Queen Rearing Workshop in Burgessville Part 2

The beautiful view at John's bee yard

June 19, 2013

And the story of queen rearing continues.

Day 21 - 26:  The fertilized queen has returned from her fertilizing flights to mating hive and is laying eggs.  The hive should be checked at this point to make sure that she has come back safely and is indeed laying.  She can then be caught, marked and caged to be added to a hive that needs a queen.  Marking the queen tells you what year she was born.  There is an international code for marking queens:

Colour          Year ending in

White            1 or 6

Yellow          2 or 7

Red               3 or 8

Green            4 or 9

Blue              5 or 0

Take the first letter of each colour and say "Will You Raise Good Bees?" to remember the colour chart.

We practised picking up drones by the wings and then marking them.  Drones can't sting and are not as "valuable" as queens.

Marking a drone with a paint marker

The queen can then be caged with 5-8 attendant bees (young bees that care for the queen) and some queen candy (fondant).  The candy acts as a slow-release plug.  The cage is added to an existing queenless hive and the workers in the hive eat away the candy.  As they work they slowly become accustomed to the pheremone of the queen and learn to accept her.  When the candy is all eaten the queen can come out, be accepted by the population and start laying.

Queen Cage installed on frame

Plastic and wooden queen cages

It was so cool to be hanging out with a bunch of fellow bee keepers in the beautiful Ontario countryside.  Some of us were new bee keepers and some with many years of experience and we all had different reasons for wanting to learn about queen rearing.  I was there purely to satisfy my curiosity and others wanted to be able to raise their own queens to make sure that they would have a supply when queens were needed or to save money on re-queening.

Beekeepers with trainer (the one in bare arms!)

I will probably never raise queens since I only have two hives but I learned so much about the biology of bees.  I also learned to be more comfortable around the bees...John's bees are very gentle and I was working barehanded the entire day.  The most exciting thing for me was picking up a drone to mark it.  Bare hands are necessary for this fine work.  That is not to say that I will be that cocky always...I do not enjoy being stung!

Proud graduates!

We drove home after the workshop tired and fulfilled.  A great day for all of us!

Queen Rearing Workshop in Burgessville Part 1

June 19, 2013

On Sunday, June 9 I took part in a queen rearing workshop put on by the Ontario Beekeepers Association.  It took place in Burgessville south of Woodstock at John Blyderveen's beeyard.  I got Queen Olivia from him.

I carpooled with 3 other beekeepers from London and the first thing one of them said as she got into the truck was, " Isn't this going to be great?  We can talk about bees all the way down and back and know that we are not boring anyone!"  It was true...we talked bees all the way there.  How fun is that?

John has a business, Oxford Honey and Supplies.  He sells supplies to beekeepers, extracts and bottles honey and also has his own bees.  He builds nucs with imported bees from Australia and sells them. This season he has been struggling as so many of his bees are perishing due to the neonicotinoid pesticide that is being used to pre-treat the corn in the fields around his farm.  He welcomed 24 beekeepers into his beeyard regardless of these losses and let us tear his beehives apart and put them back together multiple times.  Here is a shot of some of his hives he keeps behind the farm house.

John's Bee yard

We registered and were given blue or red name tags to put us into two teams for learning.  I was in the red team...Go Red!  First we did some classroom learning about queen and drone biology, queen rearing equipment, record keeping, timing and other methods of queen rearing.

You may remember from former posts that any larva has the potential of becoming a queen if it is  fed a large amount of royal jelly for a longer period of time by the nurse bees.  You also might remember that the hive has only one queen and she has to go out of the hive to mate with 10-20 drones.  This takes place over 2-3 days.  She then is able to lay 1000-1500 eggs per day and some of them will be drone eggs and most will be worker eggs.  

So we were reminded of all of this in the class. We learned that honey bees will rear queens when the colony is queenless, or the present queen is being replaced or the colony is preparing to swarm.  When these circumstances are in play, the nurse bees will choose a larva that is 1 day old and start feeding it royal jelly.  They will also build out the cell to be able to hold a queen, which is called a queen cup.  

We were there to learn how to produce the queens ourselves.  We learned how to find  a 1 day old larva, pick it out of the cell with a paint brush or Chinese grafting tool, and move it to a  queen cup made of wax or plastic.  I was terrible at it and my grafts certainly all perished.  The larva needs to be put in the queen cup in exactly the same position since its breathing holes are only on the top and it would drown if put in upside down.  A frame of queen cups can hold as many as 45 queen cups.  Here is a picture of a strip of queen cups and a frame of brood we were grafting from.   Next is a frame that  holds the strips of queen cups.

Queen cups for grafting--yellows one are wax, grey ones are plastic

Day 0:  The frame of queen cups is then put into the centre of an empty box with the following frames:

1. Honey & pollen

2. Empty foundation

3. Capped brood

4. Capped brood

5. Pollen

6. The frame of grafted larvae

7. Open Larva

8. Capped brood

9. Capped brood

10. Frame feeder full of 50% syrup

Queen cup frame in cell starter

This is a queenless hive which means the worker bees will be motivated to create queens.  This is called the queenless cell starter.

