# Queen Rearing with Michael Palmer method



## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

If you have never don't it before, start small, make mistakes, learn and adjust. 
The chances of you being successful (good take) on the 1st go is small so I wouldn't expect to get 30 queen raised in just one batch 
I would start here 
http://doorgarden.com/2011/11/07/simple-honey-bee-queen-rearing-for-beginners/
Its also on the forum here https://www.beesource.com/forums/sh...ing-using-the-Joseph-Clemens-Starter-Finisher but I find the photos on the web format handy 
Kamon Reynolds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH2GDoW8OYw&list=PLbahx4WxwRgrDTg7ksIiHmkIbLz9FAIQl and JustBeecuz https://www.youtube.com/user/tarlkb/videos both have good videos on nuc sized cell builders

What I liked abut the set up was it is simple and you can run it all year while you make mistakes/learn 

another to look at is https://www.beeculture.com/net-gain-cell-building-system/


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

You do not need to go to a full Michael Palmer "Bee Bomb" cell raiser for 30 queens. A 5- or 6- frame nucleus box will do it comfortably in 2 runs of 15 queens, and you'll not use up so much of your bee resources. 

Michael's modification of Brother Adam's method requires about 15 to 20 strong colonies from which to pick frames from to support the activity of ONE cell raiser hive. It will make lots of queens, and healthy ones, but that's a lot more capacity than you need. If you make any big mistakes, you'll lose the year's honey production from the colonies that you borrowed frames of brood and honey and pollen from.

****************

Instead, try making up 30 nucleus boxes, OR cut slots inside 15 of your standard boxes to divide them into 2 x 5-framers, and drill cork hole exits in both sides. Make bottoms that seal the hive partitions, and half-inner covers. They'll still serve as full 10 frame hives, just move the other colony into it's own box (and move them 10 miles away for a month so they won't go back to the wrong "home"and of course, remove the hive partitions.

Then make up your cell raiser nucleus. I prefer a 6-framer that is 12 inches tall with #8 hardware cloth ventilation along the bottom 3 inches - it should be extremely crowded in there, and it will need the ventilation. 

Also make a feed tray inner cover with 1/2 inch hardware cloth to go above it. That is where you place the Megabee patty. 

Make 2 jar feeder holes in the roof. Also make up you cell bar frame (if you are grafting or using other method involving cell cups).

Stuff the box full of bees from one of your strongest colonies. Leave the queen! You'll be packing 5 frames of capped brood and one of open brood into it 10 days before grafting day. *5 days later, remove the queen cells - ALL OF THEM!!!*. (<= Very important. Read it again out loud. I actually check for queen cells 3 times in those 10 days.) Isolate your breeder queen(s) on a single new empty drawn comb in a Pritchard box at 7 am 3 days before grafting day. You'll remove the 2 most hatched-out frames at 7 am one day before grafting day and putting in a frame of pollen and the cell bar frame for "polishing". Graft at 3 pm on grafting day, but take a dry run for practice in the morning. This puts your oldest larvae at 80 hours, so you;ll have to hunt through them the first hour or two, but the oldest ones are usually near the middle of the comb.

This is largely David LaFerney's method, and it will get you up to enough colonies (25 to 50 or more) that you can go to Michael Palmer's / Brother Adam's method when you get enough bees to do it his way. The idea is to raise from 5 to 20 queens all season long, getting plenty of practice, allowing a few oopsies and fails along the way, and improving your technique greatly as you go. This is how a hobby beekeeper transitions from small time to medium size operation. Once you are medium size (perhaps 50 to 200 colonies) you;ll have to go to MOP's methods to get real big.

BEST OF LUCK!!!


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## dudelt (Mar 18, 2013)

I started raising my own queens a couple of years ago and the advice given above by MSL and Kilocharlie is right on the money. I used the David LaFerney's method and continue to do so. Remember, not every queen gets mated properly or makes it back from the mating flights so you will want more than 30 mating nucs to get 30 good queens out of the process. I also strongly recommend going with smaller batches to start with and you will improve each time and keep getting better results.


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## Fivej (Apr 4, 2016)

Good advice from everyone. Josh, I think that Kamon Reynolds' (Tennesee Bees on youtube) method is perfect for you. I am kicking the same idea around in my head and his method/adaptation looks easy and sound especially for just a small amount of queens. In addition to all of the above, check out UoG youtube for similar methods. J


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## minz (Jan 15, 2011)

I do not think you are missing anything. The only place his method uses bees is getting the mating nucs stocked. His videos all have them ready to go so he is not showing how many frames you need for that. I would say go ahead a graft a couple of bars. If you are new to grafting and get about 10 to take it will take about 10 frames of mixed brood for your queen castle, after that you will have a source for bees for the next two rounds. I do not know your set up though, maybe you already have all the mating resources to do that in one shot.


