# To Michael Concering Queen Rearing



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

How many queens do you want? A few for your own use? Enough to requeen a lot of your own hives? Enought to have a surplus to sell?

If you just one a few queens you can buy a nuc box and put a frame of open brood, a frame of capped brood a frame of pollen and a frame of honey and no queen and wait a 10 days and make up some mating nucs and cut the queen cells out of the comb in the nuc and put them in the mating nucs (leave one for the first nuc). Of course this only works well if the comb is on wax foundation so you can cut it and the wires aren't going through the queen cell. Of course if one has a wire running through it, leave it for the first nuc. That will give you a few queens with no big effort. Or just make up severl nucs like this and don't worry about the extra cells. You can also take the cells and remove the queen from any hives you want to requeen and put the cell in the next day.

The basics are that any queenless hive will try to rear queens. That worker larvae that has just hatched can be changed into a queen by what the workers feed them and you can change that simply by putting them in a cell hanging down. In order to incite them to raise more (and of the genetics you wish) you give them queen cups with the appropriate age of larvae. You also give them LOTS of bees and stores to care for these to incite them to take care of more cells. The rest is all timing.

The concepts are easy enough. The simplest short description of a system that works well is here:

http://www.ohioqueenbreeders.com/queen_rearing.htm

If you follow this to the letter and don't try to skip steps like shaking the bees into the top box etc. it works very well. I don't think the books out there are going to give you any better instructions. But here is a simple short good book: Queen Rearing Hints & Tips by David Eyre available at www.beesource.com

http://www.beeworks.com/usacatalog/items/item198.htm

Sometimes it takes a few different books to help you digest the concept of something. For queen rearing I found them a bit confusing. There are a lot of different ways that work but the essential part is getting acceptance of the cells and getting them to build them. Queen rearing is difficult enough, that you need to accept it may take a few tries to do well at it. It's not hard to get them to make one or two queens. It's just tricky to learn how to get them to make 20 or 30 queens. 

Otherwise you will have to decide how you want to transfer the larvae. You can buy a system like Jenter or Nicot or the various copies of them. Or you can graft or you can do the Hopkines method http://www.beesource.com/pov/hayes/abjmay91.htm

But however you get the larvae into cells hanging down, the rest is all the same timing and the same concepts.


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

Michael:

I was thinking while reading your post and the Ohio System and I was wondering if this method would work:

In the bee yard, you take a frame of pollen, nectar, and brood to make a nuc from Hive A. The nuc will not have a queen. Then you move the nuc to another part of the yard. The field bees would then fly back to Hive A while the worker bees since that there is no queen and then you interduce the frame with the cups that have been grafted with eggs. Then the worker bees will make a queen cell. Then after a certain time frame, you take the queen cell out and put it in another queenless nuc for mating (as I understand it, this will prevent crossbreeding from Hive A). 

Will this work? 

Then I need to know a few things. How to graft, how to tell how old eggs and larva is, ect.

I do like the Ohio Method but I am not sure how to make a three story hive colony. In these parts, you only have two stories with deeps and any boxes on top are supers, 

I understand so far that to raise a queen, the worker bees need to know there is no queen, one has to graft in larva or eggs so they can build queen cells, and that there needs to be a queen rasing nuc. 

I would really like to get into queen rearing for myself and some of the people in my local bee club but I feel like I only have spots of information. I did buy a kit last year from a bee company but it seems like a joke and would rather learn the right way with no cutting corners. 

Is there any videos you can recomend? Will the method explained above work?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>In the bee yard, you take a frame of pollen, nectar, and brood to make a nuc from Hive A. The nuc will not have a queen. Then you move the nuc to another part of the yard. The field bees would then fly back to Hive A while the worker bees since that there is no queen and then you interduce the frame with the cups that have been grafted with eggs. Then the worker bees will make a queen cell.

In a nuc with just a frame of brood and nectar they will probably only build one or two queen cells. They will do this with or without a cell bar. They will do it from the larvae on the frame of brood you gave them. If you give them a cell bar with 28 cells they will still probably only make one or two queen cells because of the strength of the nuc.

>Then after a certain time frame, you take the queen cell out and put it in another queenless nuc for mating

You can, but unless you have more than one queen cell there isn't a lot of point to setting up a mating nuc. The original nuc could be the mating nuc.

>(as I understand it, this will prevent crossbreeding from Hive A). 

