Queen rearing system

[mikeaegina]

Has anyone tried the nicot system and the jenter system for raising queens? Which is better, and what differencies in use they have? Thank you.

[Michael Bush]

Two brands of the same thing. I haven't used one before but am in the process right now. I put the cage in for the bees to start drawing on it.

[txbeeguy]

I have tried the Jenter system on a limited scale. So far, I've found it very easy to use but also very difficult to obtain good "end results". I have tried it perhaps six or eight times over the last three years and so far have only obtained ONE queen to full maturity (meaning, she emerged, got mated and began laying eggs).
I have read and re-read the instructions and independent articles on how to use this Jenter system, time and again (just about got the whole thing memorized by now). I have critically reviewed the procedures I've used and found them exactly in alignment with every technique and recommendation made by the instructions (and the 'helpful hints' of the various independent articles).
I still have problems yielding queens; and furthermore, I seem to loose them at roughly the same step each time I've tried. That step is, once the eggs are put in the cell raising colony - that is, when the eggs are transfered from the plastic Jenter box onto the bar holding multiple cell cups. All looks well at this point, the hive is crowded with young nurse bees, the transfer was done in short order and at warm temperature with moist air present, etc. etc. I close up this hive and when the correct elasped time has come, I go check and the cells haven't been drawn out. The eggs have apparently all been removed and of course, the result is: no queen cells!
I've asked on the internet several times and about the best response I've gotten is from some guy who says he's experienced the same thing. Don't get me wrong, I've received some replys but they are typically just repeating what the instructions have to say - and, like I've said, I'm following the instructions (to the letter!). Nothing I've come across explains why the bees are taking the eggs out of the cells cups (if, that's in fact, what's happening). By the time I check the hive (according to the time table), there are no eggs or young larvae (alive or dead) in the queen cells cups. The queen cell cups are clean and very empty! I do see on some of the cell cups where the bees started to draw out wax for the queen cell but this wax rarely is ever below the collar of the cup holder. It's like on a certain signal, the bees have just suddenly decided to take all the eggs away and not raise any queens.

[Michael Bush]

Do you put them next to open brood? That is touted as a useful thing to do. I had the same experience as you and am about to try it again. I wax coated the cell cups (not the plugs, which I rubbed in wax) this time in the hopes it would help with acceptance.

Another method of cell building is to make a swarm box. Basicly you make a shaken swarm with lots of nurse bees and a few of frames of pollen and honey and NO brood. You wait at least a couple of hours and then you add the queen cells and the bees. The theory is that the queenless bees will build the queen cells because they know they are queenless by now and have not brood to care for.

Then after the cells are started you move them to a finisher hive. Maybe this extra step would be worth it.
http://www.gobeekeeping.com/Smithqueens.htm

[Hook]

I have heard this before. I, myself graft young larvae into cell cups. Is there anyway you can let the eggs hatch? If you can do that, you are basically doing the same thing as grafting. Important points to remember:

1. Lots of young bees
2. Some open brood, but not too much, because you don't want to draw the young bees attention from your grafts.
3. Make sure they are well fed. I have been using honey, but sugar water will probably work.
4. Make sure there is pollen coming in, or provide an alternative.
5. Most importantly, make them "want" to swarm, and "know" that they are queenless.
6. Plastic cups are alright, but I have better sucess with wax cups. If you are using wax cups though, put them into the hive for a day or so. This makes them smell right, and the bees will polish the bottom.

Maybe I just hit your problem. Are you using the same hive to get eggs from, and start? If not, bees can be fussy about how the cups smell, and might not accept them.
Personally though, I think I would let them hatch. You will just have to make the determination as to when they hatched. The time table is 4 days, but a couple of hours won't really matter. Bees feed the hatchlings royal jelly right in the beginning. That is the under 24 hour threshold that grafter need to watch for. If the larvae is slightly, and I mean slightly larger than an egg, get it to a cell bar.

Just my opinion......