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## joshk (Mar 31, 2010)

THanks for the advice everyone. I keep researching and come up with a better plan.


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## Andhors (Dec 7, 2018)

New guy here. I see much talk about queen size, but also much talk about requeening every two years. Does size get more brood or laying years? Surely shouldn’t affect genetics (unless she has limited flight distance due to her small size and mates with brother drones). What is the benefit of a large queen, and is there a real difference between queens or are we assuming they get bigger with more attention when they are larval? Comments?


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

This should be a good start for you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yxrawVF0Oc


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## Andhors (Dec 7, 2018)

MSL, Thank you. Great presentation. I wish he had mentioned the percent improvement with size. He said 4.6 mm thorax diameter suggested a good queen. I wonder what the difference between a 4.6 mm queen thorax and a 4.2 queen is. So much to learn! So glad scientists are Doing the research!


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> I wonder what the difference between a 4.6 mm queen thorax and a 4.2 queen is


Tarpy EtAl 2011 had 4.48 vs 4.24 
note the sperm volume and quality 








[/QUOTE]

https://www.researchgate.net/profil...al-and-mating-success-in-honey-bee-queens.pdf


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

joshk said:


> Hi All,
> I am looking at starting to raise my own queens this summer. After looking at many methods it seems the Michael Palmer starter is pretty reliable and will give me some large queens. I am only looking to raise around 30ish queens, is there any reason why I can use the starter hive the way Michael Palmer sets it up as a finisher too. Just want to make sure that I am not missing anything. I will not be raising more than one batch so I shouldn't need to keep the finisher stock after the one batch was done. Thanks for any help.
> Josh


When the subject of raising queens comes up most folks have watched videos and put a lot of thought into how to create and manage a cell builder. But, the thing to keep in mind, a cell builder makes cells, not queens. When the cells come out of the builder, job is only half done, now they need a home for the virgin to emerge, then go off on mating flights. You dont have a viable queen until this phase is completed too. And here is the rub most folks tend to overlook, mating queens takes more resources than raising cells. Yes I know, you can pour a pile of resources into a couple boxes and get 48 really nice cells if all goes well. That pile of resources is equivalent to about 3 boxes of bees. The most efficient way I have for mating queens is to use 4 way boxes, and to manage 48 of those, I need a dozen 4 way boxes. Each of those boxes has 4 small colonies, and when you tally it all up, it's actually more resources than your cell builder.

The first time I started to raise some queens intentionally via grafting I put a lot of effort into creating a fantastic cell builder etc, but really had not thought the process clearly from start to finish. When the cells were ready I had about a dozen nice looking cells, and exactly 5 nucleus colonies for mating them in. Lesson learned.

Most folks when they first start thinking about raising queens get so focussed on cell building they completely miss the concept of 'mating nucs need more resources than cell builders'.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

well put. 
This is why the big boys use mini nucs... and they are something I think hobbyists overlook/discount to their own loss.
a 2 frame deep mating nuc (such as ones in a 4 way queen castle) uses the same resources as 10 foam minis


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## Andhors (Dec 7, 2018)

MSL, thanks for the chart. Good info.

How do you get the mating nuc started? Just put some nurse bees in to draw out comb or put the little frames in an established hive or just put the virgin and some bees in a box with combless frames? In the old German documentary their mating nucs were just a tiny box with a few bees and very limited comb or bees.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> In the old German documentary their mating nucs were just a tiny box with a few bees and very limited comb or bees.


yep... an empty box with a few empty frames or top bars... add a cup of 2-1, cup of bees, and a virgin or cell. keep them dark and cool for 3 days and set them out in the same yard at dusk and open them up. 

The bees are siting there for 2 weeks waiting for the queen to start laying, plenty of time to draw out the mini combs, drawn comb gets in the way filling the hives anyway
here is a good video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL3...J5T1ZsqRQ50kClwIukmF4u4NL8hXboeCoNvNfVu4ZYGAI..

no need or want of temp queen if you can store them dark and cool. 
If you just making up a few, pull the bees the same way you would for a mite wash, just with a 1 cup measure instead of a 1/2


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

> This is why the big boys use mini nucs... and they are something I think hobbyists overlook/discount to their own loss.


I don't think so:
Much too labor intensive for those smaller than the big boys not to mention costs of specialized minis.

Easier and cheaper ways to make a couple of hundered and no need for a 4 man crew.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Well... who spends more hours per hive? the backyard beekeeper. But I don't get the "labor" argument... place a cell and come back in 2 weeks.. in terms of work load, its the same number of visits, but much faster to find the queen on 3 tiny combs. 

I don't get the cost argument either... $10-12 a mini to buy, 1/4 of that or less to build($1.50 each in 1" house foam) vs 2 frame nucs that stand empty all winter as well ?

