# OTS queen rearing...



## BobRagsdale

I tried it this summer and split two hives four ways each. Worked like a charm. It works well for my objectives.


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## Tenbears

The only real difference between On The Spot (OTS) queen rearing and a conventional split is the notching of the comb. The correct age is when they contain eggs. The reason it is referred to as OTS is because one usually utilizes it On The Spot rather than taking frames to the grafting shed. The problem is this technique makes moving cells to grower colony and caging cells a bit more difficult. Moving the entire frame to a colony is the most practical way when they near emergence. Although it seems an easy way to rear queen (and it IS) however it is not a practical method to rear any great numbers.


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## ruthiesbees

Beestudent, I use the emergency queen rearing method all the time in my topbar hives. I don't have to notch the comb, since I make sure there are some freshly drawn soft combs in the brood nest. They will easily re-work these without the hassle of the beekeeper notching them.

So during a strong flow, you add 2 frames between drawn comb in the brood nest so the bees draw it out. Wait about 5 days so the queen has a chance to lay them up with eggs and then pull her over to a nuc with the appropriate amount of resources. Once the queen cells are capped and just about ready to hatch, you can gently carve them out with a serrated knife and stick them in queenless nucs. I usually let the main colony requeen from one as well because there is a high chance you will miss one anyway. So when I pull the original queen, I make up a full size nuc. This also gives the main colony a brood break so most of the mites not in capped brood and will let you deal with them how you please.


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## kilocharlie

I'm in full agreement with Tenbears. I'll add that Mel Disselkoen's OTS method uses up a full frame of brood per breeder queen, where as grafting uses up 48 larvae only. Works OK for small operations, and combines well for David LaFerney's / Joseph Clemens' queen rearing plan.

BTW, Mel fails to mention that it is the .257 caliber (I believe that is approximately 6.5 mm) *slug* he uses to block the flour, not the shell. Yeah, I felt pretty stupid when I found out that!


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## beepro

Tenbears said:


> ....The correct age is when they contain eggs......


2 correction:

Nope, the correct larvae age is when they are 2 days old or 48 hours after hatching from the eggs. This is what the bees prefer to use.
In the eggs stage the bees simply rebuild the cells after you notched them. They will built cells out of the young larvae but not when 
they are still in the eggs stage. You have to wait until the eggs turn into the larvae form in order for the OTS method to work. 
For some unknown reasons they will not build cells out of the unhatched eggs. Try it and see for yourself. 

For KC:
"Bullets
I use .257 cal. bullets placed in the cell to protect the larvae when flour is shaken over the comb to gum up and kill the other larvae (See Fig. 5)"
I found it between page 16 and 17. So he did mentioned it. How can you have miss interpreted that?
http://www.mdasplitter.com/docs/IMN BOOKLET.pdf


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## orthoman

I was under the impression that he no longer used the flour and bullets:s


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## kilocharlie

I probably read that before it got to 17 pages long...oops! showing my age. Hahaha

OK - I just checked your link - it is different than the one I read several years ago. Funny - it looks like he uses rimfire .22 shells in the photo. I thought of machining hexagon cell covers instead of bullets. I also thought about vacuuming the other larvae out and leaving only the few, well-spaced larvae for queen rearing. A small tube attachment to a low-power vacuum should work. His point that he calls Farrar's Law seems to postulate that a breeder can locate and place bullets and dust with flour in less time than one can graft. This is not necessarily true.

I find my best queens come from larvae newly hatched, but with royal jelly, 80 to 86 hours after isolating the breeder queen onto a fresh comb inside a Pritchard Box, transferred to a queenless Starter colony over-stuffed full of 5- to 10-day old nurse bees and waaaaay over-fed. Nothing to do but eat and feed queen cells.


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## crofter

His first method would be a variation on this "Hopkins Method aka Case Method, Isaac Hopkins from the Australasian Bee Manual, 1911
Turning a comb of worker brood horizontal with larvae destroyed to make gaps between the queen cells"

Plugging the selected cells then destroying the viability of adjoining larvae by flour or salt, talcum powder whatever is only an alternative to jabbing with a nail or match head to allow selected queen cells to develop with room to cut them out without permanently destroying the whole comb. 22 caliber cartridges would probably work as long as they can be pushed in far enough to round out and seal the corners of the cell hex so no flour leaks past. projectiles for reloading of anything from 6mm(.243) .257, or 6.5mm(.264) would have tapered points that would seal without being too large to shade the flour from adjoining cells. My son has used this method but now grafts. It destroys less brood.

