Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => REQUEENING & RAISING NEW QUEENS => Topic started by: Nock on December 11, 2019, 06:36:02 pm
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If you were only wanting a few Queens say 4-6. Would it be as easier to just shake some nurse bees in a box. Leave them Queenless then introduce a frame with eggs? How many QC would they make normally? Then just cut them out once capped. I?m really interested in Queen rearing but no more than I would need would this be best option. Or should I just buy the equipment say like Nicot. Thanks
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Nock - I've tried several methods to raise queens.
The method you mention - works, usually. I used this route for 4 years.
However, I found (this year) what I personally think is a better approach. I pull the queen, some capped brood, stores, and some nurse bees, out of a strong hive and into a Nuc. Then I let the strong hive make QC'S. After the QC'S are capped, I transfer them to new hives, and reintroduce (via newspaper combine) the original queen. I get more qc's this way, and the queens seem to be higher quality. Fwiw.
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On a average how many do they make?
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On a average how many do they make?
From my very limited experience - from 5 to 20 QC's.
When I did it the way you describe, I got from zero to 3 QC's per attempt.
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I have been meaning to try grafting for queens for at least 3 years now and just haven't found the time to do it. I have been making splits like coolbees stated. If you pull the queen from a strong hive you will have lots of queen cells produced. I don't cut the queen cells out. I just us each frame with cells on it for nucs. Sometimes the frame may have a half dozen cells on it. I have had several hives produce more than 20 queen cells.
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Doing it the way cool and cao described, you can make as many queens as you have time to build new boxes for. Building extra equipment is the main concern when advancing your apiary. Seems there is never enough extra woodware. Speaking of, I have got to get back in the shop for this very reason.
Phillip
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I think this is the simplest:
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesafewgoodqueens.htm
If you compress the hive (remove any empty boxes and shake bees out the next boxes until they are overflowing with bees and give those boxes to other hives) then you can insure they are well fed and a lot of cells will be started. You can put the old queen back after you remove the cells.
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Thanks