Hi Garrett, Ted and All: Since both of you are fairly northern beekeepers (Ohio, Michigan) I am curious about how you manage to get young queens that you can use for splitting your colonies around the first of May. I don't think I could possibly rear queens here in PEI in April and I would have just assumed that you were buying your queens except for Garrett's final remark about using artificial insemination to rear stock that might be adapted to this system. I know our spring is delayed here compared with the midwest, but I am still curious as to what techniques you can use to raise queens that early. I just got a price list from F.W.Jones for queens and packages from New Zealand, Australia, and Hawaii (the only places we can import from because we are varroa and tracheal mite free). Queens were $20 to $25 and it was $180 for a 2 kilogram packages of bees with two queens. Sheesh. The queens especially have gone up. Regards, Stan