Some spitball numbers-3 pound package of bees last year hit $150 -$30 queen= 120…/3 = $40 a pound / 3500 bees gives you 1.14 cents per bee
at spit ball average life span left of 5 weeks (some bees older, some younger, its likely less weeks) that’s 0.228 cents per week per bee for its labor
So a mini is 600X2X0.00228 = $2.73 in bee labor(opertuinty cost) costs to mate a queen
Compare this to the common full deep frame system of a frame of brood and a frame of food to make up a mating nuc. A single frame of 60% brood fully covered with bees is a spit ball 6000 bees once hatched out = $27.30 in bee labor to mate a queen.

The long and short is with a mini your risking about 1 days’ worth of spring build up for the honey flow to mate a queen VS a 2 frame nuc your risking 10 days of build up. 

“But one thing seems quite clear, measures by which the professional bee-keeper ensures the best possible returns must, ipso facto, prove equally reliable where only a few colonies are kept” -Brother Adam, Beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey

Thousands and thousands of queen cells go to waist every year do to hobiests not having a place or resources to put them in


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

> The long and short is with a mini your risking about 1 days’ worth of spring build up for the honey flow to mate a queen VS a 2 frame nuc your risking 10 days of build up.


If you are concerned with risking resources at spring buildup either the queen rearing attempt is timed incorrectly or the donor colonies are too weak.

There are methods that utilize the bees (and frames of brood) from the mating nuc after they have successfully been previously used to mate the queen. Some may go on to become part of a colony that makes a honey crop. some the components of a nuc to be overwintered. 
What are those mini frames you reference used for? UofG, in the video, cuts out the comb, probably full of brood when their usefulness as mating resources is over, and of the house bees and foragers?

Seems like reusing resources like boxes, frames, brood and bees actually saves money and does not cost.



> I don't get the cost argument either... $10-12 a mini to buy, 1/4 of that or less to build($1.50 each in 1" house foam) vs 2 frame nucs that stand empty all winter as well ?


as grozzie has said, and I concur with "The most efficient way I have for mating queens is to use 4 way boxes".
2 frame stand alone nucs may sit all winter like your $10 mini but 4way boxes and frames don't have to. 4ways are also simple to
work with one set of hands. Close to zero additional cost when one plans ahead and makes alterations before assembling boxes.



> “But one thing seems quite clear, measures by which the professional bee-keeper ensures the best possible returns must, ipso facto, prove equally reliable where only a few colonies are kept” -Brother Adam, Beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey


Seems like Doolittles early methods are a home run with only a few colonies.
Or if you want to get fancy how about Harry Cloakes ingenious invention and the 4way providing the best possible return.



> Thousands and thousands of queen cells go to waist every year do to hobiests not having a place or resources to put them in


Probably not such a bad thing as the quality of the qcell really does matter in long run.

Enough from me except to say that the method used needs to be a finely tuned series of manipulations suited to the operator and operation, none stand alone. I'd like to read how raising queens from start to finish, and how mating in mins enables you to meet your mated queen needs you going forward and the cost of the endeavor. .


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## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)

How about the Case Method/Hopkins Method, on this site, written by Jerry Hayes but developed by I. Hopkins oc New Zealand in 1911. That’s what I’m going to try this year. If I’m trying it you can be sure it’s easier.


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## Apis Natural (Aug 31, 2017)

check out this article from bee culture, By: Joe Latshaw on his queen production, similar to palmer's method and not needing to go big until you learn how.

lots of good info in this thread to study.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Cloverdale said:


> How about the Case Method/Hopkins Method, on this site, written by Jerry Hayes but developed by I. Hopkins oc New Zealand in 1911. That’s what I’m going to try this year. If I’m trying it you can be sure it’s easier.


It works just like described. My son used it one year before he started grafting. It is a bit fiddly in that you have to provide a space above the frames to hold the frame horizontal and support the comb with space below for the queen cells to hang. I have used the Miller method and think it is easier to manage. All the methods needs the same foreplay to get the accepting hive bees fed and in the mood.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

*Re: Quaring with Michael Palmer method*



> What are those mini frames you reference used for? UofG, in the video, cuts out the comb, probably full of brood when their usefulness as mating resources is over, and of the house bees and foragers?


Well all that was used was a cup of bees, 2 mite washes, many of us dump that all the time. If you just doing one run all that is wasted is some eggs, shake it out let them find a home... 
The most common way to deal with the brood is a hatch out box placed above an QE (picture from Ian)








or many of the systems (especially if your building there own) alow you to stack them up and over winter 








and there are even people who shed/cellar winter the single foam minis, in norway no less
the problem is the not the gear, its that people don'e know how to use it.



> Probably not such a bad thing as the quality of the qcell really does matter in long run.


I am referring to high quality swarm cells. 


