# Queen Rearing Natural / Snelgrove



## pharmbee (Jun 21, 2013)

Looking to make a nuc and wish to raise a queen without grafting (at least not yet). I just finished reading Snelgrove's Queen Rearing. 

My question. Should I destroy the early capped queen cells as Snelgrove suggests? I didn't know if his idea still held water or not as far as the early queen cells maybe not being fed royal jelly throughout development and making a inferior queen? Or should I not worry about it and just add the frame of eggs and walk away? Thanks guys.


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## WLC (Feb 7, 2010)

If you destroy the early queen cells at four days from transferring the frame with eggs, you can synchronize the timing of the remaining, soon too be, queens for 10 days before harvest.

Otherwise, the first one to emerge will simply destroy the rest.


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## pharmbee (Jun 21, 2013)

Thanks WLC. I just really want 1 queen, but would like for her to be a good as one as possible. If I destroy the queen cells at 4 days, will the rest that emerge at the same time have a greater likelihood of the winner being the strongest/largest?


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## WLC (Feb 7, 2010)

Some will say that they'll be of better quality than earlier queens. There is some disagreement on that point however.

I wouldn't use the winner take all approach. Just cut out the biggest, best looking queen cell(s) that you find after 10 days, for placement in a nuc/split. 

Or, you can simply squish or scrap any queen cells that don't look well formed and leave the rest be.

The problem being that a runt queen can emerge early and take out the good queens.

You still should strive to provide for extra stores of honey and pollen/bee bread where you've placed the frame with eggs.

Handle them carefully though.


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## pharmbee (Jun 21, 2013)

I really appreciate the advice. Is your opinion that later queens are of higher quality than earlier ones as a general rule discarding exceptions?


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## WLC (Feb 7, 2010)

Not really. My experience is that getting the timing set at 10 days is invaluable in planning.

You can figure out what day to start, come back in 4 to pinch scrap the early cells, then you know that you can come back in 10 days (a day when you'll have plenty of time) to select which cells turned out the best, then you get rid of the unwanted ones.

You'll see that some cells are runts/misformed, some look like they're dead, others look healthy.

You can pick the queens you want, rather than settle for the queens you get.

There's also the cloak board method, besides the double screen.

Mann Lake sells both.


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## pharmbee (Jun 21, 2013)

Awesome sounds like I have a plan thanks to you. Last question I promise. When you say 10 days, do you mean Day 10 or Day 14 (4 + 10)?


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

Why make them raise an emergency queen from a less than ideal larva when you can control what they raise from? Day one you make up the nuc by adding a frame of mostly sealed brood and a frame of honey/pollen. That frame of brood ideally has a lot of sealed brood but on at least one edge has eggs and new hatched larva. This is fairly often found when a frame is emerging on the edges and the queen has laid new eggs around the sealed brood. Now you just take you hive tool and cut the line of cells in half that are newly hatched and are right next to the eggs. Scrap down with the hive tool after you cut the cells. You should see new hatched larva in the bottom of the exposed cells. These new hatched larva are ideal for the bees to make into queens. And as the cell is gone the bees do not have to float the larva out to the end of the cell by over feeding it. This technique works best with plastic foundation. With wax foundation I do not think you will be able to do the scrape and you are going to have to be a lot more careful that you do not touch the larva.


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## pharmbee (Jun 21, 2013)

Richard thanks for the lesson! Would you still destroy cells on day 4? Also I'm new at beekeeping this year. I can easily tell eggs vs older larvae. However new larvae I'm not so sure about. Do they look basically like a slightly larger egg but laying down now?


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

Actually pharmbee they look smaller than an egg. When I bought my trifocals a whole new world of larva appeared to me!


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

I would destroy any cells not started in one of my cuts. I want to be sure they start the queen from a just hatched larva and the only way to know is by the cut. You can not tell a thing about queen quality by looking at the wax cell. New larva are harder to see than an egg. A main hint is eggs on one side, larger larva on the other side and in between cells that just look wet on the bottom. Those wet cells have new hatched larva.


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