------------------
Dale Richards
Dal-Col Apiaries
Drums, PA

[Michael Bush]

>I have heard this before. I, myself graft young larvae into cell cups. Is there anyway you can let the eggs hatch? If you can do that, you are basically doing the same thing as grafting.

Last time I let them hatch. I transfered a few that hadn't hatched yet to see what would happen but all of them were rejected.

According to all the directions I've seen, you are supposed to let them hatch first.

[txbeeguy]

Now, both you guys have come up with a line of thinking that I was considering. That is, to let the "very young" larvae get just a little bit bigger before putting them in the cell raising hive. In that manner, I was thinking the bees would be less likely to move things around and would (hopefully) just start/continue feeding the royal jelly.

I don't have my notes here in front of me, but I think the "instructions" call for you to make this transfer at about the 90th hour (after egg laying) - so this equates to making the cell transfer just before the eggs hatch out (going from memory here). So if you wait just a little longer and go ahead and let the eggs hatch out, then do the transfer, perhaps you'd have better acceptance? (It would kinda be a "forced" acceptance since the bees wouldn't/couldn't move the young larvae as easily as they are perhaps moving the eggs).

[txbeeguy]

Another thought is that, even if you allow the larvae to get a little bigger before you do the transfer, maybe the bees aren't moving them at all...maybe they're just eating them! (a little different form of "rejecting" them)...

[Michael Bush]

What I read says the "window" is 72 to 90 hours after they are layed. If they are "C" (half circle) shaped then they are too old.

[Michael Bush]

http://www.gobeekeeping.com/Appliedqueenrearing.htm

[Michael Bush]

I just did a transfer. I put the queen in the cage Saturday at 11:00 am. I took her out Sunday at 9:00 am. I got 19 good looking larvae, 40 standing eggs and about 20 empty ones. They were all full but one or two this morning. I made a shaken swarm for a cell builder with some pollen and honey paste on wax paper and three frames of honey and pollen (with just a few emerging brood because they were the only frames with much pollen on them). I put 20 queen cups in, three frames of pollen/honey, two empty frames and I put the Jenter frame in to see if they will finish the standing eggs. I'll check them in the morning and see if they hatched. It's an 8 frame medium box.

Hope this works.

[WineMan]

Dont give up trying to get this system to work.....keep trying things.

I just graft and have never used it but queen rearing can be a delight or a nightmare......one time you cant do anything right and the next day you do nothing wrong. Sometimes I will have zero grafts accepted and the next time all are accepted. There are alot of subtle things that come into play from honey flow to rain, etc. But two things that I will restate from above.....(1) if you are using anything plastic, make sure it has been placed into the hive hours in advance and often times the cups are sprayed with a sugar syrup. (2) the most consistent way I have seen to get cells accepted is with a swarm box that has 1 and only 1 frame of open brood given to it for a couple of hours and then has that frame replaced with the cells.

Not really knowing how this system works (but I get the idea it has cells that the queen lays in and then you move the whole cell instead of grafting the larvae out and into a cell) I would suggest you continue to work on the idea of letting the eggs hatch prior to moving them in the cup to your cell builder and I would personally shoot for 12 hours from time of hatching. The old Taber research always said there was no benefit in moving eggs compared to young larvae but that the younger the larvae the better. The younger the larvae I use, the slower the bees are to work the cells in the beginning but the end result is better. When you push upto the 24 hour mark, they seem to start adding royal jelly much quicker.......I would guess it is because the clock is ticking away at that point.

You should be able to tell within 12 hours of giving them to the cell builer/swarm box if they are working on them. By 24 hours, there will be approximately an 1/8th inch of wax drawn off the plastic cup.

[Michael Bush]

Did my transfer last night at about 8:00 pm (still plenty light here). Put them in a swarm box with honey, pollen and a little capped brood (because it was the only frames with lots of pollen). Checked it this morning at 7:00 am. The larave are dried out and being ignored. This is getting frustrating.

