Those who have been following the discussions here lately know we have
decided once again to raise queens from our own stock.  A few years ago we
did so, but we expanded suddenly, and the also the price of honey went
high enough that it paid us to have someone else sell us queens.

Since then, although we have had some great successes, particularly with
some Australian queens, we have noticed some effects that we attribute to
some of the new stock.  We bought queens from many sources, and some may
not have had as good wintering genes.  Some hives just never seemed to
achieve the populations we expect, and the queens may have been poorly
raised.  Who knows?

Anyhow, we wrestled with the question of whether to use the split-and-run
method whereby we just broke each hive in two and left it to raise a queen
or to select and graft and use cells for splits.  We chose the latter, not
because we believe that emergency queens are inferior (we use queenless
cell builders, so all our grafted cells are 'emergency' cell), but because
we could not spare the extra 10 days to get a laying queen.  We have
contracts that specify hive strength on July 1.  Grafting is a *lot* more
work, and consume resources.

The biggest problem we face is getting cell raising as early as we like.
If is at all cool or rainy, we find that there is not a lot of jelly in
the cells and the bees do not feed the cells as well as we would like, or
accept them as readily -- even when we have pollen cakes on the hives and
syrup in the feeders.  Late April here is cool & rainy.  So can early May
be less than ideal.  We have lots of drones well on the way and don't
expect them to be a problem.

I am wondering what tricks anyone can offer to get good cells in good
numbers early.  We have tried swarm boxes and just been very unhappy with
them.  Our preferred method is a two storey queenless colony for starting
and finishing the cells.  Is there something better for cool weather?

allen
http://www.internode.net/HoneyBee/