> If you are concerned with risking resources at spring buildup either the queen rearing attempt is timed incorrectly or the donor colonies are too weak.


or your a back yard beekeeper who just had a hive swarm on plastic foundation.. Sure maby you have done your reading and a have a 5 frame nuc to put a few frames with a cell in.. but what happens to all those other cells? 
you can buy/build more nucs and split up your whole hive 10 ways IF you have 10 frames of brood 
or for the same resources in 1 of those 10 2f splits you could stock 10 minis. put push in cages around the cells and end with a good suply of local queens to sell and trade 




> Close to zero additional cost when one plans ahead and makes alterations before assembling boxes.


false economy.. 
the equipment isn't making you honey or bees and your locking up drawn comb that could be better used elce ware. 

while I don't dissagree that outhers ways may be better for you with your stock and your methods... in terms of efficiency, that's all numbers and minis win hand down. they have been with us for hundreds of years (Jansha 1771) and remain the most popular nuc. for good reason. Its a retilitivly easy thing to produce more queen cells then you can use, if you can use more cells with the same amount of resources, you can make more queens. more local queens is a good thing 

Your arugments against them sound like you haven't worked with them... they do have down sides for sure, just not what your bringing up, you should try some..

in my stock pile... I have a 3 frame queen castle (3), a 2 frame queen castle (3), 6 2f stand alones (6), 12 of "mine" witch are 8 one half frame shallows that have a division board center so it can split in to two 3 frames with feeder they can be stacked on each outher or 2 on top of a 8f hive (24), and 10 foam minis (10) for a total of 46 holes for queens At peak last year I think I had 40 running. 

Aside from the resorce reasons. they are well dezinged and well insulated, and well ventilated with an internal feeder. 
you get an earlier jump on queen rearing the insulation square(ish) brood chamber and 3+ combs leads to a warm center.. you only need about a dozen bees to care for a queen till the eggs start hatching, the rest are for thermo regulation.... 2 frame standalons have very poor thermal properites 
can easly move them in and out of dark cool place, spray the frount vents with a bit of water while they are locked up and 3 days later set them back in the same yard... very handy if all you have is your back yard
The tiny combs are fast to find queens on, making it a great way for beginners to learn how to find queens.
Being so small the are quite docile, alowing one to quickly work them with out smoke or gear 
Do to the size and no brood they are readly excepting of virgins. A handy thing if you have cells on plastic foundation you want to save, cage them and move the virgins to minis at your leasure. 

This spring 1st out will be "mine" as I have 3 stacks overwintering and expect at least one to make it and be brood factory to stock the nucs, folowed by the foam minis... likey a bunch of foam minns I am making, the queen castles if need and last and only if I have to the 2 frame stand alones. 

I got the crap kicked out of me last year main yard took 85% losses... likly nosema after late season tetra to put down a efb out break wipe the gut microbse and then got mite bombed.... 
I came threw the winter with 7, one went drone layer early spring, what I had alive didn't build up (cold spring with screwy pollen flow and they started weak as it was). I didn't get queens mated out and layeing till the 1st week in july... 
But I sold queens and got my numbers up (stitting on 20, 25% losses so far) this was mainly do to the 2 mini nuc systems.


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

*Re: Quaring with Michael Palmer method*

Good luck finding the best practices for your purposes and long term goals, when you get close to being efficient you'll know it and so will the wallet.
Piles of junk stacked up gets disposed of or sold off (like the minis I used for 3 seasons) and the effort is concentrated on doing more and getting more done and making more money with less. Let the bees do the work. Meet the goals you've set for your operation without killing yourself doing it.
Dive in and get some propolis under your nails, I'm interested where the road leads you.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

*Re: Quaring with Michael Palmer method*



> Dive in and get some propolis under your nails, I'm interested where the road leads you.


I started rearing queens with cut strips in 09... this is were the road lead :kn:

however you and I are not "backyard" beekepers.. The OG point was the Minis are a tool that could be leveraged by BYBK to "save" cells that would outher wize go to waist.. every one saved is one less imported so what "we" do is inmatirel to the point

I like the minis form bolth a functional point of view but also an educational one... they are easy and un intimating to handle, and use so little bees even a new keeper starting with a package has the resources to stock a few by mid season. 
One of the bigest fears I find working with beginners is a fear of makeing a mistake and "wasting" resources, some times to the point of even being afraid to do a mite wash and "hurting" the hives population level.
to that end I have cut the parts for 50 mini nuc kits and donated them to the local club for a build it yourself work shop


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

msl said:


> I don't get the cost argument either... $10-12 a mini to buy, 1/4 of that or less to build($1.50 each in 1" house foam) vs 2 frame nucs that stand empty all winter as well ?


I've never seen the little styro things for 12 bucks, cheapest I found in a quick search today is just over 20 bucks. Even then, it's still just a drop in the bucket. The little styro mini is probably a good choice if you only want to use it once in a season. A cup of bees, a shot of syrup, leave them in a cool dark place over night, drop in a cell the next morning then look again in 18 or so days, doesn't get any easier than that. when you have your queen, shake em out around other hives, cut the comb out of the plastic frame and throw it in the melter, then on the shelf till next year.