No, it won't. The queen will fly far enough she probably won't cross breed regardless. She will not mate in the hive or, for that matter, close to the hives. She will fly several miles away where she mates in the air with drones at a drone congregation area. There will be drones from miles around there.

>Then I need to know a few things. How to graft, how to tell how old eggs and larva is, ect.

That is the nice thing about a Jenter or Nicot or other cell plug system. You confine the queen and so you know how old the eggs are. If you confine the queen and four days later you tranfer the larvae then the oldest larvae there cannot be more than four days and probably is only 3 to 3 1/2 days. If the cell looks wet and you really have to look hard to see any larvae at all (or get your reading glasses) then they are probably the right age.

Also, with a Jenter or similar system you don't have to graft.

>I do like the Ohio Method but I am not sure how to make a three story hive colony. In these parts, you only have two stories with deeps and any boxes on top are supers

I can't say that some of those three stories aren't supers. The point is there are three boxes full of bees and there is lots of brood and bees.

>I understand so far that to raise a queen, the worker bees need to know there is no queen, one has to graft in larva or eggs so they can build queen cells, and that there needs to be a queen rasing nuc. 

Let's be more specific. Queen rearing is usually split up into these:

A egg donor colony. This is the colony with the queen you want to get more queens from. This COULD be the same as the cell builder etc. or not.

A cell starter colony. This needs to be very crowded and, I've had the best luck with, queenless. It is not a nuc. It is at least one box overflowing with bees. It's the top box in the Ohio queen rearing directions. In order to get them to make queen cells there has to be LOTS of bees (preferably nurse bees) and lots of stores and it's nice if there is some open brood next to the queen cell cups to draw the nurse bees. The exact order of frames given in the Ohio queen breeders page works well for this.

A Cell Finisher. This can be queenright if you have the queen cells a couple of boxes removed from the queen and it's a very strong hive. In the Ohio queen breeders page this is the same as the cells starter. They just pull the divider out to make it a queen right finisher. The cell finisher can be the same as the starter or not. You could just make up a strong box as a split to use as a cell starter and just leave the cells in until they are ready to go in the mating nucs so it also acts as the finisher.

The mating nucs can be quite small. Mine are two medium frames. Mini mating nucs are even smaller.

>I would really like to get into queen rearing for myself and some of the people in my local bee club but I feel like I only have spots of information. I did buy a kit last year from a bee company but it seems like a joke and would rather learn the right way with no cutting corners. 

What do you think is wrong with the kit?

>Is there any videos you can recomend? Will the method explained above work? 

www.beeworks.com has a nice video on queen rearing. Here is the DVD:

http://www.beeworks.com/usacatalog/items/item213.htm

They are aslo avaialbe in VHS:


http://www.beeworks.com/usacatalog/items/item195.htm

Just buy the one titled Queen Rearing. The Nicot system one is included in that one.

Let's try a different view here.

All you have to do to get a queen is put some brood and bees in a box with no queen and they will raise one. So why go to the trouble of grafting etc? The reason is to get the most queens with the least resources. If you make all your hives queenless they will raise new queens to requeen themselves, but doing this at the wrong time, anyway, will set them back 28 days or so in brood rearing. At exactly the right time this might not be bad, but at the wrong time it can cost you a honey crop. Queen rearing is only stressing a minimum of bees for a maximum of queens. So you get one box of bees to raise 20 or 30 queens instead of two or three. And you only make a couple of frames of bees queenless to get them to mate the queen instead of a whole hive.

Queen rearing takes practice. Don't get your hopes too high, and don't try to cheat on the directions at all until you're sure you understand why they are there and you've suceeded by following them. Then you can try different things and see how they work.


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

As I said, I did buy one of those no grafting kits. I am just concerned about how to get the queen inside of it. Its a hole. How can you get her safely inside of it? It is also pretty thin and I wonder if she can move alright in there. 

So, what would the set up be in the bee yard?

An egg doner colony, a cell starter colony, a cell finisher colony, and a mating nuc?

Do you still need this set up with a no grafting system? the same?

If the cell finisher colony is queenright, wont the queen of that colony kill the queen cells?

I think I am understanding it. Lets assume I do use a no grafting system. Will you please explain the set up in the bee yard and walk me through the process.

Sorry for the inconvience. This is a hard thing for me to grasp.


