad you need a feeder on to give them a pint of syrup per day for the 4-5 days the cell is open.

[Adam]

Steve,
So with your method you're only grafting in one of the 1/2 width brood boxes at once so the 'path from queen to grafts' is up the non-grafted side, across the super and down? This makes the distance quite large - more than just a super in between - hence the grafts appear with little queen pheromone so a good take-up. Is this a correct interpretation of your method?


Adam