OTOH if you plan to do multiple rounds in them, they can and do get very tedious. When dearth arrives you would be amazed how fast they starve out if you aren't tending them right away with feed. Then when you do put feed in them, we like to call the mini nucs, but if you have full size hives in the area, they call them 'feeders', and they get robbed out. I think there is a delicate balance between 'small enough to find a queen quickly' and 'large enough to become a viable colony that can defend itself', again, not an issue if you only plan on doing one a year and doing during the flow.

In our case, we run the mating nucs year round, so I have no stocking considerations. Some of ours are just plain old 5 frame nucs, they get populated when we are doing swarm control splits. Aside from those I have a bunch of 4 way mating nucs made up of deep box split into 4 quadrants, each quad holds 5 half size frames that another local fella made for me. In the 4 ways we will harvest the wintered queens in April, then they get a fresh cell every 3 weeks until August. There is enough comb space in one of those that we can leave them for 3 weeks typically. The last queen to emerge in each of them is left over the winter. The size of the unit is about right to manage quite easily over the summer as they new queens lay them up then get harvested, they spend enough time without a laying queen that they dont get so full of bees they want to swarm and there is usually a nice compact brood nest waiting for the new queen after she has mated. When it gets colder, the cubical shape of the volume allows the bees to cluster far better than a 2 frame compartment would.

When we were at Apimondia I saw a styro mating nuc configuration I really liked, so I ordered a few to try the out in the upcoming season. Lyson makes them, 6 frame box that has a frame roughly similar to a half size deep. It comes complete with a bottom that has two entrances, a follower board that allows you to run it as a single 6 frame or split into two 3 frame sections, then a top feeder set up to manage feeding it in both configurations as well. I got 5 of them complete, shipped to my place for 50 bucks apiece (canadian dollars). With 5 of those thru the summer I should be able to run 10 queens per round, then when fall approaches remove the follower and winter one colony in each. The real appeal for me with this setup, they arrive complete and I dont have to start building anything. I should be able to use them for 4 rounds of two, then merge the sides and winter the 5th. They stack, so re-populating a deadout means putting it on top of a live one and let that queen lay some brood into it. A year from now I'll know how well they worked. I'll have to populate them the first time by shaking bees.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Now up to $13 (shipped, USD) ,they climb in price as spring approaches, low price point seems to be Oct-Dec 
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Harvest-Ho...285095?hash=item1efb7ce4a7:g:-TUAAOSwodhc70Y8


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## BernhardHeuvel (Mar 13, 2013)

grozzie2 said:


> The little styro mini is probably a good choice if you only want to use it once in a season. A cup of bees, a shot of syrup, leave them in a cool dark place over night, drop in a cell the next morning then look again in 18 or so days, doesn't get any easier than that.


I run 500 of the Apidea mini foam nucs all year long. I don't winter them though. But I do use them to continually mate queens in them.

I never start them queenless, means not with a cell, I start them with old laying queens that I extracted from production hives. This way the Apidea build up a small and sturdy broodnest with the right mixture of brood, old and young bees, enough nectar and pollen. Once those mini colonies are established the old queen is removed to start a new Apidea. The established Apidea receives a virgin queen. I let the queens emerge in the incubator. Because I visibly inspect them and also I weigh each queen at birth. Everything less than 220 mg (0.008 oz?) is discarded. 

The established mini foam nuc produces significant better mated queens than just a min swarm with a cell.

























I choose the mini foam nucs, because I sell a lot of queens and I find queens in Apideas dramatically faster than in any other mating nuc. Also the mini foam nucs can be moved around much easier, which is important for me, because I do move them to mating stations all over the country. Also the minis are easy to tend and I don't bother wintering them. Because wintering nucs is extra work nobody wants and needs.


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## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)

Quite the operation you have; does that ladle hold 1 cup nurses? then put your older queens in? about how long one brood cycle?


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## BernhardHeuvel (Mar 13, 2013)

This ladle is huge and yes, it is a bit more than a cup o bees. I introduce the old queen about three hours later. I wait until all combs are drawn and filled with capped brood. I do like to wait until the first batches of young bees hatch, so the queen has some young attendants.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

How do you introduce the virgins to the exstlbushed nuc? I started using them last year do to having cell viability issues (BQCV and some outher stuff) but the bees weren't reliably eating the candy plug in the JZBZ cage, meant a added trip witch was a bummer..

What is you catch cycle?


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## Knisely (Oct 26, 2013)

*Re: Quaring with Michael Palmer method*



msl said:


> The most common way to deal with the brood is a hatch out box placed above an QE (picture from Ian)


The use of a hatch out box was a conceptual breakthrough for me. It looks like a good way to get brood combs for mininucs drawn by a strong colony, too. The combs shown in the picture (thank you, Ian) are obviously recycled through a season or more. 

