Presentation to the Midwestern Beekeepers Association on queen rearing, raising your own honey bee queens for your backyard hobby or small scale apiary. https://www.createspace.com/6663403

1. Grant F. C. Gillard
gillard5@charter.net
Raising Your Own Queens
Why? …and how?

2. 6 Methods
 1. The Doolittle Method
 2. The Procrastinator’s Method
 3. The “I Just” Method
 4. The “I’ll Let” Method
 5. The NICOT Queen Rearing Kit
 6. The Five-Minute Queen Method

3. Why?
Availability
Quality
Cost
Introduction issues of caged,
mated queens*

4. Successful Introductions
Better a nuc than full hive
Queenless for at least 24 hours
Remove all attendants from
cage
Leave corks in, cover candy
Install queen in cage for 4 days
On day five, manually release

5. Why?
Availability
Quality
Cost
Introduction issues of caged,
mated queens*

6. Lesser criteria
Locally adapted, survivors
Select for mite resistance
Avoids banking stress
Avoids shipping stress
You don’t receive dead
queens, file insurance, etc.

7. Why not?
Takes dedicated hives, nucs
Doesn’t take a lot of time
but timing is critical, demanding
schedule is unforgiving
No room for
procrastination
long spells of rainy weather

8. Biggest Hurdles
Not all grafts get capped
Not all capped cells hatch
Not all virgins return from their
mating flights
My wife wanted to take in a
Cardinals baseball game.
It rains the next four days.

9. Timeline for queens
3-1/2 days egg
5-1/2 days larva
7 days pupa
Day 16 queen hatches
5-7 days harden, mate
3-5 days mature, lay eggs
24 – 28 days to production

10. Best Time To Raise Queens
Swarm season
Generous nectar flow
Abundant pollen
Strong colony (cell builder) of
healthy nurse bees

11. 1. The Doolittle Method
Graft (remove) day-old larvae (day
4) to a cell cup
Place cell cups (grafts) in a
queenless cell starter for 48 hours
Move cell cups to a queen-right
cell finisher for 4 to 9 days
Place capped cells in mating nucs
(Day 10 - 15)

12. Advantages
Can be started anytime
Cuts 4 days off the process
Large quantities of queens
can be raised

13. Disadvantages
Can you identify day-old
larvae?
Can you graft without
damaging the larvae?
Need --good eye sight
--a steady hand
--excellent lighting

14. 2. Procrastinator’s Method
Ignore colonies and trigger the
impulse to swarm (but when?)
Hope to catch swarm as it
leaves (when cells are capped)
Hope queen cells are evenly
distributed among the frames.
Divide frames with swarm cells
into nucs.

15. 3. The “I just” method
“I just” pulled two frames of
brood and put them in a nuc.
But we expect a weak, under-
resourced nuc make fantastic
queen cells.
Not completely impossible to
get a good queen.

16. 4. “I’ll let” method
“I’ll let my bees decide when
they need a new queen.”
Run down colonies burdened
with low morale hope to
make a queen.
Lost production waiting

17. 5. NICOT queen rearing kit
Kit costs around $80
Cell grid – where the queen is
confined to lay eggs
Cell cups – where eggs laid
Cell cup holders, cell cup
fixtures – fasten cell cups to top
bars

21. NICOT Process
Place the empty cell grid (no
queen) between two brood
frames to “warm up.”
Leave in for 24 to 48 hours.

22. NICOT Process
Put the front on the cell grid
Find the queen, and place
her in the cell grid
Wait 4 days to see if you see
eggs.
Queen may not lay on the
first day.

24. NICOT Process
Move (“graft”) cell cups with
larvae to a frame (cell cup
holders/fixtures)
Install frame into cell starter
and builder

25. NICOT Challenges
 Cell grid with cell cups needs 48
hours to “warm up.” (B4 queen)
 Queen may not lay eggs right away
 Timing the transfer of day-old larvae
not certain, keep checking
 May require multiple trips to bee
yard to graft cell cups
 May require multiple cell starters

26. NICOT Benefits
 Graft cell cups w/o touching larvae
 Very easy to detect day-old larvae

29. NICOT Disadvantages
Takes longer
2 days to warm up
2 days for fickle queen
Four cell starters per batch,
all one day behind the other
Restraining queen

30. NICOT Disadvantages
110 cells cups, and queen won’t
lay in all of them
Must graft larvae, not eggs
60-70 larvae hatch
40-50 queen cells capped
30-40 queens mated

31. 6. Five-Minute Method
Build up a colony to a minimum
of 8 frames of brood
Expand brood nest to prevent
swarming
Make a “reverse split” (nuc) with
the queen, two frames of brood
and bees

32. What just happened?
A fully-resourced, queenless
colony begins to make queen
cells from age-appropriate
larvae.
Do you trust the bees to
choose the larvae?

33. Return 7 days later
Expect to find capped queen
cells…now what?
Option 1
Squish all but two queen
cells and super for honey
production

34. Return 7 days later
Option 2
Divide the frames with queen
cells between nuc boxes,
allocating frames with cells
between them.
Squish all but two cells per
nuc

37. Return 21 days later
Confirm queen mated by
observing pearly white brood

38. How’s this work?
Bees do all the heavy lifting
Requires a minimal amount
of time from the beekeeper
Allows for weather
disruptions
Limit to 4 to 5 nucs per
existing hive.

39. Five-Minute Method
Remove queen, reverse split
Return 7 days later, squish
all but two cells
Return 21 days later to
confirm mated, laying queen
Virtually goof-proof

43. More Information?
 www.mdasplitter.com
 Mel Disselkoen
 www.cowetabeekeepers.org
 Facebook:
Coweta Sustainable Beekeeping
https://www.createspace.com/6663403