Hi all
Back in the 1980s I had a small business raising queen cells for large scale beekeepers, up to about a thousand per week. One of my customers told me he had taken to setting up his nucs and letting them raise their own instead of buying them from me. I thought they were pretty cheap at $2.00 but whatever. 

Since then, I have seen many people offer queen rearing workshops to small timers and have that that the techniques for raising queen cells are more suitable to large scale than small. I wonder how many beekeepers use nucs to raise queens. To be clear, I am talking about a good four standard frame nuc, although the minimum size could be less.

Abstract Can. Ent. 107: 705-709 (1975)
Queen honey bees were reared in the laboratory in cages by small groups of worker bees; the
queens were then introduced to small nuclei to test their acceptance, mating ability, brood
patterns, and brood production. Later, certain morphological and anatomical characters were
measured. No significant differences in sealed brood, total brood, or in selected morphological
characters were found between control queens and those reared in the laboratory. The possible
economic aspects of this cage rearing method are discussed.

Lai's (1969) method for rearing queens, using small numbers of caged worker
bees, was adapted as follows: 400 caged bees were kept queenless in an incubator for 24 h at 35"C,
and 40-60% relative humidity. The caged worker bees were fed water, 60% sugar solution, pollen 
and honey mixture (1:3 by volume), and honey.

Comments:
If 400 bees can raise a normal queen in a cage, then it stands to reason that nucs of 2 to 4 frames should be able to as well

PLB

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