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## Antero (Jan 9, 2005)

Chef Isaac; Jenter Time Line-Day 0 Trap Q into Jenter frame inside Breeder/Cell Raiser colony Day 1 Release Queen Ensure eggs have been laid (can also do this on Day 2) Day 3 Remove Queen Take Q,one frame brood and frame honey and start nuc over 3 kilometers away Day 4 Transfer Q cups onto cell raising frames feed sugar syrup Day 12 Cull rogue Q cells prep nucs Day 13 Tranfercells to nucs one frame bees one frame honey leave one Q cell in breeder/cell raiser colony Day 17 ensure Q's have hatched Day 30 cage Q's TERRY


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>As I said, I did buy one of those no grafting kits. I am just concerned about how to get the queen inside of it. Its a hole. How can you get her safely inside of it?

I just pull the whole front off, put her on it and then put the front back on. Of course you have to be both quick and gentle. Quick so she doesn't run off or it and gentle in case she's trying so you don't squish her. But I use a hair clip queen catcher to catch her and them just put her on the "comb" in the jenter box and then put on the lid.

>It is also pretty thin and I wonder if she can move alright in there. 

Yes, she can.

>So, what would the set up be in the bee yard?

I put the box in the middle of a frame (I wired mine on) and put foundation on each end for the bees to work. I put the box in with the foundation in the middle of the brood nest for a few days and let them draw the comb and get their smell on the box. Then I put the queen in.

>An egg doner colony, a cell starter colony, a cell finisher colony, and a mating nuc?

The doner colony could be the same as the cell starter and the cell finisher depending on how you do it. But I have done it with all of them the same colony. But still you have to set up the cell starter. I did it like the Ohio queen breeders where the cell starter becomes the cell finisher. But assuming all that went well, you now have 28 or so queen cells. They can't all live in the same hive and get mated. You can put the cells in hives you want to requeen by removing the queen from those hives the day before and putting the cell in and using the hives for mating them. Or you can set up nucs that are queenless to mate them. But you have to have one queenless colony/nuc for each queen cell.

>Do you still need this set up with a no grafting system? the same?

The same.

>If the cell finisher colony is queenright, wont the queen of that colony kill the queen cells?

In order to have a queenright finisher (which is not necessary) you need to have the queen on the other side of an excluder from the cell bars.

>I think I am understanding it. Lets assume I do use a no grafting system. Will you please explain the set up in the bee yard and walk me through the process.

Here's what I've been doing
Queen rearing plan:
Make sure you have a minimum four medium box strong colony (or equivalent such as three deeps etc.).
Make sure you have chosen a queen mother. (pick a queen from a hive that has the qualities you want, gentle, productive, winters well, handles mites etc.)
Make sure you have cell bars set up with cups etc.
Make sure you have a cell cup system of some kind. (Jenter, grafting, etc)
Make sure you have a "Floor without floor" box. 
Make one with a 3/4" by 3/4" piece of wood with a 3/8" x 3/8" groove in it. Hang it out from 3/4" to 1 ½ in front and put a piece across the front under the sides to make a landing board. Cut a piece of 3/16" laun to slide in for a removable bottom. Coat edges with vasoline to keep from connecting. Maybe make it with the landing board on both ends and make a 3/4 x 3/8 (7/156?) x 15 ½ entrance block for one end. That way you can make it open either directions by just moving the entrance block.
http://incolor.inetnebr.com/bush/images/FWOF1.jpg
Make sure you have mating nucs. (homemade two medium frame nucs are what I'm using, but you can also buy mini mating nucs or make your own) http://incolor.inetnebr.com/bush/images/TwoByFourMatingNucs.JPG http://incolor.inetnebr.com/bush/images/AssortedWidths.JPG)

Days are counted from the day the egg is layed.

This is all done in one strong hive that already has the breeder queen in it.

Day Action
-1 Set up top box with: Frame Feeder (Brushy Mt or Betterbee style that only takes one space or put a frame of honey here and some other kind of feeder) - Nectar- Brood- Pollen- Eggs- Cell Bar- Eggs- Pollen- Brood- Nectar.Put breeder queen in top box also the Jenter box and cell cups brood, division board feeder, pollen and honey, over an excluder. Put all remaing brood and pollen in the bottom box. Put everything else in the middle box(es). If you want to have royal jelly to add to cups, now would be the time to take a couple of frames of eggs from some other colony and put them in a nuc and shake in several frames of nurse bees from some other colony than the breeder colony. That way they will start some queen cells that we can rob the royal jelly out of. I haven't found it necessary, but some people think it helps.

