# Q: Number of hives needed to raise X number queens.



## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Only from my experience with the method I use...

I raised 1500 queens with 50 cell builders and 455 mating nucs. Took from May 11 until August 14.


----------



## Velbert (Mar 19, 2006)

Here is a projected queen rearing spreadsheet according my findings

http://www.box.net/shared/rd6xlbauku takes Excell program to open


----------



## Countryboy (Feb 15, 2009)

To raise 10 queens, simply pinch the queen (or put her in a nuc) and the bees will raise 10 (or 20) emergency queens.


----------



## KevinR (Apr 30, 2010)

Michael, 

Did you feel that you were pushing those 50 starters or could they have handled more. Were those hives both a starter and finishers or? I'm assuming that those 455 mating nucs were small boxes or 1-2 frame nucs?

Velbert,

Looks like a pretty neat spreadsheet from what I can see. I need to reinstall office, so I'm using a viewer.

Countryboy, 

Pffft. I think you knew what I meant from the post. :doh:


----------



## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Some were used twice and counted twice. How many individual cell builders...maybe 40. I tried something different this year and used up a lot of hives...adding brood to strong colonies to create huge populations. The cells I got were beautiful, but it did take a lot of bee resources.

The mating nucs are 4 way. Fourn nucs in a body with 4 full depth half length combs per nuc.


----------



## KevinR (Apr 30, 2010)

Michael, 

Thanks for the info. Were your mating nucs similar to this one?

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~reute001/Plan files/pMini Mating Nuc 4x4.pdf

Do you have 455 nucs with 4 chambers aka 1820 mating nucs, or were you counting each chamber as a seperate mating nuc aka 113 quad nuc hives?

Do you have all of your queens mating nucs in one yard? 

I was curious if you have to feed the mating nucs, or are they able to gather their own stores. Did you find that during the "flow" they became honey bound? 

i.e. if I put a mini hive on an acre of clover. I'm assuming the workers will have the cells full in a few days.

I've got 14 acres to play with local to me. Another ~250 acres in the "family".

I'm trying to get a grasp on how many hives I'll need to have if I want to try raising queens.

Thanks


----------



## EastSideBuzz (Apr 12, 2009)

KevinR said:


> Thanks for the info. Were your mating nucs similar to this one?
> http://www.tc.umn.edu/~reute001/Plan files/pMini Mating Nuc 4x4.pdf


So I made a couple of these and bought some frames from Mannlake to put in them. Did not do it in time to really use them this year. If I can figure out exactly how to use them correctly I will make some more over the winter. I did screw 2 frames together to a full frame and put them into a larger hive which built out the comb for me quickly. So I have built out comb already to use next season.

I was wondering who else has these and do they like them.? 

What do you do with the little frames when the season ends to combine them into a larger hive?

I was thinking of single or dual frame deep nuc's instead.

http://www.mannlakeltd.com/ProductDetail.asp?idproduct=1094&idCategory=13 I decided that I can make these small frames really easy. Need to see if it is cheaper to buy the small plastic cell or cut larger stuff into two. http://www.mannlakeltd.com/ProductDetail.asp?idproduct=569&idCategory=


----------



## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

>>Thanks for the info. Were your mating nucs similar to this one?

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~reute001/Plan files/pMini Mating Nuc 4x4.pdf<<

No, not really. Mine have a fixed divider across the hive body the short way. This has a frame rest on each side matching that of the body. Then, each chamber is divided in half by a movable division board feeder. This creates 4 chambers.

>>Do you have 455 nucs with 4 chambers aka 1820 mating nucs, or were you counting each chamber as a seperate mating nuc aka 113 quad nuc hives?<<

114 - 4 way boxes totalling 456 mini nucs.

Do you have all of your queens mating nucs in one yard? 

I do have all my mating nucs in 1 yard. 4 groups with 4 circles of boxes. Most circles are 8- 4 ways. Each group gets cells on the same day...one group every 4 days. Queens are caught every 4 days...one group every 4 days is what i mean with all 4 groups caught over a period of 16 days. Then it's back to group 1. 

It's quite a sight. Worked well and I had 75%+ acceptance. Rather than try the isolated mating yard bit...I've done that too...I flooded my valley with good bees of different stocks. I think that's a better plan.

>>I was curious if you have to feed the mating nucs, or are they able to gather their own stores. Did you find that during the "flow" they became honey bound?<<

Only fed some when we set them up in May. Some had only bees and brood and no feed. After that, no feed. In fact we had to remove a frame of honey each time we caught queens to be sure they didn't get honey bound. 

>>i.e. if I put a mini hive on an acre of clover. I'm assuming the workers will have the cells full in a few days.<<

Well, I'm on tousands of acres of forage. Remember you're removing the queen every 16 days and re-celling the next day. It's easy enough to manage.


