At 01:04 PM 8/27/2006, you wrote:
>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.

You may want to try using the Cloake Board method or using a smaller hive to raise the cells.  I've found that when using the cloake board the bees are far less aggressive, probably because they are only truely queenless for a couple days at a time.  

You can also use a smaller hive to raise queen cells.  Even a 5 frame nuc.  They key is the number of young workers vs. the number of queen cells you are raising.  I think Steve Tabor 'Breeding Super Bees' put it at about 400 workers per queen cell (or 200 young workers).  Thus a strong 5 frame nucs can raise 10-15 good queen cells.  I've done this several times when I raised fewer queens and it works well, then you can just turn around and use it for a mating nuc after a couple cycles (when the bees get too old).  

>  I find the cell builder gets better with practice.

I've noticed this as well.  The first graft in a cell builder always seems not to take as well as the following grafts, at least using a queenless cell builder.  It doesn't seem to mater if they have been queenless 1 day or longer.  I haven't noticed this problem with the Cloake board method.

> I have lost most of my new Queens to my own robbing bees this year. 

What do you use for mating nucs?  How big is the entrance?  The first year I raised queens I used 5 frame nucs (and 2 way split hive bodies) with standard bottom front entrances (3/8" high the width of the hive).  Robbing was a big problem later in the year around August when we tend to have a bit of a dearth.  I've since switched to 5 frame nucs that have a single  7/8" diameter hole as an entrance.  This has eliminated the problem of robbing completely even in weak hives with 1-2 frames of bees.  The 5 frame nucs do have a partially screened bottom so that overheating isn't a problem when moving them or with strong nucs mid summer.  Even with a strong over populated 5 frame nuc that needs splitting, the single entrance hole has been adequate.  (Plans can be seen here: http://www.honeyrunapiaries.com/beekeeping_plans.phtml )


> 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.

Inbreeding is most visible in the brood pattern.  The more inbreed the queen, the more spotty the brood pattern is due to the sex alleles.  An outyard would only fix this if there were other hives (with different alleles) in the vicinity of that yard.  For small operations a practical fix is to bring in a new breeder from an outside source each year.  You wouldn't need to raise all your new queens from this breeder, just enough to add her to your mix.  This really applies to many (most?) large queen rearing operations as well.  I've been told that many only have a few breeders they use each year, which means that even though they raise thousands of queens and have hundreds or thousands of hives, there is relatively little genetic diversity.  That's 10s of thousands of queens reared just from 2-5 queen mothers.

Of course it's not practical for many of use to purchase expensive II queens for breeders from reputable programs that maintain a very diverse gene pool.  So most of us end up purchasing open mated queens, see how they do over the season and winter, then breed them the next year if found suitable.  But when doing so you need to take into consideration the above and possible order just a couple queens from different producers to ensure different queen mothers rather than a lot of queens from just one (unless of course you find a breeder that can ensure the queens you receive came from different mothers.  There are a few that can, but I suspect most won't)

-Tim

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