[txbeeguy]

Michael,
It sounds like you and I are (have been) failing at the same step in the process. I'm at a total loss and have been for quite awhile now.
As wineman suggested, I have sprayed the cell cups with a sugar solution (in order to attract the nurse bees to the cups). I have also tried "brand new" plastic cups as well as plastic cups that had been in the colony before (for the preceived, potential odor problem). Nothing seems to help. Again, I'm at a total loss as to why the bees don't immediately jump on these queen cell cups and start feeding the young larvae and drawing out the queen cells.
I keep thinking that I'm missing some really basic, fundamental reason that causes the bees to reject these potentially "life saving" ("colony saving") queen cells! And like I said, I'm following just about every recommendation I've ever read. I've even varied the time they've been queenless from about two hours to about a week - nothing seems to work! (like you observed, pretty frustrating)

[Michael Bush]

>It sounds like you and I are (have been) failing at the same step in the process. I'm at a total loss and have been for quite awhile now.

I'm not sure what to try next. I bought three more books on queen rearing. Part of it is confusing because of the contradictory advice in the ones I already have. Some say you want no brood in the cell builder. Some say you want LOTS of brood in the cell builder. Some say you can use a queenright colony for the cell builder (which I have NOT tried because it doesn't sound possible). I have tried a queenless hive and a swarm box. I put cells bars in five hives last time that had been queenless various amounts of time and all were ignored. This time I did the swarm box.

>As wineman suggested, I have sprayed the cell cups with a sugar solution (in order to attract the nurse bees to the cups). I have also tried "brand new" plastic cups as well as plastic cups that had been in the colony before (for the preceived, potential odor problem). Nothing seems to help.

I tried putting them in the hive ahead of time. I tried wax coating them. I haven't found the secret.

>Again, I'm at a total loss as to why the bees don't immediately jump on these queen cell cups and start feeding the young larvae and drawing out the queen cells.

Beats me.

>I keep thinking that I'm missing some really basic, fundamental reason that causes the bees to reject these potentially "life saving" ("colony saving") queen cells! And like I said, I'm following just about every recommendation I've ever read. I've even varied the time they've been queenless from about two hours to about a week - nothing seems to work! (like you observed, pretty frustrating)

I have varied it also. This last time was a swarm box that was queenless for about three hours.

Anyone out there have advice?

[Hook]

Try making wax cups. I used a 3/8 dowel, and sanded it down to about 5/16. I dip it in cold water, then wax, then cold water, but not quite as far in the wax. I do this several times until it fits into my plastic holder. Then after you get them all done, put them into your cell builder for a day. The bees will do their thing to them. Now, put it into the Jenter cage. Now the queen lays into wax, that smells like the cell builder. This should help. But like which has been stated before, bees can be really funny. I have had 30% acceptance, to nearly 100%, doing the exact same things.
Also, I graft at night, I think this way, the bees are not flying, and it kinda forces them to look at the larvae for a few hours. I have hads sucess grafting in the morning too though. I guess it is hard to say.

Good luck!


------------------
Dale Richards
Dal-Col Apiaries
Drums, PA

[Michael Bush]

I may try the wax cups. I rubbed mine in wax and put the whole Jenter cage in the hive for a few days before confining the queen, but not the cell builder. I transfered mine last night just before it got dark and had them in a confined swarm box but they rejected most of them. I looked again this afternoon at the jenter eggs and there were some more, so I transfered another 20 cups. Also I looked again at the ones I gave them last night and there is at least one or two that they are feeding (out of 20). Maybe they will try the ones I gave them today.

[WineMan]

Hey Guys

You both mention that the larvae seems to be drying out. I seem to have the same thing happen when grafting under certain conditions. This is just a casual observation but it seems to be worst with the following: when moving very small larvae...that which has just hatched...matter of 2-4 hours..... not having much if any royal jelly when making the transfer and giving to a cell builder which is underpopulated.

I generally dont prime cell cups but I dont dry graft either. Now some folks have good success dry grafting but I think they use wax cups often. Probably some also use plastic.