(Always check all the frames for natural queen cells since that could upset the whole idea...also make sure there is no queen!)  Lots of bees are needed for this operation.  Once this box is set up, the workers will  start drawing out the queen cups to create the large queen cells needed for the queen larvae to grow.  They feed the larvae royal jelly the whole time.

Day 2:  The box is placed on top of a hive that is queen-right (has a healthy queen).  A queen excluder is place between the two boxes to separate the queen from the hive on the bottom and our queen builder.  This is called the queen-right cell finisher.  The workers are spurred on to finish off the queen cells and capping them by knowing that they have a queen and will prepare for swarming behaviour. 

Day 10:  Brush the bees gently off the cells and move each queen cell carefully to a nuc (4 frame hive) or a mini mating box...a tiny hive.  A pheremone strip is added to the tiny hives to encourage the workers to remain in the nuc. 

Pheremone strip

The queen cell is attached to the wax comb by making an indent int the wax and then gently adding the cell.

Mini Mating box---tiny hive!

Queen cell added to comb in mating hive.

Add two cups of bees to mating hive...and do not stir.

Day 12:  The virgin queen emerges from the queen cell.

Day 13 - 17:  The virgin queen grows and prepares for her maiden flights.  It must be sunny, above 18 degrees Celsius and not very windy.

Day 17 - 20:  The virgin queen is mated by 10-20 drones by flying to areas where drones are hanging around waiting for virgins.  If many queens are being raised in the bee yard, the bee keeper will make sure that many drones are being raised as well.

Too many pictures for one post so Part 2 will tell you what happens next!  See you.

A Series of Related Bee Events

Thursday June 27, 2013

In the middle of a meeting at work, I got a call from Bill letting me know that there was a very large swarm in the top of our Manitoba maple...very high up.  I suggested he set up a bait hive on top of a ladder to see if we could entice them into it.

Bait hive on top of ladder

All day Thursday, she stayed up in the tree.  It was rainy all day Friday.  I wrote John the beekeeper to see if he could tell me how long the bees could survive in a rainstorm out in the open.  He wrote me back to let me know that a swarm outside could last 4-5 days.  In fact, it is sometimes easier to entice the swarm into a box in inclement weather.  I rubbed lemon grass on the box and left some in the opening hoping that she could not resist it.  At this point I had no idea where this swarm was from though logic would  say that it must be one of my hives...likely Queen Mab.  My sister was convinced that the swarm was Queen Maggie coming back!  We crossed our fingers.

Saturday was still grey but starting to clear and she was still up in the tree.  Bill and I were very busy that day since we were part of a local garden crawl (much like a pub crawl  including lovely drinks at each garden) and were hosting the bbq later that day.  I had my camera with me all morning in case something happened with the swarm.  Nothing.  Nothing that is until Bill and I were completely immersed in setting up tables and chairs.  During that extremely short period of time, the swarm decided to take off.  What an anti-climax!

We shrugged, took down the bait hive and had a lovely garden party.

PS:  We did catch a cat though! :)

Smokey climbed the ladder to entertain us

Monday July 1, 2013

Happy Canada Day!

I went into Queen Mab to see what had happened and if that swarm on the weekend was her.  What I found was a so-so strong hive with at least 8 capped queen cells.  No Queen Mab to be found.  I really should have gotten a puppy!  Sigh.

Capped queen cells

Queen Mab laid the eggs in the queen cups so that the hive would still have a queen after she left with half of the hive.  The workers fed the larvae with royal jelly for the entire time until they capped the cell.

This swarm was so unexpected since the hive was young but they were extremely healthy and built comb super fast on the open frames.

I wrote Dave and John for advice and to see if they had any mated queens for sale.  Neither of them had any queens and they both said to just let the hive alone to hatch its own queen naturally.

Tuesday July 2, 2013

I got scared by the Queen Mab story so I thought I'd better go into Queen Olivia this morning.  She is very, very strong.  She has lots of honey stored in the top box.  I found her majesty very easily and I didn't find any sign of queen cells or queen cups on any of the frames.  Yippee!

I have decided to do an experiment and have started a third small hive with a couple of frames of honey and brood from Queen Olivia and a frame of brood with 3 queen cells from Queen Mab.  It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.  I closed up Olivia and added another box on top for honey storage.

In case you are wondering what the timetable for these queen cells to move on to being queens in their own right, here you are:

In 7 days from today the queens should emerge.  The queen will strengthen, put her make up on and then head out to be fertilized by 10-20 drones.  She will then come back to the hive and start laying eggs.  That is all she will do for the rest of her life ( 3-5 years) unless she gets sick or accidentally dies...or she swarms due to a unaware beekeeper taking care of her.

In 21-28 days from today I should be seeing eggs in the comb.  I am going to go into both hives with queen cells next Tuesday to see if they have hatched and to see which one got the crown.  The first queen to hatch will go to all the other cells and kill the occupants.  If they hatch at the same time, they will have a duel to the death.  The queen uses her stinger in this duel and she is capable of stinging multiple times.  I am told that she will only use her stinger in this fight and not for stinging humans.  I haven't tested that theory...don't plan on it actually...she is much bigger than a worker!

It seems that beekeeping this season is very dramatic.  Makes for a more interesting blog.

I am on holidays now so gardening and beekeeping are my focus these days...and sleeping in.

Campanula with yellow lilies

Honey bee at sage blossoms

Happy summer!