# larger queens



## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

From your largest strongest hives with the traits you want to reproduce, lots of incoming high protein pollen or good quality pollen sub during a strong flow.


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

I've had queens I thought were small and puny until they were put into a hive that had enough bees to take care of them. Then they get fat and large. Not experienced enough to know for sure but I think "how a queen is fed" affects her appearance as much as genetics in the "largeness" category.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Welcome to Beesource!

If you are raising your own queens, start by making 32 nucleus boxes wide enough for 5 frames of honeycomb. Then, make two 12" tall nucleus boxes for 6 frames, but with window screen on the bottom 3 inches along the sides for ventilation. Make a feeder rim with 1/2" wire mesh for pollen patties, and room for a mason jar for sugar & water feed. Also, get 2 queen excluders.

Place one queen excluder on top of each of two strong colonies, then and empty box on top of the excluders. Place 2 comb frames with honey, 1 frame with pollen, and 6 empty frames in each top box. Place 2 frames of open brood in the top boxes, and put the lid on.

In the afternoon, take the frames of young nurse bees out of the top boxes and put them into the 6-frame nucleus box. The 6-frame box should have 2 frames of honey, 2 frames of fresh pollen, and 2 open honeycombs, *AND MAKE ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN THERE ARE NO QUEENS AND NO QUEEN CELLS IN THE QUEEN BOX!!!* (check again 5 days later - remove any queen cells you find) The open brood placed over the strong colonies was "bait" for attracting the nurse bees up into the top boxes.

The 6-frame queen box should be absolutely crowded with young nurse bees - pouring out over the top. This is why it must be ventilated with screen, and also why I set up 2 strong colonies for this - I steal lots of young nurse bees from the 2 colonies and stuff them into one 6-frame box!. The massive crowd of 5- to 15-day-old nurse bees will build fat queen cells if they have no queen and nothing to do except eat lots of good food and feed a few baby queen cells.

Move this 6-frame queen box away from your other hives - they are not well defended and may be robbed by other bees. They will build queen cells for 10 days if you are grafting. The larva worms you graft should be the very youngest grub worms that have royal jelly. These will be 3 1/2 days old since they were laid as eggs by their mother queen. 10 days after you grafted the larvae into the queen cell cups and placed the frame of grafts into the 6-frame queen box, you carefully cut the queen cells out and install 2 of them in each nucleus box. Graft no more than 16 queen cells at a time.

On the 9th day, take a peek inside the queen box, count the queen cells, and make that many of the nucleus boxes ready. Each nucleus box gets a frame of honey, a frame of honey + pollen, and 3 frames of capped brood. The 3 brood frames go in the middle. Place the queen cells in the middle frame, 2 inches down into the brood cluster space. Now move the nucleus boxes to a nice field of flowers away from other bees. Check on them 10 days later, and feed them. 22 days later, they should be ready to judge the brood pattern, and go into regular 10-frame boxes.

You can raise 16 queen cells or less at a time, all during the season (fewer late in the season - try 8) and you will learn by trial getting all the details right. There will be failures at first, but you can repeat the cycle every 11 days and the new queens are in the 5-frame nucleus boxes for 22 days. the first year will be quite a learning curve, and by the second year, you should start seeing larger queen cells, and larger queens.

The 5-frame nucleus boxes need to be near a good source of drones so the queens can mate well. 2 strong colonies with extra drone combs should be within 1/2 mile of your mating nucleus boxes. Feed the drone colonies with pollen substitute patties every 4 days if they'll take it.

To summarize the calendar, I make 2 queen boxes for 16 queen cells each. I start a cycle every 11 days. I make a set of 32 boxes (5-frame nucleus boxes) for each 2 queen boxes. I fill up only 16 of these in one cycle, the rest get filled up 11 days later. I make the second queen box so I have 2 queen cells for each 5-frame nucleus box. I have very few failures that way, as usually at least one queen hatches and mates.