Lots of good links in this thread, and all of the practical advice given by people who've worked through the issues with whichever approach they've taken to raising their own queens is gratefully noted.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

BernhardHeuvel said:


> Because wintering nucs is extra work nobody wants and needs.


Guess it's a matter of perspective. From our perspective, shaking bees in the spring to re-populate mini's is just extra work nobody wants or needs. by wintering colonies in the mini's we can have first round of queens for sale a month earlier than folks starting from scratch to graft the first round. That is a big deal for folks wanting to split before heading into blueberry pollination.

I started down this road after attending one of the British Columbia Honey Producers education day events a few years ago. Liz Huxter from Kettle Valley Queens was telling us about how they got into wintering queens in the 4 ways. They were using medium boxes with half size frames in each quadrant, essentially the same methodology as Michael Palmer for mating nucs. One year for an experiment they did an extra round of queens then put the 4 ways into a lean to for the winter. 250 4 way boxes so putting a thousand queens into storage for the winter. In the spring when they went thru the boxes, they got over 700 live queens in April. She looked around the room and asked 'Do you know how much 700 queens are worth in April?'. It became a mainstay for their business going forward. According to Liz, some number of years later in the fall it got real busy and they never got the boxes into the shed before winter hit on them, so the boxes sat out in the snow that year. Survival outside in the snow was no different than stacked up in the shed, so, they stopped moving them in because it was just more work that is apparently not required.

But we are getting sidetracked here with discussions about doing many rounds of many queens. OP was about doing 30 in a season and asking about using the MP bee bomb cell builder method. I brought up the issue of mating nucs because I think many folks just starting, and I was guilty of this myself, read and ponder endlessly about how to make great cells, totally missing the detail that mating nucs require as much thought and pondering as the cell builder. And much like there are many ways to do cell building, there are just as many ways to accomplish the mating side of raising queens.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

*Re: Quaring with Michael Palmer method*



Knisely said:


> The use of a hatch out box was a conceptual breakthrough for me. It looks like a good way to get brood combs for mininucs drawn by a strong colony, too. The combs shown in the picture (thank you, Ian) are obviously recycled through a season or more.


If you are paying attention to what Ian is doing these days you will also realize he's not using minis anymore. His queen rearing today is focussed around placing cells into 6 frame nucs.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

*Re: Quaring with Michael Palmer method*



> Liz Huxter from Kettle Valley Queens was telling us about how they got into wintering queens in the 4 ways. They were using medium boxes with half size frames in each


my 2 ways were defently inspired by the Huxtlers "duplex" system and Plamers 
I believe the Huxters use shallows not mediums... over wintering on 4-5 1/2 shallow frames... amazing indeed. I din't have the guts to push it that far and pulled the dividers and dubble stacked mine for a total of 16 1/2 extra shalow (5.25" box) combs 
l they stopped overwintering the nucs as the trend shift to fall re queening gave them a market for those queens. For those who want to see more about what we are talking about she has a good presentation https://vimeo.com/161651142 

weather you like the foamys or not, many people who do any sort of volume of queen rearing use one form or another of mini... be it 1/2 or 1/3 frames, deep or shalow. single, 2 way, 4way, or the occasional 6 way 

and as a demo of just what is possibly, they can get real, REAL tiny 


> I have made them in sizes as small as the one shown in the cut, which used a single individual comb honey section about one inch square (2.5cm),


- Jay Smith, Better queens 1949


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## BernhardHeuvel (Mar 13, 2013)

*Re: Quaring with Michael Palmer method*



msl said:


> How do you introduce the virgins to the exstlbushed nuc?



I dequeen the Apideas and after 3 hours I introduce the virgin queen from the top. Or the next day. I simply drop them in and have 100 % success. I know, that some find that troublesome. If you dip the queen in honey-water mixture, before introducing them, you are more successful in the beginning. 

In fact, I introduce all my queens that way. I dequeen, wait a couple of hours, introduce the new queen. Bees are aware of the queenless situation after some hours, and are in panic at that stage. In this phase you can throw anything queen at them, they'll accept. Virgin, mated, young or old. Doesn't really matter.

Once they overcome the panic phase, they start making their own queen. Drawing emergency queen cells. From then on you are in a constant battle against the bees, if you try to introduce your queen. They want their own queen. You want them to accept your queen. They do not want it. It is instinct, I guess. 

So the trick is, let them panic and come to the rescue in the right moment. Don't wait until they help themself. 

I catch queens every four or eight days, depends. Another thing that I learned from Michael Palmer (who learned it from Kirk, I reckon)...




grozzie2 said:


> Guess it's a matter of perspective. From our perspective, shaking bees in the spring to re-populate mini's is just extra work nobody wants or needs. by wintering colonies in the mini's we can have first round of queens for sale a month earlier than folks starting from scratch to graft the first round.


