Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
on a bed of royal jelly. You will now know how many nucs to prepare for the number of
queen cells. Ten days after grafting, remove the queen cells with a scalpel (or unplug the
plastic cells) and place each one into a prepared mating nucleus.
Before you start to rear queens, decide which method you are going to use and which
method of larval presentation: some are incompatible. Have a plan ready and mark it
out in your diary. Modern queen-rearing systems, such as the Jenter or Cuckpit (which
can be purchased from bee-supply companies) have removed a great deal of the fiddly
work of grafting as described above. If you don't use one of these systems or a let-alone
system, therefore, you will have to graft the larvae.
Before raising queen bees, make sure there are plenty of drones flying or at least plenty
of drone larvae in your hive(s). When selecting a colony to provide the larvae, it is
common sense to select a gentle colony. This will make it easier to handle and may even
provide gentle daughter queens. Remember also that queen-rearing units do not have
to be super-strong, so choose one of a size you can easily manage.
Whatever method you decide on, the colony that is to rear queens (or the part of the
colony that is to rear queens) must be queenless. De-queen thoroughly, therefore, and
then check to see if there is another queen lurking about. This happens. Treat the
eggs and very young larvae carefully - neither should be exposed to too much direct
sunlight. Use healthy colonies only and, finally, remember that timing is all important
in queen rearing, so a failure to keep accurate records could be disastrous.
The following sections describe a few easy methods of rearing queens in the numbers
you want. There are other very good ones, such as the Cooke and Cloake methods
- both named after New Zealand beekeepers - and there are excellent texts on these,
but these methods are beyond the scope of this topic.