One thing that almost always helps me is making sure that the just hatched egg/larvae is sitting on a beautiful bed of royal jelly. That way I transfer jelly with the larvae and it doesnt dry out and the jelly quickly attracts the nurse bees. In order to have that type of jelly, you need the frame of eggs to hatch in something that is as overcrowded as a swarm box or cell builder before you even intervene to graft.

I always have breeder queen in a nuc box limited down to a few frames for laying. As soon as she lays the frame that I intend to graft from, the frame is transferred to a cell builder. As soon as the larvae is about 8-12 hours, I graft. If the colony caring for the frame is in real good shape and has fresh nectar and pollen, there will be ample royal jelly. The grafts then go to a seperate swarm box or cell builder/finisher. Big downside is that it takes alot more prep work and colonies dedicated to rearing queens and it burns them out to the point of no return rather quickly.

Are you sure your swarm box is strong enough? But even if it isnt, they usually at least touch the cells. Sorry nothing else comes to mind at the moment.

[WineMan]

I'm sitting here and still cant figure out why you arent getting cells after all these tries.....I might have a couple of failures in a row but never over and over and over. So a couple of other things came to mind but they are sort of out there and not the norm. M.Bush seems to have tried every version and even have given bars to 5 different hives. Are these cell builders all generally the same kind of bees and what kind are they?

My general observation is that light, yellow italian or carniolan type bees make the best builder of cells. I'm sure this isnt really the case in all situations but I typically have better luck getting cells off something like that rather than a dark, conservative, burr comb building buckfast. If you happen to be giving all your cells to something very dark or feral, maybe try a different type if you havent already. It sounds odd but it might help.

Secondly, some types of bees are difficult to graft off and that is just all there is to it. I run into this with one of my breeders in particular......acceptance is always lousy no matter what I try. If you read the modern stuff on Buckfast and when Monticola was added you will see how acceptance can go to nothing. Recollection is that it is thought that there is difference in pheremone levels which impact the acceptance rate. Perhaps your small cell/feral bee is just different enough that it causes problems. However, if you gave the cells to a related feral colony it doesnt seem like it should be an issue.....just thinking out loud on the computer now? Not sure what you are trying to raise queen from txbeeguy so my reasoning doesnt really have much logic to it for your case.

[Michael Bush]

Some of the cell builders I put the grafts in were Russinan, Italian looking feral bees and Carniolians. Some had been queenless a week or so. Some longer, some shorter. I was partly thinking it was a good test to see if they were queenless and partly an experiment to see which conditions seemed to work the best. I don't think it's a good test for queenlessness anymore. Is there somewhere to get royal jelly for grafting? I think that might help with them drying out. The cell starter I'm trying now, is about a pound of bees in an 8 frame medium depth box. It's not busting at the seams, but it's not underpopulated by any means.

[txbeeguy]

My answer is more or less the same as Michael's; cell builders were Russian/Causcasians and also feral Italian-looking bees. I have looked closely during some of my transfers and yes, I do see the very young, very small larvae floating in some small amount of royal jelly. Occassionally, I will find the "dried out" young larvae left in the cell plug but more commonly, nothing is there and the cell plug has been cleaned out by the bees.
I also put the Jenter box in the hive a few days ahead of time and the bees have always waxed the bottom of the plastic cells. I've never had a problem with the queen laying in them - I usually get a good selection of eggs to choose from. The problem always arises once the cell plugs have been transfered to the cell builder colony.
I keep coming back to the idea to wait a little be longer, to allow the young larvae to grow just a bit, in hopes the bees would attend them better. I realize there's a fine line here (about not wanting too old of larvae) but maybe this would help.
The 'downside' of this idea however, is that it still doesn't answer the basic original question of why the bees wouldn't just naturally take care of the young larvae first given to them (especially since the
"survival" of their queenless colony depends on them raising a new queen!).

[mikeaegina]

Seems that these rearing system have lots of difficulties. When you try to put the plastic cups to the hive that is going to grow them up do you give pollen pie and lot of syrup to the bees for about 9 days before that day?That would help the whole proccess i think.

