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Rearing queens for a small operation

192K views 153 replies 49 participants last post by  Michael Bush 
#1 ·
I'm in my 4th year of beekeeping and I am a small operation with 6 production hives and various nucs through out the year. In this early phase of my beekeeping I don't plan on growing more than around 10 hives plus nucs.
I try to set a goal each year of starting to learn a new aspect of beekeeping. My first years have been focused on keeping the bees alive and nucs, with the specific goal of not purchasing packaged bees.
I think I have become reasonably competent with making spring nucs from swarm cells and helping my bees survive. But the issue I tend to run into is that when I need a queen I don't have one or suppliers are out, and It is a pretty long process (and a little pricey) to get one.
Also I have a few hives that have good traits and a few hives that have not so good traits (propolize the fool out of everything).
So I have decided my project for this year is to start learning queen rearing on a small scale.
My Primary focus on beekeeping is the production of Honey for sale and a fun learning experience for myself and my children.
What methods would you more experience beeks recommend for a beek with a small operation on a learning level?
I don't think I want to tackle grafting yet.
I have done some reading on general queen rearing and I may be looking at this wrong, but I figured I would determine which method of raising queens first and focus my reading and research on that method.

Thanks For your help.

David
 
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#147 ·
Queens , workers, and drones all start out the same. Eggs for three days, larvae for 6 days, and then comes the difference. Queen pupal state is 7 days, workers 12 days and drones 15 days. For a total from egg to emergence of 16 days for queens, 21 days for workers, and 24 days for drones. Queens are not capped for 16 days, nor are they capped at 16 days. They are capped at 9 days.
 
#150 ·
I have some “queen” larvae in a queenless starter from a Nicot frame. Looks like some have been accepted. I have seen advice to move them to a queen right colony over an excluder. When should I do that? And why or why not leave them in the queenless starter? Thanks again.
 
#153 ·
Here is a discussion of what is essentially a vertical split with some good and bad results.; https://www.beesource.com/forums/sh...-hive-before-splitting-without-grafting/page2

I do not think it is a case of simply dropping in a cell, nor do I think the age is that crucial as long as they start. An introduction delayed until the bees are feeling a little queenless might help, but too long and they will start their own.

Ray Marler does his flyback splits by moving the queen back after a few days, I would call that a queenright raising.
 
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