Hello All Robert Landolfi wrote asking for information on the above subject. There is an absolutely vast number of approaches to Queen Rearing. I recently came across what I believe to be an elegant method called 'The Hopkins System'. It dates from 1911 and was devised by a Mr I Hopkins from New Zealand. It consists of placing a frame of drawn comb which has NOT been used for brood rearing, into the broodnest of the hive from which you wish to breed. Remove the frame after four days, when it should be well filled with eggs and just hatching larvae. Then select one side as the better side and destroy the eggs on the other side. Then, starting at the top of the frame on the better side, destroy two rows of eggs and leave the next row. Then destroy the next two rows and leave the next row. Continue until you reach the end of the frame. Now start at the first column of cells (the vertical 'rows'), and do the same, destroy two columns and leave the next one etc. You will now end up with eggs over all or most of the surface of the comb with about 12mm of empty space all around each of them. This prepared surface is laid flatwise with cells facing down over the brood nest of a queenless colony which you have designated as a cell builder. Some kind of support is necessary to hold the comb far enough above the frame to leave plenty of room for drawing large queen cells. A shallow super with grooves cut in the end pieces to within 25mm of the bottom is a solution to this. If all conditions are favourable you will secure a maximum number of cells. It should be borne in mind that if too many queen cells are left to be nurtured, that the resources of the cell building colony may be over taxed, and you may end up with a great many mediocre queens. So I daresay the message is do not go for too many cells. When the cells are ripe, a couple of days before emergence, they can be removed with a very slight effort with minimum or no damage, and placed in mating nucs or queenless colonies etc. in the normal way. I got a full write up on this system from Mr G W Hayes Jr, Branch Manager, Dadant and Sons Inc., Wayland, Michigan, USA. In my opinion, and this is elaborated on in the write up, the Hopkins System offers many advantages to a beginner like myself, not the least of which are that it is not necessary to find the breeder queen, or get involved with tricky grafting procedures, or extra paraphernalia. I am going to try it out this year. Sincerely Tom Barrett 49 South Park Foxrock Dublin 18 Ireland Hobbyist beekeeper e mail [log in to unmask] Tel + 353 1 289 5269 Fax + 353 1 289 9940 Latitude 53 Degrees 16' North Longitude 6 Degrees 9' West of Greenwich