I need to give credit here - this system was discussed here on Beesource by David LaFerney, and was developed by Joseph Clemens. Use the search box, and look for these old discussions by David and Joseph. There are some differnces - I suggest 6-frame queen boxes (they used 5-frame boxes) because it stuffs more nurse bees inside. They go up to 20 queens - I suggested only 16 at one time, because you want FAT queens! Either way, this system gives you lots of practice if you use it often throughout the season, and gives you a few good queens as you need them, throughout the season.

Good luck, get building, get started, and keep asking questions! It takes time and practice. Take good notes, try to write down everything you can think of. This will help you next year and for many years later.


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## texanbelchers (Aug 4, 2014)

That is a great summary of queen rearing. That is a lot of frames and resources! How many hives do you have to draw frames from to keep this up?

Do you move split up the starter bees into the nucs?


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

The beauty of Joseph Clemens' system is that it scales very nicely to your limiting resource (often bees or honeycombs) by using very little resource to make a few, very good queens. Try to have enough hive boxes and frames of drawn comb, its disappointing to have either of those for your limiting factor!

Just the right number of increaser nucleus colonies and queens for re-queening for the scale of your operation increases your apiary at a maximum rate (other than outright purchase of other bee colonies, which is quick but expensive). In a few years, you have taken 10 colonies to a sideline business if the rainfall and flower blooms are good, and can produce excess queens and nucleus colonies for sale.

By purchasing high-quality mated queens or nucleus colonies (not package bees), and introducing them to your worst colonies, then raising queens from them and from your stock, and letting them mate, you should realize a noticeable improvement over a decade if you keep a consistent genetic goal, and use consistent methods to determine the trait expression for colonies in each environment (out yard).

As your apiary becomes larger, you can go up to more efficient methods - like Michael Palmer / Brother Adam's super strong "Bee Bomb" finisher colonies, multiple / separate starter colonies, incubators, etc. Labor will probably be your limiting factor, or maybe your calendar. But while we are still small-scale, Joseph Clemens' system sure scales nicely and uses very little resource. It beats walk-away splits by a lot.

I actually go make a list of every frame in the apiary before starting making queens. Each colony gets a sheet listing how many boxes, and what the frames look like in each box. I then make a decision about who is a breeder queen, who is a finisher colony, who is a drone colony, who are support colonies? There is a bit of "what if" being played if I take this many frames away from this colony and nurse bees from that one to make a starter, that many frames from that colony and the one down the hill plus 8 frames of capped brood from nucleus colonies to make a finisher colony (finisher colonies are for larger apiaries - usually more than 20 strong colonies). So I start by making a list of what I have. I may even try to mooch a frame or two from other club members before going on a queen rearing spree. But I know the scale of my operation down to the frame.

How many nuc's can I make? Can I leave a few production hives alone to do their thing? Can I make 2 good queen cells per nuc'? What are the rigid dates to work around in my calendar? How much pollen do I have? How much do I need to buy? Is there enough feed for the nuc's, or should I get more next week? Run an equipment check.

OK now make my plan and stick to it. The first run is always a ZERO! I always screw up the first run of grafts. Its the second run I time everything for. Then try for just a few 11 days later, and 11 days after that, etc.

Once the nuc's get moved up to the 10-frame boxes (after 22 days in the 5-frame nuc's), I don't need drawn comb - they can make do with empty foundationless frames for the other 5 frames to fill out the box, though i prefer to give them 1/2 a foundation centered in the frame with 4 inches or so empty at the sides. They will only draw out wax on a nectar flow. Later in the year, about mid-July or August, forget that, they won't draw it.


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## Michael H. (Oct 28, 2015)

Yet another excellent post KC! :thumbsup:


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

I've been raising queens for a number of years, by different cell building methods. I think size and quality of the queens is deterring by both nature...genetics, and nurture...the way you raise the queens. Genetics alone doesn't mean larger queens, or better queens. Prof. Farrar said that you can raise better queens from less than the best stock but under the best conditions, than you can from the best stocks in the world under less than ideal conditions. 

