Breeding queens

At four or five years of age, a queen becomes sterile. As a rule, however, workers plan to replace the aging mother of their colony before any signs of weakness appear. This replacement is either done by swarming or less frequently by supersedure. If the whole colony is to be retained or better still increased, it is up to the beekeeper to control this situation by playing a decisive role,. And at the same time he can make the most of the dynamic energy provided by the newly-emerged queens.

Do beekeepers need to breed queens ?

The answer is without exception - YES! Every beekeeper should know how to breed quality queens, and providing he can draw on selection techniques established by experienced and well-known breeders, there is no reason why he should fail.

How to go about breeding queens

Selected queens can be bred from:

- quality queens from the home apiary
- stock from reputed breeders

Methods for queen rearing

There are a large number of different ways of breeding queens, all of which have been used with varying degrees of success for the past few decades by a minority of beekeepers. The rest of the beekeeping world (the majority) still leave matters of selection to nature.
Whatever the chosen method, the basic material remains the same: larvae, drones and top quality nurse bees.

Larvae

Larvae should always originate from suitable stock, selected by the beekeeper to fulfill his personal criteria for queens. Their exact age must be known before handing them over to the nurse bees.
Handling larvae is a very delicate job. It requires great precision and very acute vision (or binocular-style magnifying glasses). Success is influenced by temperature, light and humidity, and particular attention should be paid to all three conditions. Insufficient care frequently leads to rejection of larvae by the nurse bees.

The nurse colony

Ideally there should be a profusion of young bees, made up of the colony's bees plus extra bees brushed off 4 or 5 additional frames). This mass of young bees ensures an abundant source of quality royal jelly. The hive must be literally overflowing with bees, to the point where it appears completely overcrowded.

Small-scale queen breeding (25 or less)

Larvae are raised in the same colony from start to finish

Large-scale queen breeding (over 25)

Breeders use specially prepared colonies to start rearing larvae. These colonies are called starters. Once the larvae have been accepted (visible by a small rim of wax on the cell-cup), they are transferred to finishing colonies or finishers.

Step by step queen rearing

Simple method without grafting

The best colony in the apiary is chosen. Replace two drawn-out combs from the center of the brood nest by two frames of foundation, separated from each other by a drawn-out comb. As soon as the new cells are drawn-out, the queen will start laying in the newly-built cells. Next, remove the queen and artificially feed the colony a syrup of 1/3 water - 2/3 honey, to make sure the nurse bees are in peak condition for queen rearing. Keep feeding the bees until all the royal cells on the new combs (and anywhere else for that matter) are fully drawn-out and sealed. You now have at your disposal a large number of sealed queen cells. When they are 13 days old, they can be transferred to mating hives or queenless colonies.
Once emerged and their mating flights successfully accomplished, the new queens will be ready to lay.

Grafting method

The transfer of young, selected larvae from worker cells into wax or artificial cell cups is called "grafting".
Grafting is the only way of obtaining queen cells of identical age, and this is of the utmost importance: to successfully breed a maximum number of queens, they need to emerge at the same time, otherwise they will kill each other.
The possibility of controlling simultaneous emergence explains why grafting has met with such popularity for over the past hundred years.
Thanks to their ingenious inventors, breeders can also use the Jenter and Cupularve systems.

Age of larvae

What is the ideal age to graft a larva ?

As young as possible. In fact, as soon as it can be discerned by the naked eye and can be removed reasonably easily. This means about 12 hours after hatching when the larva is almost straight and only just visible in its pool of royal jelly at the bottom of the cell..
As the queen generally lays in concentric circles, once a few larvae of the right age have been spotted, it is fairly easy to follow the circle to find others of the same age. But this is not an absolute rule, and the pattern can be totally different if the queen returns to lay in cells which have recently been cleared of nectar or pollen. In this case larvae in adjoining cells can be of varying ages.
The ideal situation is to choose larvae from a colony with an artificially reduced brood nest.

Method

A few days beforehand, to avoid wasting time, identify the combs which will provide larvae
of the right age. Although young larvae are resistant to cold (temperatures as low as 6° C), pupae are easily affected by the cold. If the chosen comb contains brood in pupation, grafting should be carried out in a room with a temperature of 18°C to 20°C.

Equipment

The following items should be prepared before starting:
- cell cups
- cell bars
- grafting frame
- nurse colony and starter
Cell cups are artificial cells, made of wax or plastic, shaped like the rough outline of emergency queen cells found in hives in spring.

Fixing the cell cups

Cell cups can be fastened straight onto the cell-cup bars with melted wax or pushed into specially manufactured cell-cup holder strips, already fixed to the cell-cup bars.

Frames for cell-cup bars

The frame is an ordinary empty frame which has been prepared to take cell-cup bars by either inserting a piece of crimped metal or making a notch for the end of each bar.
If using crimped metal, the bars need to be a bit shorter than the interior of a frame, and a bit longer, if slotting them into a notch.
They should be 8 mm to 10 mm thick and 24 mm wide. If artificial cells are to be fixed in place the bars are dipped in melted wax. Although not strictly necessary when using manufactured cell-cup bars fitted with holders, dipping the bars in melted wax encourages the bees to build artificial queen cells in cold weather or periods with poor honeyflow.

Number of cell cups per bar - number of bars per frames

This depends on:

- the quantity of queens desired
- whether or not a starter colony is used
- the quality of the nurse colony.

Always rear a few more cells than are actually needed to compensate for "rejected" cells. A reasonable choice would be 12 cups (on wooden bases) per bar and 2 bars per frame.

Space betwen bars

If the cell cups are fastened directly to the bar, 4 cm should be left between each bar.
If cup holders are used, this should be increased to 7 cm.
If the space between the lower bar and bottom of the frame is over 7 cm, an additional bar needs to be placed at a distance of 7 cm to prevent the bees from building burr-comb (unwanted comb) between the cells and the bottom of the frame.

Grafting tools

Various grafting tools, in plastic or steel, are available from beekeeping suppliers,.
The spoon-shaped end used for picking up the larva needs to be smooth and fine enough to slide gently under the larva and then to transfer it easily into the cell cup. The handle of a good grafting tool should be slightly off center to avoid obstructing the beekeeper's view of the bottom of the cell during grafting.
In fact, all that aside, there are no bad grafting tools. With a little practice and a steady hand one can graft with almost any type of makeshift instrument. However, good eyesight is very important because larvae of the right age are tiny.

Two important prerequisites

- lighting
- eyesight

The ideal lighting for grafting comes from a cool source such as fluorescent tubes or, better still, optical fibers.
If using an ordinary incandescent bulb, it must not exceed 40 watts.
Never use halogen lamps - they dry out larvae quicker than they can be grafted.
Finally, a pocket torch or a battery-powered miner's head-lamp will do the trick.
In fine weather, grafting can be done outside by natural light but care must be taken not to expose the larvae to direct sunlight as this will kill them.

Good eyesight is obviously important but for those with poor eyesight, this can be corrected by using a pair of binocular-style magnifying glasses. Short sighted people should, of course, graft without their glasses. Lastly, those with serious eyesight problems (eg color-blindness or astigmatism) can always opt for another technique, such as the Jenter or Cupularve method.