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.