My solution is by far not the solution for everyone in every place. It is just what I do. Didn't meant to down talk minis or overwintering. Instead I wanted to say, it is costly to winter mini mating hives. It costs time, work and a lot of sugar. And treatment against varroa. That is it, what I wanted to point out. I have very early queens, too. All a matter of applied bee knowledge, I guess. 



grozzie2 said:


> I brought up the issue of mating nucs because I think many folks just starting, and I was guilty of this myself, read and ponder endlessly about how to make great cells, totally missing the detail that mating nucs require as much thought and pondering as the cell builder. And much like there are many ways to do cell building, there are just as many ways to accomplish the mating side of raising queens.


Well said.


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## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)

*Re: Quaring with Michael Palmer method*

Reading this opened my eyes, I believe it was posted in another thread. Super royal queen lines in Emergency queens, more than supersedure or swarm queens.

https://theapiarist.org/whos-the-daddy/


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

*Re: Quaring with Michael Palmer method*



> I simply drop them in and have 100 % success. I know, that some find that troublesome


I was thinking that's what you did, but wanted to be sure, as you note literature suggests that would be troublesome..



> I catch queens every four or eight days, depends.


I meant how many days is the queen left in the nuc.. and out of curiosity what age do you place the virgins?
thanks in advance




> Reading this opened my eyes


yep... if you do walk away spits 40% of you queens end up being from a drone line that has no impact on hive traits your selecting for... add in the fact if you break the walk away in to nucs to use the cells the bees don't chew down the poor ones, and you end up with a lot of poor performing queens... 
This fact we have known for a long time, but the "internet says"... lol

"He next tried dequeening a colony during a flow of nectar and pollen and permited them to build cells. Some of the queens that were produced looked to be fully developed queens and they performed well. However, in the spring one-third of his queens died so suddenly that no effort was made to supersede them. Seemingly, these queens had failed to attain full development" Laidlaw(1979) Referring to Doolittle, Contemporary Queen Rearing P169.. 
Only "some" of the queens looked good and performed well, but 1/3 of them still failed. Sam Comfort notes that in his experience only 20-30% of the queen made this way are any good 

There are a LOT of very good reason to learn to graft, or use a method that alows the beekeeper to select the larva used (cut strips, cell punch, etc).


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## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)

*Re: Quaring with Michael Palmer method*



Cloverdale said:


> Reading this opened my eyes, I believe it was posted in another thread. Super royal queen lines in Emergency queens, more than supersedure or swarm queens.
> 
> https://theapiarist.org/whos-the-daddy/


https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0199124 (Tarpy)


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## BernhardHeuvel (Mar 13, 2013)

*Re: Quaring with Michael Palmer method*



msl said:


> I meant how many days is the queen left in the nuc.. and out of curiosity what age do you place the virgins?


The young queen stays about two or three weeks in the Apidea. Shortly after being mated she is removed, before that she lays eggs and the broodnest in the Apidea continues to live on. 

The last queens of the year stay in the Apidea for about two months. Until they are used for late splits. This is in October. 

Queens are usually from 0-2 days old when I introduce them. Age is not much of a factor for success. Although older queens tend to run too fast. Bees dislike running queens.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

*Re: Quaring with Michael Palmer method*



BernhardHeuvel said:


> The young queen stays about two or three weeks in the Apidea. Shortly after being mated she is removed, before that she lays eggs and the broodnest in the Apidea continues to live on.


just to clarity

before being removed she lays...


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## Amibusiness (Oct 3, 2016)

Certainly mating in full sized equipment takes a lot of resources. And finding queens is very labor intensive if she can hide anywhere. So large producers of queens will use minis. Not being a full time beekeeper I often have things get in the way and those minis need tending at the right time or they swarm, or starve. Another down side (and I don't have the latest data on this) is that it appears queens that lay longer before being caged are more productive. So the sized box that allows the queen to lay the optimum amount (whatever that is) is best. I think if you are only raising 100 queens or so per year using your standard sized frame is best. Most of our queens are raised to go in our summer splits for overwintering nucs. The few we sell can be easily found on the big frames. If I were doing 500 I would need more efficient queen catching.....
And msl, going from about 5 -20 colonies is easily done with standard equipment, esp if you time it right with your flows. And with the comb you had from dead outs you could almost double that or get a decent honey crop. Using 10 resource colonies can easily be split to 40 without additional drawn comb on hand all up to wintering strength by fall here in upstate NY (projected low of -8 on Feb 8th). Any comb given results in harvestable honey or another round of splitting.
Happy beekeeping!


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> And msl, going from about 5 -20 colonies is easily done with standard equipment, esp if you time it right with your flows.


sure, 2017 I did a 7x expsastion, on a good year, in full sized gear, with very little drawn comb.... (it was a split to far and I had to condensate some nucs come late fall)
But that was a good year, last year was NOT a good year. 