I dont think Mel uses this method now as it requires the frame to be placed horizontal above other frames. The notching is quick and needs no equipment other than your hive tool.


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## Michael Palmer

beepro said:


> 2 correction: Nope, the correct larvae age is when they are 2 days old or 48 hours after hatching from the eggs. This is what the bees prefer to use.


I question this. I believe larvae as close in age to the egg as possible, make the best queens.


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## Lauri

Listen to Michael Palmer

I don't even use 24 hour old larva. 6-12 hours old is my preferred window. Just hatched and almost too small to graft probably isn't necessary, but I don't let it go much older than that.
If they are eggs in the evening and hatch out sometime over night, I am good with that with a morning check.

Below you can see larva just hatched actually smaller than the eggs, larva above them, progressively slightly older.



















This was about a 48 hour draw, if I remember right:



















Just capped:










Placing in the mating nucs:


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## billabell

I know nothing about grafting, but here we are talking about notching. So if all larvae are fed royal jelly for three days it would seem to me that up to three days would be fine. As someone infamously said, "what difference does it now make" or words to that effect.


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## Lauri

You can do what you want, but you won't find jelly like this in any ordinary cell

Here's a larva reared as a queen:









Below, Here's larva about the same age, reared as workers:


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## crofter

According to Roger Morse in his book on Rearing Queen Honeybees, the diet fed to selected queen cells is starting to change some time during the second day. Queens will be produced from older cells but it is felt that their laying potential is somewhat compromised. 

At some point 3 days and after, a so called "caste queen" results that _can_ lay _some_ viable worker eggs but very definitely is not desirable.


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## Dan the bee guy

OTS a good way for a new beekeeper or one new to queen rearing get the hang of making queens without being overwhelmed while learning.


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## Lauri

When I started, I book marked all the methods for queen rearing during my months of research. Then when it was time to start, I planned to refer back to each method to refresh my memory. I tackled grafting first since most seemed to try _anything_ to avoid it. Did the grid system next and never pursued other methods, except for a couple walk away nucs.




























Once you experience some success, you'll want to learn methods that allow a larger harvest. There's always a market for good local queens if you have extra.


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## billabell

Thanks Crofter. That certainly answered my question. Now I have to fine tune my eyes to get under the 3rd day as Beepro does. I also like Ruthiesbees method.


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## beestudent

kilocharlie said:


> I'm in full agreement with Tenbears. I'll add that Mel Disselkoen's OTS method uses up a full frame of brood per breeder queen, where as grafting uses up 48 larvae only. Works OK for small operations, and combines well for David LaFerney's / Joseph Clemens' queen rearing plan.


I thought about this, and came up with this:









If you position black plastic foundation in place of the paper, let the bees draw that out, and OTS the squares, you can easy cut the finished sections out... Maybe not as simple, but increases the number of Queens.


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## biggraham610

I would suggest trying it before trying to tweak it Beestudent. I only tried it once. The bees made a queen elsewhere, and when i went back in I couldn't even tell where I had notched.


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## beepro

I agree with Mike and Lauri to use the youngest larvae when possible. After 4 years of making queens, this is true. I'm simply
quoting Mel's findings that his bees prefer the 48 hours larvae when he use the OTS method. Even he doesn't know the answer either.
When I graft or use the OTS method, I find the youngest larvae to make the queen cells. Reading that the young larvae will turn into better queens when they are well fed starting from the hatch out phase. So it makes sense to take the youngest larvae for this task. If you time it right on the 4th day then all the young larvae are there for you to choose from. OTS is just another method out of the many if you don't want to do a graft. i.e. For some reason, I have a handicap queen on the right hind leg that the bees are trying to supersede her since the beginning of Autumn. Each time I intervened to take out the emergency cells and put them into a crowded queen less nuc hive. And each time the cells turn out to be largest and well fed ones you can find. Since it is close to the beginning of the winter now, they stop making the emergency cells and decided to keep this clumsy queen just so that she can keep the hive going. She still lays but a bit slower than a normal queen. I'm sure comes Spring time they will replace her. But I will not let that happen by taking these queen cells out each weak early on. I have some of the healthiest queens made and no grafting involved.

If you don't want to use the bullets to plug the cells then try a cotton swab. Though I think it is a waste of bee resource killing all those innocent larvae.
You can also use the rubber silicone cell plugs that I made just for this purpose. I'm trying to turn those cell plugs into an international non-graft cells frame. The plug and take out version without any grafting involve.


