I finally got a good photo to illustrate how I like to do my queen rearing in my topbar hives, so I thought I'd share with the group. My purpose is to encourage backyard beekeepers to feel confident in raising a few queens on their own. I know that many of you graft larvae into queen bars, etc and I have done some grafting and the nicot system, but for the class I teach, this seems to be the easiest for them to understand and copy. No need for a "starter", "finisher", etc.
The premise is that on newly drawn comb, without foundation or wires, the bees can easily rework the wax. And my preference to prevent swarming in the spring is to always insert empty bars in the brood nest in between drawn brood bars. I am pretty aggressive with this (about 4 bars each week) by the time our main flow is hitting (first part of May). This seems to work out perfectly to give me newly drawn brood bars with fresh larvae that can be turned into queen cells once I am ready to start queen rearing.
I make sure the empty bars have been in there about a week to 10 days so they can get partly drawn out and laid up with eggs, and then I remove the queen to a nuc. The big hive senses the queen is gone and starts the queen cells on the newly drawn comb that has the fresh eggs/larvae. (I know many of you say that emergency cells are not as good as swarm cells or supercedure cells, but the cells that the bees drawn on this new comb are very large and also well fed).
The bees in a full size hive will usually draw out a great number of them on multiple bars with the new comb. Making splits is very easy for a newbee as they just remove one of the bars with the ripe cell and drop it into a queenless split. If you date the bars when you add them to the brood nest, counting down until the queen emerges is pretty easy.
For this photo, I actually had the queen in a nicot cassette for 5 days (and then moved those cups over to the queen rearing bar) and then I let her loose in her hive for another 5 days with empty bars that got drawn out and laid up. (The fact that she was caged for some days in the nicot system explains why the brood pattern in this photo isn't slam packed like it was before I caged her)
On this one comb, I have 12 good sized queen cells that I will carve out on Saturday and place in queenless nucs or put in roller cages to emerge. There are additional bars in the hive with queen cells that have been divided with vertical queen excluders between the 3 entrances, so I should end up with 3 mated queens in the remaining big hive, plus these additional queens in the mating nucs. (and if I get lucky, I will snatch up any virgins as they emerge in the hive and move them so none go to waste).
I'm also pulling in a huge honey harvest at the moment since the bees haven't had much brood to tend to while I have been messing around with queen rearing. (I will be adding a bar of capped brood from the nuc that the original queen went into, just to keep the number of nurse bees up to tend to the new queens).
The virgin queens that emerge from these cells look like they are already mated, they are so large. That means they have been well fed by the nurse bees in the hive and have had plenty of room to grow in their cells.
The premise is that on newly drawn comb, without foundation or wires, the bees can easily rework the wax. And my preference to prevent swarming in the spring is to always insert empty bars in the brood nest in between drawn brood bars. I am pretty aggressive with this (about 4 bars each week) by the time our main flow is hitting (first part of May). This seems to work out perfectly to give me newly drawn brood bars with fresh larvae that can be turned into queen cells once I am ready to start queen rearing.
I make sure the empty bars have been in there about a week to 10 days so they can get partly drawn out and laid up with eggs, and then I remove the queen to a nuc. The big hive senses the queen is gone and starts the queen cells on the newly drawn comb that has the fresh eggs/larvae. (I know many of you say that emergency cells are not as good as swarm cells or supercedure cells, but the cells that the bees drawn on this new comb are very large and also well fed).
The bees in a full size hive will usually draw out a great number of them on multiple bars with the new comb. Making splits is very easy for a newbee as they just remove one of the bars with the ripe cell and drop it into a queenless split. If you date the bars when you add them to the brood nest, counting down until the queen emerges is pretty easy.
For this photo, I actually had the queen in a nicot cassette for 5 days (and then moved those cups over to the queen rearing bar) and then I let her loose in her hive for another 5 days with empty bars that got drawn out and laid up. (The fact that she was caged for some days in the nicot system explains why the brood pattern in this photo isn't slam packed like it was before I caged her)
On this one comb, I have 12 good sized queen cells that I will carve out on Saturday and place in queenless nucs or put in roller cages to emerge. There are additional bars in the hive with queen cells that have been divided with vertical queen excluders between the 3 entrances, so I should end up with 3 mated queens in the remaining big hive, plus these additional queens in the mating nucs. (and if I get lucky, I will snatch up any virgins as they emerge in the hive and move them so none go to waste).
I'm also pulling in a huge honey harvest at the moment since the bees haven't had much brood to tend to while I have been messing around with queen rearing. (I will be adding a bar of capped brood from the nuc that the original queen went into, just to keep the number of nurse bees up to tend to the new queens).
The virgin queens that emerge from these cells look like they are already mated, they are so large. That means they have been well fed by the nurse bees in the hive and have had plenty of room to grow in their cells.