Concepts and Methods for the First-time Queen Rearer, Part 2: Queen Rearing Methods in Three Levels of Difficulty

This article was first published in American Bee Journal, Volume 163 No. 5, in May 2023; a few minor edits have been made to the version here.

Introduction

This article is a continuation of part one which appeared in last April 2023’s American Bee Journal and was published last month on the blog; refer to it to review the basic queen rearing concepts that should be understood before using the following methods.

Level I: Allow the bees to do most of the work and harvest/isolate capped cells

How:

• Start one of two ways:
  1. Create queenless conditions by removing an old queen if she is no longer wanted, or preparing a queenless nuc, thus prompting the bees to create emergency cells. At the time of queen removal, the colony must have an open brood frame available with eggs and young larvae —  either its own or provided from another colony. They will build the emergency queen cells from these young larvae, so ensure the eggs/young larvae they have are from the breeder colony.
  2. If emergency, supersedure, or swarm cells are discovered in a colony with otherwise desirable traits, take advantage of these natural events to obtain new queens. If a colony is undergoing swarm preparations, perform a split as usual to retain those bees, but leave the rest of the swarm cells alone and allow things to continue.
• In both scenarios above, the colony will start many queens, but can only use one. Instead of allowing the extra queens to go to waste, take advantage of the situation and either harvest most of the cells after capping or cage the capped cells and harvest the virgin queens as they emerge. Ensure that at least one queen is left with the original colony. Harvesting the queen cells must be done with care to avoid damaging the fragile queen larvae, especially in emergency cells that may be hard to cut around; caging the cells and harvesting the virgin queens as they emerge might be preferable.
• Give the harvested capped queen cells or virgin queens to queenless hives or mating nucs.

Advantages:

Since no special equipment and few manipulations are required, this method is an inexpensive and easy way to obtain a handful of new queens with minimal effort from the beekeeper. There is an added benefit of the brood break that occurs in queenless colonies, which sets back mite reproduction and provides a good opportunity for oxalic acid treatment, if desired.

Level 2: Non-grafting techniques for queen rearing

How:

• Choose a non-grafting technique to obtain young larvae. Two options (of many) are:
  1. The Miller Method:

1. 1. 1. a. Prepare an empty brood frame by installing a sheet of foundation and cutting triangles on the foundation, to allow queen cells to hang vertically off the edges.
      2. b. Move the queen, lots of young workers, and two frames of capped brood from the breeder colony into a nuc.
      3. c. Place the prepared frame with cut- triangle foundation between the two frames of capped brood.
      4. d. Fill the rest of the nuc with frames of honey and pollen on either side of the brood frames.
      5. e. As soon as cells are drawn on the prepared cut- triangle frame, the queen will start laying eggs in them.
      6. f. After 7 days, remove the prepared frame and trim comb away until cells with 1-2- day-old larvae are left on the lower edges of the remaining comb. Give this frame to the cell builder colony to build queen cells around the larvae.
   2. No-graft queen rearing kits (such as the EZI-queen or Nicot systems) are composed of plastic comb boxes with a removable queen excluder and holes into which removable cups can be attached.

a. Install cups on the comb box. Place the box in the breeder colony to be cleaned and polished. Prepare the queen cell bar by attaching cup holders to the bar.

b. The next day, introduce the breeder queen into the comb box and add the queen excluder and plug, trapping her in. She will lay eggs in the plastic cups.

c. After 3 days, release the breeder queen from the box back into her colony.

d. Remove the cups containing newly- hatched larvae and attach to the cup holders on the cell bar.

e. Place the queen- rearing frame with cell bar in the cell builder colony to build queen cells around the larvae.

• One day after transferring the queen-rearing frame to the cell builder colony, check for successful takes.
• Transfer the queen rearing frame with successful takes to the cell finisher colony and revert the cell builder colony back to queenrightness (or remove the divider from the Cloake board to convert the cell builder into the cell finisher).
• 8 days after transferring to the finisher colony, harvest or cage capped queen cells. Give harvested capped queen cells to queenless hives or mating nucs or wait for virgin queens to emerge into the cages and give them to the queenless hives or mating nucs.

Advantages:

These non-grafting methods are more hands-on than just harvesting extra cells the bees naturally make, but they can be easier for a beginner than grafting so they’re a good mid-level way to rear some queens.