0 Close breeder queen in the Jenter box. Feed. 

1 (24 hours) Release queen from Jenter box. Feed

2 Set up Cell Starter/Cell Builder: Take the queen out of the top box and cage her (I just catch her in a hair clip catcher). Put the top box on top of the inner cover (with a screen over the hole). Shake all bees from all the other boxes into the top box. Put bottom box (as alread set up above) on the bottom board and release the queen there. Add an excluder on top of this and the middle boxes on top of that. Add Floor Without Floor. Put top box (will all shaken bees) on top of the FWOF and the inner cover on top of that. Feed. The field bees will return through the bottom entrance and the nurse bees will stay in the top box.

4 Transfer eggs from Jenter to cell cups with preference to those that are already started as queen cells and replace in Cell starter. Feed nuc and cell starter. If you started the nuc as Roayl Jelly donor, steal the royal jelly out of the queen cups in it and add it to the cell cups as you transfer. Be careful not to touch the larvae when doing this. You now have a queenless cell starter on top of a queenright colony.

5 See if queen cups are started. If so, remove Floor from FWOF to establish queen right cell finisher. Feed.

6-8 Feed

8 Cells capped

9 If you want more queens you can move the capped cells to a finisher (a queenless nuc with an abundance of bees would do) and start another batch of queen cells in this breeder colony if you want.

12 Set up mating nucs. I put a frame of open brood, a frame of honey and shake in another frame of bees into a 2 frame nuc. The brood keeps enough bees there. If you don't want to do that you can shake bees from a variety of hives into a box and divvy them up into mating nucs and close them off for the night so they get reorganized.

13 Transfer the queen cells with (optionally with protectors) to the mating nucs. I just used aluminum foil for protectors. I wrapped it so the end was open and the sides were covered. If you closed the nucs up, open up the entrances for the nucs.

15-16 Queens emerge

22 First possible day to fly

25 First possible day to mate

27 Still mating

28 First day we may find eggs in the mating nucs.


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## Antero (Jan 9, 2005)

Chef Isaac. Capture a drone with no gloves,practice handling,marking and clipping wings so you get comfortable when holding your queens. Terry


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Antero is right, that's the best way to get comfortable with it. Drones move about the same and are just as fragile, but much more expendable. I'd mark the drones a color that none of your current queens are so you don't get confused when looking for a queen. You don't want 20 of them marked blue or whatever the current color of the queen in that hive is.


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

Michael:

I have a few questions....

How do you feed the quen while in the no grafting "bedroom"?

in day -1, what is a frame feeder? The black "frame" that hold sugar syrup?

in day -1, do you place the queen excluder ontop of the bottom box or ontop of the middle box?

in day -1, why do you put the jenter box with cell cups in the top box on the day before you place the breeding queen in the jenter box?

In day two, if you do not want to make a floor without a floor, can you just add a peice of flat wood that extends out to make a landing board and that covers the middle box? Of course, this is not as dandy as the one you have that can just be pulled out. will it work?

in day four you said "Transfer eggs from Jenter to cell cups with preference to those that are already started as queen cells ...". What do you mean by those cups that already started as queen cells?

in day five, why do they call it a queen right cell finisher? Bees can pass from the bottom box through the queen excluder...wouldnt the since that there is a queen and kill the cells? 


Ok, now I think I have it granting I understand the answers to the above questions.

Now... another area of quee breeding... queen genetics... should I be concerned with this now at this point? talking about ethics... would a company get pissed off if I boght a queen from them and used that queen to breed? 

After the queen has hatched, I read somewhere that it is REALLY hard to tell her apart from the rest because lack of size. Do you find this to be a problem? Would it be advantageous to use a protector over the queen cell until she hatches and then mark her?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>How do you feed the quen while in the no grafting "bedroom"?

You don't. The cover is queen excluder material so she can't get out, but that lets workers in. She will feed them. You just feed the cell builder to make sure they are well stocked.

>in day -1, what is a frame feeder? The black "frame" that hold sugar syrup?

It doesn't have to be a frame feeder, but I find them useful for this application since you end up opening the box a lot to check on thigs. I don't care for the black ones. Brushy Mt. has a wooden/masonite one that only takes up one frame, has a limited area the bees can get to and a ladder for them. I haven't used it, but it Betterbee has a plastic one that looks like it has these same features.

>in day -1, do you place the queen excluder ontop of the bottom box or ontop of the middle box?

You put the top box over an excluder on day -1. This limits the queen to the top so you can find her more easily to put her in the Jenter box later.