Raising large queens really has to do with royal jelly management in the cell builder. Maximize the nurse bee population and you maximize the royal jelly available to each queen larva.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

kilocharlie said:


> But while we are still small-scale, Joseph Clemens' system sure scales nicely and uses very little resource. It beats walk-away splits by a lot.


Not hard to do, eh KC, beat walk away splits?


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Especially if you've been reading Michael Palmer's posts!  That's why his thread about his cell building methods became a "sticky" at the top of the queen rearing a breeding section!

A highly-crowded starter / finisher full of well-fed 5- to 15-day old nurse bees is a royal jelly factory with a turbocharger!

A walk-away split is like a game of Russian Roulette. You MIGHT win...


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

How do I produced larger queens?

Too bad I don't read Iranian writing. Do you have an English version?
With minimum bees and hive resources, I tend to scale down a bit to make rather
healthy queens and large cells that are full of RJ. Never that they are shorter than 1 inch !
1. Choose the hive with the most active foragers , the more the better on a good flow either Spring or Autumn flow will do.
2. Find your favorite breeder queen hive and take a frame of eggs/young larvae to make up a 5 frame nuc hive.
3. For the nuc hive: All bees are attached. 2 frames of pollen/nectar one either side. Next to the pollen/nectar frames inside are 2 frames of capped
broods about to hatch in a few days. So the nuc hive configuration is like PBXBP. P = pollen, B = capped broods, X = see #4 below.
4. Then put in the X frame of eggs/larvae from your breeder queen in the middle. If all goes well some queen cells will be draw from this frame in a day or 2.
5. On the original active foragers hive, removed ALL the bee frames into another hive box and stand. Don't forget to take the laying queen with them too.
Leave the original hive the way it was. Then put in the newly made up 5 frames nuc into this original hive. 
All the active foragers will be flying into this 5 frames nuc hive now. <<== An instant population and resource growth.
6. Brush in 1 or 2 more frame of nurse bees into the 5 frames nuc hive from another strong hive if you can afford it.
7. Put another empty hive box over this nuc hive box. Put the top cover on the empty hive box after you are done. 

Tips: Put in a jar of 1:1 syrup and a pound of patty sub. Cut the patty sub. into 2" square pieces to lay them on the top bars.
Cover the nuc hive with a piece of breathable cloth and then put another empty hive box on top. I use the plastic net dish drying cloth to cover them.

More tips: After the 2nd day, go in to check on the X frame. You might see a number of queen cells already started. I like to pick my own queen cells to
keep for further development. So I will choose the cell with the largest base. And only keep 1 or 2 of the biggest cells to keep with lots of RJ in it.
The cells with the smallest developing larva with the most RJ deposited and the most drawn out wax from the base those are the ones I will keep.
Also, use the wax foundation so that you can easily cut out the extra cells if you want to make another nuc hive.

In some years, these queens turn out to be the most beautiful, biggest and healthiest well fed long lived laying queens I've ever seen! I wonder if they have
the big or small ****roaches in Iran?

I call those my yellow ****roach queens:


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

So I've check the 2 nuc hives today.
Found 2 more large queen cells all filled up with RJ and already capped.
Not sure if they will complete their mating flight or not. The winter is
just around the corner with our first real rainy day. The bees are scrambling
to enter their hives as the rains hit.
At least I have found a way to make some large cells and queens.
Going to be interesting to compare the Spring queens with the late Autumn queens 
on this Spring time using the same cell rearing method.

Large queen cells in macro mode:


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Interesting web site Iran Bee, seems like you are already very experienced at queen breeding, just wondering why you ask us? 

Maybe you just want to see how it is done in other countries?

Anyhow to me, the important thing is to have the larvae fully pumped up with royal jelly for the first day or two. Then for the rest of the time also but if the first 24 hours are not good then nothing will make up for that.


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