> Another down side (and I don't have the latest data on this) is that it appears queens that lay longer before being caged are more productive.


often repeated, almost never backed (and if your not caging and banking/shiping it won't mater.. as in my example of a BYBK saving swarms cells... Again my point is they are over looking a good tool, not that minis are right or wrong for a given sideliner) 
There is one lonely Australian study that suggests better sruival, but the reality seems the longer catch cycle alsos mean you can be more selective , pinching poor brood patterns/drone layers and leaving better queens.. not necessarily creating them. Tested vs untested queens 
Its worth a read, but it dosent show a significant ovariole difrance as some claim 







In fact it shows some odd things.... clipping the wings at 14 days gives larger sperm loads. being in the center position on the cell bar led to less ovaries and had a bigger impact than time spent in the mateing nuc, Banked queen performing better then fresh caught, etc that makes a lot of the data suspect, as does the very poor mating of the queens in general with a very low sperm count https://www.agrifutures.com.au/wp-content/uploads/publications/03-049.pdf

Laidlaw (1979) says "Young queens mated from nuclei are ready to use as soon as they begin to lay. They are now as good as they will ever be" Contemporary Queen Rearing, page 109


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## Andhors (Dec 7, 2018)

What is the reason for queen wing clipping?


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

Andhors said:


> What is the reason for queen wing clipping?


If the mark wears off, then you know it's the original queen walking around with a clipped wing the following year.


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## [email protected] (Aug 1, 2004)

What is the reason for queen wing clipping?

I believe it was originally conceived as a means of controlling swarming. If the queen's wing is clipped she can't follow the bees into the trees, and will instead be in the grass in front of the hive. However, if that happens the bees will (mostly) go back to the hive and just wait until they swarm with a virgin. Therefore, queen wing clipping has deservedly fell out of favor.


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## BernhardHeuvel (Mar 13, 2013)

[email protected] said:


> Therefore, queen wing clipping has deservedly fell out of favor.


Not really. 

It is the standard method for professional beekeepers and with the use of entrance boards/landing boards down to the ground, the queens will crawl back up into the hive. Clip only one wing, so the queen flies in circles in front of the hive. If you clip both wings, the queens hop and hop further away from the hive. 

Clipping wings buys you valuable time so you don't need to check the hive every five/seven days. Instead you only need to check every two weeks. 

Checking hives for swarms cells cost you a lot of honey. By checking for swarm cells you hinder the hive to work properly for that particular day. The honey income of one day is lost. Say 3 kg of honey per day per hive. I check 100 hives a day for swarm cells, making a loss of 300 kg per day. If I save three days of checking hives, by clipping wings, I harvest a ton of honey more per 100 hives, only by *not* disturbing the bees. Less work, more honey. 

Brother Adam clipped every single queen before he introduced her into a hive. You can read this in his book.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

I try to mark every queen in my operation for obvious reasons, but not every queen is clipped. However, I do clip every breeder queen. Yes, clip just one wing. Once, I fell way behind on inspections and found my breeder in a small cluster a few feet away from her colony. I was able to pick her up and start a new colony. After that experience I'm a true believer in clipping breeders. Should every queen be clipped? Not sure, but probably (if done well) it wouldn't hurt. This will obviously not prevent swarming, but "may" enable recovering the swarmed queen. Of course, you still need to find her on the ground before other bad things happen.


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## Muenster (Feb 19, 2018)

joshk

I used Palmer's methods last year, but in minature. I use mostly intermediate size frames (1" deeper than a medium) in my hives. I made a double deep, five frame nuc with these hives. I'd shake in bees and add frames of capped brood from other hives in the yard just as Mr Palmer describes. I'd put in about 20 grafts per "cycle". As it was my first year grafting I'd get about half of those to take. This worked very well for me, the hive made some honey during the process too!

As others have said the making of the cells is easy, getting to a mated queen, not so much. I used a combination of traditional nucs and the double styrofoam mini nucs from Mann Lake. I like these because the frames are a bit larger (they're like a 1/2 medium). After the queen rearing season I intended to round up the little frames and overwinter in some boxes I made for them that hold five and stack them three high. In practice I lost interest in get this done 'cause it was so **** hot in September this year! I have, however, overwintered two three frame clusters. I've had to feed them honey a few times but they're still hanging in there. Of course our winters are fairly mild, but we have gotten into the low twenties a couple of times. Going forward I plan to use the mini's for queens that I intend to sell.
I've made some three frame nucs to use to mate queens for my own use. That way I can do a newspaper combine to requeen full sized hives. 

Good luck!


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## aran (May 20, 2015)

i use MP queen rearing technique and the queens that are produced are huge!

Its really not very difficult to do and im at best average at grafting. The 10/10 method provides so many nurse bees that they tend to compensate for my grafting skills.
I have had really good success doing this the last couple years and will be again using this method to graft 40-50 queens this year.


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