>in day -1, why do you put the jenter box with cell cups in the top box on the day before you place the breeding queen in the jenter box?

To get the smell of the hive. So the worker bees will polish it and clean it and get used to the smell of it.

>In day two, if you do not want to make a floor without a floor, can you just add a peice of flat wood that extends out to make a landing board and that covers the middle box? 

Sure.

>Of course, this is not as dandy as the one you have that can just be pulled out. will it work?

Sure.

>in day four you said "Transfer eggs from Jenter to cell cups with preference to those that are already started as queen cells ...". What do you mean by those cups that already started as queen cells?

On some occasions I've seen them start queen cells in the Jenter box. I probably shouldn't bother mentioning it, but it was a "note to self". The first time it happened I was looking at it from the other side (the back) and didn't see that they were making a couple of them into queen cells. Actually if your timing is right you probably won't get that.

>in day five, why do they call it a queen right cell finisher?

Because once you remove the FWOF it is a queenright hive because the bees can communicate with the area with the queen.

> Bees can pass from the bottom box through the queen excluder...wouldnt the since that there is a queen and kill the cells? 

But they usually don't.

>Now... another area of quee breeding... queen genetics... should I be concerned with this now at this point?

Just pick a queen you like. Calm and productive.

>talking about ethics... would a company get pissed off if I boght a queen from them and used that queen to breed? 

People have been doing it for centuries.

>After the queen has hatched, I read somewhere that it is REALLY hard to tell her apart from the rest because lack of size. Do you find this to be a problem?

Yes. They are also very flighty and the workers are not treating them like a queen. A laying queen has an entourage. A virgin queen is just running around solo. A virgin queen is very fast, very shy and likes to hide. I've searched a 2 frame mating nuc several times and not found them before. I've also found them sometimes on the front of the nuc on the outside. But only having to search 2 frames helps and you really don't have to find her until she's laying anyway. On day 28 you can check for eggs and if you find them, then start looking for a laying queen.

>Would it be advantageous to use a protector over the queen cell until she hatches and then mark her?

First, she hatched on day 3. She emerges on about day 16. But I don't think so. If you mean the hair curler cages. I have used them, but they are tricky. The queen comes out voracious and needs some food. I've tried a small drop of honey in the bottom and had them plunge headfirst into and drown. A small amount of crystalized honey is probably the best for food in them. I will probably do more hair curler cages because I want to maximize the use of the nucs and Dennis has been talking about having a mating queen and an emerging queen in the same box by using them.

Part of learning all of this is learning to find the queen and learning to catch her. But worst case, for your own use, is she lays in the mating nuc until it's booming and you dequeen the hive you want to requeen and do a newspaper combine.


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

_She will feed them. You just feed the cell builder to make sure they are well stocked_

Perhaps you meant "they (the workers) will feed the queen"?

Fusion


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## nw bee (Nov 1, 2004)

Issac, Maybe you should just slow down, Get thur a full year of being just a bee keeper with a few hives. Learn your way a round bees, befor you start tring to raise queens. You may get some swarm cell, start with that and work your way up. Bees are alot of work! Just take your time and learn your way around a hive. This way you can see how you like it and just how much work it is to be a bee keeper. Good luck with your frist year.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Perhaps you meant "they (the workers) will feed the queen"?

Sorry, yes, that is what I meant to type. I think maybe Issac doesn't see that the workers can get into the Jenter cage.

>Issac, Maybe you should just slow down, Get thur a full year of being just a bee keeper with a few hives. Learn your way a round bees, befor you start tring to raise queens. 

Probably not a bad idea. It would probably be less frustrating to start by just doing some splits and observing them raise a queen. You can do this in your observation hive by just putting a frame of brood in when you populate it in the spring and no queen. They will raise one and you can watch in detail. If you do a split, you could take any extra queen cells and put them in mating nucs or use them to requeen existing hives. Then work your way up to queen rearing. I failed the first several times becaue I underestimated the need for LOTS of bees in the starter. I kept thinking I could take shortcuts or things didn't matter that much because I would find multiple systems that would do opposite things. But sometimes it's the WHOLE system that makes it work.

e.g. some people try not to have any open brood in the cell builder so there won't be any extraneous queen cells. Some people purposely PUT open brood in to draw the nurse bees to the cells. But in the end it is often the whole system put together that makes it work.