[WineMan]

I have used royal jelly a few times to prime the cups. It typically has been jelly which I have collected from a cell....if you could find a supercedure or swarm cell...of course you only find them when you dont want them. I dont know where you can purchase it.

I have heard of water and milk also being used to keep them from drying. When I really need something to keep the dryness in check while I am in the middle of grafting, I have transferred a touch of jelly from a larvae which is a few days old in a nearby cell and used that to prime the cup. There seems to be a general belief that whatever you use will be cleaned out by the nurse bees and replaced with the proper royal jelly for queen development.

I am the first to admit that I am a horrible judge of what a pound of bees looks like. However, I would just speculate that a pound is on the small side and 2 or 3 pounds would be better. I dont really have a set way that I raise cells...sometimes it starts in a swarm box, sometimes its a queenright builder/finisher. Just depends on what I need and what is working or not at the time. However, even if starting in a swarm box, I almost always transfer to a three story colony which is just overrun with bees. I think that I would try to boost the number of nurse bees and see if that helps. Even with that, a small number of bees in something the size of a nuc can raise 5 plus decent cells so I still cant figure out the total rejection.

[WineMan]

Another thought......do you have water in the colony as either real light syrup, soaked sponge in the bottom or just plain water in an empty frame. Royal jelly is primarily water and very high humidity is a must.

[Michael Bush]

The swarm box had two quart jars of light syrup on top and a pollen cake on the bottom and three frames of honey/pollen.

I gave them twenty cell cups the first time and since they weren't doing much with them, I gave them twenty more. Out of fourty I now have one queen cell. http://www.beesource.com/ubb/frown.gif

I'm not sure what I'll try next.

[loggermike]

I dont know anything about jenter or other systems,just grafting.The main thing is the larvae must be lavishly fed by the nurse bees from the time the egg hatches.And it must never dry out .The Chinese tool picks up the bed of jelly with the larvae floating in it ,so makes transfering easy.Hives differ in the amount of jelly they feed,so some scantily fed larvae will dry out very quickly.I agree the starter should have more bees.It should be crowded.I use a queenless free flying starter/finisher most of the time.Priming the cups isnt neccesary if the larvae being transfered are floating in a big bed of jelly.I like to graft a day after making up the cell builder.You can make these up with bulk bees and put 1 frame of young unsealed brood right in the middle.Have unsealed honey and pollen on each side.Pull the frame of brood right before grafing and replace with the grafts.The nurse bees that were feeding the larvae will start feeding the grafts .Dont know if anything here will help,but it works for me.
---Mike

[Michael Bush]

With the Jenter you have all of the jelly and the larvae in a little cup that makes up the bottom of the cell, so all of the jelly and the larvae get transfered without disturbing anthing. I just am not getting the bees to take care of them.

The Jenter system seems like an elegant solution.

[Hook]

I agree, the Jenter system sounds great in theory. I have never used it or anything like it. But, if it does not work all of the time, are you really saving the work of grafting? It is not that hard to graft, and I know I'll get more than one in forty queen cells. But anyway, there must be some variable that is not being met. What it is, good luck.

Paper clips make good grafting needles!


[This message has been edited by Hook (edited July 04, 2003).]

[Michael Bush]

The question is, will grafting be any more accepted by the bees than the jenter cups? I don't really see why they would be, but I am willing to try something else at this point. I think I'll try the Hopkins method. I would like to elimenate grafting at first so I'll know if my problems are caused by my lack of skill grafting or by some other factor to do with acceptance. Eventually, I would like to learn to graft. I just see it as one more complex piece of the puzzle and I'd like to master it by itself.

[BWrangler]

Greetings Everyone,

One of the problems with raising queens using these methods is the focus on "grafting". The actual grafting is really one of the least significant parts of raising queens.

The real focus should be on the condition and motivation of the starter-finisher hives. It's pretty hard to really mess up the grafting but getting the starters up to speed is not often easy. It certianly isn't automatic and is sometimes impossible. One of the worst times is during a honey flow!