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## Michael Palmer

beepro said:


> OTS is just another method out of the many if you don't want to do a graft. i.e. For some reason, I have a handicap queen on the right hind leg that the bees are trying to supersede her since the beginning of Autumn. Each time I intervened to take out the emergency cells and put them into a crowded queen less nuc hive. And each time the cells turn out to be largest and well fed ones you can find.


Are you talking about supercedure cells or emergency cells? If the queen is still there and the bees area attempting to replace her, the cells are supercedure cells. The queen lays the egg in the queen cell cup, and when it hatches, the larvae is fed as a queen larva. Right from the start. So, of course the cells are large and well fed. 

Emergency cells are started in a queenless situation, are created from existing female larvae, are sometimes started from older larvae than supercedure cells, and the resulting queen cells and queens can be smaller.


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## crofter

billabell said:


> Thanks Crofter. That certainly answered my question. Now I have to fine tune my eyes to get under the 3rd day as Beepro does. I also like Ruthiesbees method.


I was not advocating the use of older cells to start new queens. A queen from an older cell can appear to function OK but the size of their reproductive organs decreases. Less sperm stored and fewer ovarioles functioning that can slow their max production rate and total lifetime egg production. There may be reduced pheremone production that can lead to early supercedure.

Snelgroves book on queen rearing speaks of it being common enough to use 36 hour larvae for grafting but only because they are easier to see; younger is better. The older the larvae the more the odds stack up against getting the ultimate genetic potential possible. 

If you want bragging pictures of those beautiful frames of capped brood that look like the eggs were all laid on the same day, they likely wont come from a larvae that was aged three days and 8 hours from the egg hatch which is nearing _the absolute cut off time_ to still be called a queen.


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## Michael Bush

>Below you can see larva just hatched actually smaller than the eggs...

You always have the most awesome pictures. Yes, those are perfect aged larvae (the ones that have hatched, not the eggs).


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## Dan the bee guy

Lauri said:


> When I started, I book marked all the methods for queen rearing during my months of research. Then when it was time to start, I planned to refer back to each method to refresh my memory. I tackled grafting first since most seemed to try _anything_ to avoid it. Did the grid system next and never pursued other methods, except for a couple walk away nucs.
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Love your pictures


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## beepro

Mike, they are both. 
Sometimes the queen will lay in an already made queen cup. And the workers
will build out the supersedure cell. Another time they will try to make the emergency
queens from extending the cell floating the larva out. It does not matter to me. what kind of
cells they are as long as I can removed them into a crowded queen less nuc on time. The nurse
bees will keep on depositing their RJ until the cells are capped. I end up with some really large cells. I'm
sure that the queens are well fed too. At hatch time there was about a 1/4" of RJ remaining on the bottom of the cell.
And the queens are big too. Let's say that after you removed the cells into a nuc and the queen lays some more, then
in 2-3 days they will make more queen cells trying to replaced the current queen. Then on the 4th days you go in to removed the
cells into a finisher nuc. Each week will have some cells for you to take out. 
This cycle keeps on repeating until the late Autumn when they finally gave up building more cells. Now I know they
will repeat this cycle again the next Spring. Gotta keep an eye on them so to make more nucs. Imagine if I would have use the
OTS method to make more queen cells. This queen kept me busy all season long already. And the bees naturally selected and care
for the eggs/larvae since the beginning. I just help them along to enhance their genetic capability by removing them to a crowded (special) nuc hive.
So don't throw away a good handicapped queen! Just because she is slow doesn't mean you cannot use her.


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## billabell

beepro said:


> This queen kept me busy all season long already. And the bees naturally selected and care
> for the eggs/larvae since the beginning. I just help them along to enhance their genetic capability by removing them to a crowded (special) nuc hive.
> So don't throw away a good handicapped queen! Just because she is slow doesn't mean you cannot use her.


:applause:


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## jwcarlson

biggraham610 said:


> I would suggest trying it before trying to tweak it Beestudent. I only tried it once. The bees made a queen elsewhere, and when i went back in I couldn't even tell where I had notched.


I had a similar problem this summer when I tried it. Notched a couple places they made queens on one notch and not the other. I moved a couple cells to another nuc and they tore them down and started their own. The other turned out well. She emerged and started laying in 10 days (mated right around September 1st). I actually caught her during her orientation flights (http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?317149-Watched-a-queen-orient-yesterday). She built up (with some feeding) into a 5/5/5 deep nuc and they're looking good.


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