Some things you can change and not make any difference. Some things you can't. Some things the details (like shaking ALL the bees into the cell builder or some different variation that also manipulates the bees into the cell builder) are all the difference between success and failure.

Learning can be a frustrating experience and it's helpful to divide and conquer. Learn one aspect of it at a time, if you can.

That's one of the reasons I went with the Jenter. I wanted to learn to rear queens first. Then I'll learn to graft. Maybe this year or next year.


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

I agree with taking things slowly. The problem is, is that it ALL fasinates me. The same thing as when I learned how to cook professionally. I took so much in at a time and it was overwelming but then my mind sorted everything out and I got my feet wet in certain area, learned from mistakes, had fun and I am still having fun. 

Same with my new love for beekeeping. I am learning so much, so fast and with so much interest that it will (and is starting too) make since. Then I will get my feet wet and learn like I did with professional cooking.

For example, last year I started out with a fully established colony. That was a lot of bees. Now I tell other beginners to start out with packaged bees. See, I learned. So this year, I will buy another fully stablished colony and a package of bees. It should be fun. I will also buy a nuc to see the difference between the package and the nuc. 

Last year, I also have an observation hive. It died this winter but I am learning!

I also learned how to requeen last year which was a lot of hard work (that is.... finding the queen). God bless marked queens!

So my desire to learn how to rear comes from the passion and interest I havefor beekeeping. Will I do it this year? Proboboly not...we will see. Will I play with a nuce and have them raise a queen.... we will see.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

A nice thing about observation hives, you get lots of practice finding the queen. For that purpose it's nice to have an unmarked one in the observation hive.







That way you get to find her the hard way but you have all the time to do it.

I'm all for jumping in with both feet. I always have. Just so you don't get discouraged when you have setbacks and failures. It takes a lot of failures to learn sometimes.

"If you're not making mistakes you're not learning anything" (Michael Bush adapted from "If you're not making mistakes you're not DOING anything")

"If you think you can or you think you can't, you're right" (Henry Ford)


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

This is something that I would really like to try. I fully understand the method you presented above...finally. I am not sure if I will try it this year or not since I will be being new hives and moving them. We will see. 

There is a lot of things that I have not gottan to experiance yet like catching a swarm, housing a package of bees, ect. This is so much fun and everytime I see a bee or taste honey, I get so excited.... now I am waiting for spring,,,, while I reread a lot of the bee books to make sure I will be doing everything right. 

I think so far, one of the hardest descisions to make is to medicate or not. 

one more question... I plan to take some frames from my hive and put into a nuc with no queen. How long does it take for them to notice they have no queen and start building queen cells?

ok.. another question... After putting frames into a nuc with no queen and say they build 3 queen cells for example. After they have capped the queen cells, can I cut out one of the queen cells and not interduce it to another queenless hive for the purpose of just watching and observing it? How many days from when I cut the queen cells out do I have until I really need to interduce the queeen cell to a queenless hive?


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## Antero (Jan 9, 2005)

Isaac, This is how I do it:

Use this process during a nectar flow!

- Take two frames of open brood including the bees that are on it, one frame of pollen and one frame of honey (or a frame feeder to replace the frame of honey, filled with 2part sugar 1 part water mix)put in the nuc. Move the nuc 3 kms away.

- If you want to keep the nuc in your yard, you will have to shake in 2 more frames of young bees as well(under 20 days old). As the younger bees will stay with the nuc, and are needed in the raising of the new queens.

- They will raise quite a few queens, and the first one born will kill the other queen cells.

Time frame:

From a new egg, it takes 3 days to become a larva.
The bees will use 1 day old larva to make a queen.
When the larva is 5 days old, it becomes a pupae and is capped. 8 days after capping, the queen is born.
Terry


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

Antero:

Do you use a non grafting kit? I bought one last year from Betterbee. I do not have it here as iti s at my parents house in Longview. I do not know how the worker bees can get into the non grafting "bed room". I wish I had it her to look at.


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## Antero (Jan 9, 2005)

Isaac. I took a Queen rearing course last year.We learned three methods Doolittle which is grafting 20 hour old larva into plastic cells.The Jenter is what you have. We trap Queen into jenter frame and put back into hive.Micheal Bush explains this method well. The third is what I use SIMULATED EMERGENCY, 2 frames of brood 1 frame pollen 1 frame honey into a nuc .You will have a mated queen in a month. More nucs = more Queens.
The workers can get into the Jenter Matrix and feed, but queen can not get out.

Terry


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