----------



## KevinR (Apr 30, 2010)

I would expect that I have lots of forage for the bees, but I assumed they were lazy and would gather the closest flowers first. I was thinking about planting most of the pasture land in clover, then placing the hives and nucs in the middle.

If you were starting from scratch, would you do the half-frames again? I was thinking about using 1 or 2 frame mediums nucs. To help lower the investment cost and standardize frames. But, I'm not sure if that would increase my over all requirement for bees. In thoery, once the queens start laying and are pulled. I should have a new stream of workers in the box.

So you place a capped cell, then remove the mated and laying queen 16 days later? I'm assuming that any queens that didn't make grade are pinched. Do you bank your queens after that point, or do ship it out to the customer.

How do you flood your yards with drones? I'm assuming that you have one hive(s) that you like and your rotating the drone comb out to other hives to spread the load.

Thanks for all the tips.


----------



## BerkeyDavid (Jan 29, 2004)

Michael P, what do you do for your drones? and where do you put the drone rearing hives? With that many queens I would think you have some outyards with some strong hives to raise drones? Great info thanks for sharing!


----------



## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

>>If you were starting from scratch, would you do the half-frames again? I was thinking about using 1 or 2 frame mediums nucs. To help lower the investment cost and standardize frames. But, I'm not sure if that would increase my over all requirement for bees. In thoery, once the queens start laying and are pulled. I should have a new stream of workers in the box.<<

I would. Catching queens on full sized frames is too hard when catching hundreds in a day. New workers...yes eventually. When I catch the queen, there are usually larvae about 2-3 days old. It takes time for them to emerge.

>>So you place a capped cell, then remove the mated and laying queen 16 days later? I'm assuming that any queens that didn't make grade are pinched. Do you bank your queens after that point, or do ship it out to the customer.<<

I leave any queens I see that aren't laying yet, figuring they have already accepted her. I can't take the chance woth queens that aren't laying yet. Don't dar ship or use them. Most are laying next time, but every once in a while you get a dud. No, I don't banl. I ship or use the queens before I catch more 4 days later.

>>How do you flood your yards with drones? I'm assuming that you have one hive(s) that you like and your rotating the drone comb out to other hives to spread the load.<<

My mating yard is in a little valley with 4 production yards. Plenty of drones. I add some of my best colonies to these yards as drone producers.


----------



## chillardbee (May 26, 2005)

I believe that there are so many variables that come into play like how many cells are reared in the cell builder, useing a cell starter as a finisher, and how many cells will take from a graft, how many cells will hatch in the nucs, how many of those virgins will get mated, and through it all the weather has a roll to play on how successful it will be.

I don't think you could guess as to how many successful queens you could rear by the end of the season but you can insure that you will get the number of queens you need by making more then what you need. here's an example in the extreme for 50 mated queens:

working on the premises that 50% of what your doing will succeed, you would graft 200 cells, 100 cells would go into nucs of which 50 would hatch and get mated. Generally the percentage of acceptance in grafts, cells hatching, and queens getting mated are much higher especially in the case of beekeepers that have experience. Lets say you did that same graft with 200 cells and in the end you got 75% of them mated up, now your at 150 mated queens. The downside of this is that you can never predict what percentage you will get, as it has been said before no one wants to admit to percentages around the 30% but yet they can be as high as 95% or so. 

I generally raise 20 cells in a single to finish. I generally have a 90% acceptance of the grafts and most will hatch. Our bigest problem here on the wet coast of Canada is the weather, Like this year where the queens may of had only a window of a day or two to get mated. To make *around* 200 cells I would need 10 singles.

The type of mating nuc will also determine how much resources you will need. A regular strong 2 story brood nest can give either 4-4 frame nucs, 6-3 frame nucs, or 8-2 frame nucs the latter being used only for mating. The bees them selves if shook into the mini styrofoam nucs can stock 25 - 30 of the units. There is also the medium depth 4 way nucs but that means you will be running those units as they are and consolidating them at the end of the season into 2 way boxs to over winter. Dead outs in the spring can be reinitiated with package bees. A 3 story medium depth 2 way can stock up to 20 units.


----------



## KevinR (Apr 30, 2010)

Thanks the feedback.


----------



## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

If you use 1/2 frame nucs what do you do with them at the end of the season?

The medium frame nucs that I've used this year (to get my feet wet) have actually been kind of handy to fill out big hives as I've been preparing for fall. 

But minis sure do look tempting when you are using resources to make up mating nucs at the beginning of the season.


----------



## KevinR (Apr 30, 2010)

Two options that I have found....

Option 1. Shake bees back into one hive and store frames for next year.. i.e. combine.

Option 2. Built a frame to hold the half frames. Then you can build out/utlize the small frames in normal hives.

Something like this...

http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/kirchhadapfr.html


----------

