Queen Rearing Plan

[FThoney]

Is this a good plan for raising good Queens? If not, what is? I understand the different scenarios
that bees will rear queens, I just want to know if there is a better plan, than the one below, that
someone wishes to share. This is my current way I plan to raise a few queens to make some splits:


I will take a strong hive which has 2 deeps for a brood box.
The Cell builder colony will be housed in a 10 frame deep.


DAY 1

STEP 1: I would grab an extra deep I had laying around. And from the strong hive would
donate to the Cell Builder the following:

7 frames of brood
3 frames of stores
A few frames of nurse bees would also be shaken in.

STEP 2: The Queen, with the rest of the bees, brood, and stores, would be moved to a new
location. And The cell builder left at the exact location of the original hive.

Day 8:

STEP 1: The Cell Builder colony will be checked thoroughly for any queen cells that the bees
may have built. The Queen cells found will be destroyed.

Step 2: A frame will be removed to make room for the grafted cups.

Step 3: The frame of grafted cups will be inserted in the hive.

Day 9:

Step 1: A check will be made to ensure that the grafted cups were accepted.

Day 19:

Step 1: Queen cells are distributed to nucleus hives.

[Joseph Clemens]

It sounds doable, I'd add at least one more thorough check for rouge queen cells - if you missed even one on the first check (and it's easy to do), it can ruin your day.

[frazzledfozzle]

I like to finish my cells in a queenrite hive I leave the cells in the queenless starter for 48 hours and then switch them out to the top box of a queenrite finisher over an excluder with the queen in the bottom box.

I usually do 60 cells to a starter then put 20 cells into each finisher if I left 20 cells in the starter some of them would be ripped down.

If you are only doing a few cells them completely ignore all of the above and go with what you have said because that will work really well.
It's really important to have the younger bees in the starter because they are the ones feeding your queen lavae not the workers.

frazz

[Michael Palmer]

I use almost the same method, except I place the box of brood and honey and bees above an excluder on the strong colony. 9 days later check the entire stack for queen cells. Remove the cell builder..the box above the excluder with only sealed brood at this point. Turn the parent colony around and place behind stand. Place cell builder on new bottom on stand and shake 3/4 of the bees from the queen right hive into the cell builder in morning. Give graft in afternoon. 5 days later unite queen right hive and cell builder by placing queen right hive in stand and cell builder on it above excluder. Harvest cells on 10th day.

Almost the same method, but more nurse bees by keeping the queen right hive for nurse bee production.

Read Beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey.

[FThoney]

I use almost the same method, except I place the box of brood and honey and bees above an excluder on the strong colony. 9 days later check the entire stack for queen cells. Remove the cell builder..the box above the excluder with only sealed brood at this point. Turn the parent colony around and place behind stand. Place cell builder on new bottom on stand and shake 3/4 of the bees from the queen right hive into the cell builder in morning. Give graft in afternoon. 5 days later unite queen right hive and cell builder by placing queen right hive in stand and cell builder on it above excluder. Harvest cells on 10th day.

Almost the same method, but more nurse bees by keeping the queen right hive for nurse bee production.

Read Beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey.

This is great. I think I will try it out. This will be my first attempt at queen rearing so I was a little nervous about completely splitting up my strong hive and losing too much productivity. This plan seems a lot less stressful on the hive. But then again, any malipulation of a hive is stressful for the bees.
I wanted to get a complete understanding of the process before I dove in. If anyone has any more suggestions or possibly a better process let me know.
Thanks!