Regards
Dennis
Ex-queen rearer.

[loggermike]

Grafting CAN be messed up by letting the larvae dry out or flipping them over.But it is easy to do and is so quick and economical that I never could understand why anyone would pay for a system that just complicates things.

>>The real focus should be on the condition and motivation of the starter-finisher hives. >
Absolutely.And that seems to be the problem being discussed here.There must be plenty of nurse bees,and they should be well fed and realize their queenlessness.I think the problems in getting cells built during a good flow are related to using cell builders that have a big field force already gathering.Using bulk nurse bees to make up the unit(starter/finisher) doesnt have the problem of the whole hive being geared up for nectar gathering and processing.The focus now becomes getting a queen.(I wish I had that problem here this year. The flow is dismal so far)
--Mike(who usually buys 1/3,raises 1/3 and uses 1/3 natural cells for re-queening)

[txbeeguy]

I started with the Jenter system due to it's "apparent" ease and maybe more importantly, due to my eye sight (for some of us older guys, the old eye sight just ain't what it used to be - especially for 'up close' work). Yeah, I considered the lighted magnifying glass thing but like Michael said, just to pop out the little plastic artificial cell bottom and put it in the queen cup holder just appeared to be a really quick and easy thing to do. The concept of the Jenter system still seems to me to be a really gracful way to raise queens. (Assuming one can *actually* yield any queens!).
Michael, my cell bars hold two rows of eight so I'm placing only about 16 potential queen cells in a cell builder colony at one time. And yes, I've had about the same kind of luck as you. Occassionally, ONE will get fed and raised to maturity. In my mind, that "proves" the Jenter concept and various "hardware components" CAN work. But it also leads me back to trying to understand if the bees can raise ONE queen, why don't they raise all of them???
It's supposed to be easiest to raise queens during swarming season (which is over, here in north Texas); do you guys continue to raise queens all summer. What I'm getting at here, is it too late to try again? I know some guys raise queens for Fall re-queening but I've never been clear if they were actually raising queens during the hot summer months or just supplying queens that had been raised earlier in the year. I thought I might try extending the time line a little in order to let the larvae get just a little larger; maybe go to 102 hours or 114 hours (rather than the 90 hours) after queen containment in the cage.

[WineMan]

As the others have said, grafting is the least of the work raising queens. You spend 5 minutes moving larvae but 2 hours setting up the cell builders.

I think you might be surprised how easy it really is. After awhile, you will notice that transferring is done as much by feel as anything else. I remember when I first started that I worked on moving larger larvae to get the hang of it. Stuff too big to make into queens but it helps you gain confidence in the process.

I think you can come up with pros and cons to raising queens at any given time. Around my parts, spring starts in late April (usually) which equates (probably) to February in Texas. I start raising queens in April but it doesnt always work. You can end up fighting the weather.

May and early June are the swarming times. Cells sometimes are readily accepted but the weather goes on and off from 80 degree days to 45 degrees the next day with lows down to freezing and there can be some really big flows also.....all of which can make them ignore the cells.

The weather probably hurts mating the most. Lots of pollen comes in and there will be tremendous drone population of the right age but you can go for long stretches with rain and strong wind. Poor mating is why you see so many early mated queens from the south supercede in mid summer and the same can be true when mating in north in April and May.

I continue to graft thru June and into July. Acceptance is usually really good unless the flow is huge but young nurse bees can compensate for that......I would rather raise them this time of year than in spring. Weather is much better for mating but pollen can become scarce which ends the raising of drones and the spring drones are getting old so you can still have mating problems. However, if you are only mating a handful of queens I doubt it is an issue.

You could continue well into August around here before worrying about being too late in the year but you would need to be using them to requeen existing colonies. This is about as late as you can expect to make a nuc and have it survive winter here.

[loggermike]

>>I start raising queens in April but it doesnt always work. You can end up fighting the weather.>>
I set up my first 5 cell builders in late April this year .It snowed for the next 3 days!Cant do much with 6 inches of wet snow on the hives and the bees back in their winter cluster.

