Looking for advice to raise a handful of queens

[Ral]

First year beekeeper with 3 hives, so I have limited equipment.

Here's what I have - all in double deeps:

1. Hive #1: started from nuc in late March. Built up very fast, produced 2 mediums of delicious honey. I would like to produce a few queens from this one
2. Hive #2: Started from nuc early April. Built up slower than #1. Filled up both deeps. Re-queened in mid May. No honey.
3. Hive #3: Split from Hive #2, using Hive #2 queen. Filled 1 deep only. Weak hive. No honey.

I also have:
4 empty nuc boxes (5 frame deep)
2 empty deep brood boxes
4 empty medium supers
wired foundation - deep and medium

I know I shouldn't expect a new colony to produce honey its first year, but Hive #1 is so much stronger than the other two that I would like to raise a few new queens from it to re-queen my other two hives.

I've studied several of the re-queening methods - but I'm reluctant to do anything to Hive #1 for fear of messing it up. Also, the nectar flow seems to be over and I don't want to overstress the hive.

Any advice on the easiest and safest method? Thanks

[Keth Comollo]

Try OTS (on the spot) queen rearing. Here is a YouTube video with a guy talking about how to do it. . . .

[Ral]

Thanks Keth. I watched the video and it looks do-able for my skill level.

Anybody have any experience that can offer pros/cons of this method?

[RayMarler]

Pinch queen in hive 3 and reduce it to a nuc so it gets over populated into swarm mode, and give it a feeder. The same day, put frame of worker cell foundation into hive 1, directly into the brood nest where it'll get drawn and queen lay in the virgin wax. The virgin wax frame of eggs is important, as virgin wax is easily manipulated by the bees to make queen cells of quality.

When eggs are just hatching in hive 1, go thru hive 3 and destroy all queen cells, and move the virgin wax frame with hatching eggs from hive 1 into hive 3. The bees in hive 3 (now a cell builder) will be desperately and hopelessly queenless and the nurse bees will be in full royal jelly production mode. They will be crying for viable brood now.

Ten days later, make up nucs from hive 2, and then cut out queen cells from the virgin wax frame in in hive 3 to give the nucs. Also put a feeder on the nucs until the virgins have mated and are laying. Also put a cell in the cell builder so it can have a queen and grow back up into a hive.

This way produces very nice large well fed virgins.

[Ral]

Thanks Ray. That sounds like the simplest method. I think I will give that a try.

[Michael Bush]

I would put the old queen in a nuc for a backup rather than pinch her... then when you do want to dispose of a queen, I'd drop her in a jar of alcohol (with all my other "retired" queens) for swarm lure...

[Beezly]

Michael, what size jar and what kind of alcohol? sorry to get off subject. Do you just keep adding more to it all of the time? How much do you put in a swarm trap?
thanks,
mike

[waynesgarden]

I put all replaced queens in plywood nucs with a frame of brood and a frame of stores and let them live out the season. They create brood which could suppliment a weaker hive, create comb which is always good and they sometimes generates some surplus honey.

Wayne