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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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From:
"James W. Hock" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 27 Aug 2006 13:04:54 -0400
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I've been experimenting with a small scale Queen rearing project.  Not that I need a lot of Queens, or have any real long term plans.  I just have some free time to play with the bees.

I found my old cell builder gets hot after several manipulations, to hot for a yard full of kids and a dog.  The cell builder was capable of raising far more queens than I ever could use and I had to sacrifice part of my crop to keep it going.  I am more interested in a steady stream of good queens than a river.

My new cell builder is a medium box.  I loaded it with emerging brood from several hives.  After a few days I cut the queen cells out and introduced a few grafted cells.  I find the cell builder gets better with practice.

My Queen mother is in her own Medium box, divided in half with a queen excluder.  The Queen mother survived a bad Varroa infestation (no treatments) and still produced a large crop.

My Queen bank is a super on one of the hives.  Over a queen excluder.

Every few days I pull a frame of larva out of the Queen mother hive, graft from it, and put the remaining larva in the bank.  I replace the frame with clean drawn comb.

I graft up to ten larva and put them in the cell builder.  When the surplus larva from the grafting is emerging, I put them in either the Mother hive, the cell builder or what ever hive can use it.  The cell builder seems to handle ten Queen cells well.  There are eight medium frames of emerging brood, a feeder and a small frame of queen cells.  They have nothing else to do but tend the cells.

My whole queen rearing system takes up two medium boxes.  Queen mating, I am still having problems with.  The large hives will rob out any nuc with less than four full medium frames of bees.  I have lost most of my new Queens to my own robbing bees this year.  If there is a drone congregation area in my area, it must be ten feet over my own hives.  I've watch dozens of matings right here.  This is not helping my inbreeding problem.  I'm looking at a outyard for mating.

Jim Hock
Wethersfield, CT.


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