[txbeeguy]

I guess I don't really see the problem as a "grafting" verses "non-grafting" issue. The end result at that point in time is that we both end up with an egg or rather very young larvae floating in a small "pool" of royal jelly - the Jenter System yields this same result at that point in time. So if I looked strictly at the "mechanical" differences at that point in time, the main thing I would notice is that your larvae are floating in a wax cell cup and mine are floating in a plastic cell cup. And while this *could* be a significant difference, it's apparently not a complete 'show stopper' since the bees on occassion do, in fact, raise a queen from these plastic cell cups (...just not very often). What becomes most noticable just after this period of time, is that the bees have moved (or otherwise, eaten, carried off, etc.) the young larvae given them. I also haven't experienced the drying out problem addressed earlier in this thread - and I think Michael wasn't saying that drying out of the larvae during transfer was a problem he was having either. If I understood his comment correctly, what he noticed was the the larvae were dried out after he checked on them the next day. I took this as an indicator that the nurse bees had once again not attended to the needs of the young larvae in a timely fashion. The problem appears to be that the young nurse bees aren't attending the larvae given them. So, to me, the question remains, "why"? The cell builder colonies I have used, have generally been very crowded with nurse-aged bees and have had the sense of queenlessness for varying periods of time. I, likewise, have had the sugar syrup on and plenty of pollen available to them.

[Michael Bush]

>I think Michael wasn't saying that drying out of the larvae during transfer was a problem he was having either. If I understood his comment correctly, what he noticed was the the larvae were dried out after he checked on them the next day.

That is correct.

[BWrangler]

Hi Everyone,

Hive motivation is everything when rearing queens. Anyone can feed, rearrange frames, graft larva, etc. but getting the hive motivated is the real art part of the business.

The best motivation is associated with reproductive swarming. Supercedure or emergency conditions produce a motivation that is not quite as good and can easily be lost due to other factors.

Any condition that causes the bees to become lethargic, in my area that's temps near 100, will destroy good queen rearing.

Also hot, dry winds which confine the field force will destroy any queen rearing efforts no matter how carefully the larva are protected from drying out. With temps in the 80's and winds in the 30's, I take the day off.

Excessive amounts of field bees or no field bees will limit success.

A sudden and intense nectar flow will change the motivation.

Colony disturbance can upset some kinds of bees for days and little queen rearing will occur.

Some types of bees are easy and will raise queens faster than others. Setting up starters with these bees can be done in 1 to 3 days.

Other more difficult bees can require 2 weeks to get a properly functioning starter- rearer.

It's not always easy to determine how the bees will respond before hand. So queen producers spread the risk out over lots of colonies and over time.

Regards
Dennis

[Michael Bush]

So you would recomend getting a hive to the point of wanting to raise swarm cells to make queens?

Do you know a breed that is better for raising queen cells? or just that it varies from one hive to the next, as I'm sure it does also?

I have A variety of breeds right now and would be happy to focus more on one that might be more likely to work. I have regular Italians, Cordovans, Russinas, Carnolians and plain swarmy feral bees (look like mostly Italians).

[txbeeguy]

Dennis brings out some interesting points. Yes, I've always understood that the best time to raise queens is during swarming season - the time they have the natural instinct to do it anyway. I guess "southern" queen breaders are so popular because they get a "jump start" on warm temperatures in the early Spring. However, here in Texas, it usually just goes from, "fixin' to get hot" to just plain, "hotter than h_ll" (not to mention the wind, which seems to be always present). Dennis, you mention several things to think about...thanks! (Now if I can just get a handle on it).

[Michael Bush]

I understood doing it during swarming season, which is going on right now here, but I guess I hadn't thought of crowding a hive to a swarm state to raise queens.

[wayacoyote]

Michael and others,
What improvements and corrections have you made in order to make this successful for you?

Waya

[Michael Bush]

I just use a queenless starter that is overflowing with bees. This is usually done by shaking a whole hive into one box and letting the field bees fly home.