The biggest advantage with non-grafting methods is that the beekeeper doesn’t have to search brood frames for the correctly-aged larvae or risk damage to larvae by transferring them with grafting tools. In non-grafting methods, the age of the larvae can be very accurately known and some, like the Miller method, don’t require any special equipment. Non-grafting methods can result in a lot of queen cells —  over 100 queens could be raised in one go with the queen-rearing kits! Take care not to make more queens than can be handled, though; unless they will be sold as queen cells or virgins, each queen will need its own mating nuc to mate from.

Level 3: Graft larvae into queen cups

How:

• Fit an empty queen rearing frame with bars and queen cups.
• Two days prior to grafting, prepare the cell builder colony.
• The day before grafting, shake bees from every brood frame in the cell builder and remove any queen cells they started.
• Optional: Harvest royal jelly from any removed queen cells and store in the freezer for priming cups with royal jelly on grafting day.
• Optional: On grafting day, prime the queen cell cups by covering the bottoms of the cups with the stored royal jelly diluted with up to 25% deionized water.
• On grafting day, move a frame of larvae younger than 3 days old, and ideally younger than 24 hours old, from the breeder colony to the grafting area. Keep the brood from drying out by covering the brood frame and the queen cell bars with a damp towel while working, uncovering areas and cups only when they are needed.

• Using a flashlight and magnifying glass, locate 1-2 day old larvae and use a grafting tool to move them into the prepared plastic queen cell cups in the same position they were in before transferring.

• Graft larvae one by one until the desired number of cups have larvae in them.
• Insert the queen cell frame into the cell builder colony.
• Give the brood frame back to the breeder colony.
• One day after transferring the queen rearing frame to the cell builder colony, check for successful takes.
• Transfer the queen- rearing frame with successful takes to the cell finisher colony and revert the cell builder colony back to queenrightness (or just remove the divider from the Cloake board to convert the cell builder into the cell finisher).
• Eight days after transferring to the finisher colony, harvest or cage capped queen cells. Give harvested capped queen cells to queenless hives or mating nucs or wait for virgin queens to emerge into the cages and give them to the queenless hives or mating nucs.

Advantages:

Although this is the most hands-on technique and requires decent eyesight and practice, some studies have shown that the Doolittle method used here results in superior queens that are larger at emergence, have larger diameters of spermatheca, and have more spermatozoid than queens raised by natural methods (Dodologlu et al. 2004). There’s also a major fun factor involved with hand selecting larvae and seeing them grow into queens.

After queen emergence: the mating nuc

The mating nucs should be prepared 1-2 days before needed. One or two queen cells can be transferred into each mating nuc a couple of days before the queens will emerge, or caged virgins can be carefully introduced after emergence (as in any queen introduction, leave them caged for a couple of days if the workers appear violent toward her; see May 2022’s American Bee Journal article on introducing virgin queens for some techniques (Bawden, 2022)). The mating nuc is used as a home for the queen while she matures and mates. It is recommended to restrain from peeking for a couple of weeks to avoid risk of accidentally killing or losing her. Once capped worker brood is observed in the mating nuc, the beekeeper knows the queen has returned from her mating flight and the efforts to raise a local, homegrown queen have been successful. Observe the quality of her laying pattern and use her as needed, then celebrate with a nice dinner out (or fancy new bee equipment you’ve had your eye on) using all that cash saved by not purchasing queens this year.

Flow Chart

Feel free to download and use this flow chart covering each of the methods outlined in this article to keep all your queen rearing steps on track:

References and Further Reading

Bawden, Trevor. Virgin Queens Take the Throne Best. American Bee Journal 162:5. Pages 507-511. 2022.

Dodologlu, A., Emsen, B., & Gene, F. 2004. Comparison of Some Characteristics of Queen Honey Bees (Apis mellifera L.) Reared by Using Doolittle Method and Natural Queen Cells. Journal of Applied Animal Research 26:2     . Pages 113-115. 2004.

Ostrofsky, Morris. Graft-Free Queen Rearing. 2019. http://openbooks.library.umass.edu/radicalizethehive/wp-content/uploads/sites/15/2019/08/Graft-Free-Queen-Rearing-Morris-Ostrofsky.pdf

The Beeyard. Queen Rearing Calendar. < https://thebeeyard.org/queen-rearing-calendar/>