Peter, Allen, et al.

Thanks for your timely, insightful comments.

I am interested in a hand-off, queen-rearing procedure because it appears
that the more we press our queens to be a super stock [SMR, NWC, or a
Communist?], the more failure we seemed to experience [Search *Queen
Failure* in any archive].

Sure, Hopkins’ Method works but you need to have a larger-than-standard
super to lay down an egg-laden frame, flat horizontally, a problem
everyone experiences yet nobody mentions.

Of course, done expertly, grafting works fine.  But I am wondering the
viability of emergency queens from a split, made up of at least five
frames minimum, during a flow, simply because that particular procedure
seems to warrant a natural process best—-other than harvesting swarm or
supercedure cells, which is tricky during a non-swarm season.

Given the delicate-handling of eggs and other factors involved in grafting—
-such as the moisture in the air, priming the cells with royal jelly,
transferring them, harvesting the cells, transporting to another yard,
putting in the nuc boxes, mating the virgins, shooing the drone-eating
birds [martins in particular] in the neighborhood, marking them (for
some), harvesting them in queen-cages, and worrying about myriad of other
variables, such as tools, your eyesight, Feng Sui, etc.—it seems this
procedure involves just too many man-handling, thus increasing the odds
against an excellent prodigy.  Jenter system, too, must confine the queen
in a jail, which must be stressful, not to mention, unnatural.  [Yes, I
realize emergency cells are, too, unnatural]

A *satisfactory* [as Allen used the term judiciously], not perfect, queen
from emergency cells will work for many hobbyists who do not possess the
expertise and the dexterity of a queen breeder, for they, too, can cull,
though not as efficiently, their own stock that withstood the onslaught of
bee pestilence.  It’s free.  Most important, this procedure will let the
bees do what they do best under the circumstance.  Sure, there will be
duds, just as there will be, among the queens you paid an arm and a leg
from a reputable breeder.  Hence, my initial thread.

Cheers,


Yoon

In Shawnee, OK, ugly drones are flying already, and daffodils, red maples,
flowering quince, and Bradford pears are blooming.  Spring has sprung,
indeed.

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