# Queen Rearing Plan



## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

It sounds doable, I'd add at least one more *thorough* check for rouge queen cells - if you missed even one on the first check (and it's easy to do), it can ruin your day.


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## frazzledfozzle (May 26, 2010)

I like to finish my cells in a queenrite hive I leave the cells in the queenless starter for 48 hours and then switch them out to the top box of a queenrite finisher over an excluder with the queen in the bottom box.

I usually do 60 cells to a starter then put 20 cells into each finisher if I left 20 cells in the starter some of them would be ripped down.

If you are only doing a few cells them completely ignore all of the above and go with what you have said because that will work really well.
It's really important to have the younger bees in the starter because they are the ones feeding your queen lavae not the workers. 

frazz


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

I use almost the same method, except I place the box of brood and honey and bees above an excluder on the strong colony. 9 days later check the entire stack for queen cells. Remove the cell builder..the box above the excluder with only sealed brood at this point. Turn the parent colony around and place behind stand. Place cell builder on new bottom on stand and shake 3/4 of the bees from the queen right hive into the cell builder in morning. Give graft in afternoon. 5 days later unite queen right hive and cell builder by placing queen right hive in stand and cell builder on it above excluder. Harvest cells on 10th day.

Almost the same method, but more nurse bees by keeping the queen right hive for nurse bee production.

Read Beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey.


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## FThoney (Apr 22, 2011)

Michael Palmer said:


> I use almost the same method, except I place the box of brood and honey and bees above an excluder on the strong colony. 9 days later check the entire stack for queen cells. Remove the cell builder..the box above the excluder with only sealed brood at this point. Turn the parent colony around and place behind stand. Place cell builder on new bottom on stand and shake 3/4 of the bees from the queen right hive into the cell builder in morning. Give graft in afternoon. 5 days later unite queen right hive and cell builder by placing queen right hive in stand and cell builder on it above excluder. Harvest cells on 10th day.
> 
> Almost the same method, but more nurse bees by keeping the queen right hive for nurse bee production.
> 
> Read Beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey.


This is great. I think I will try it out. This will be my first attempt at queen rearing so I was a little nervous about completely splitting up my strong hive and losing too much productivity. This plan seems a lot less stressful on the hive. But then again, any malipulation of a hive is stressful for the bees. :scratch: 
I wanted to get a complete understanding of the process before I dove in. If anyone has any more suggestions or possibly a better process let me know. 
Thanks!


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