Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?
I guess one can call it queen rearing if you throw a few bees in a box and let them grow out a queen cell. Question I would ask, is that a quality product that you would want to buy ? Conversely, is it a quality product you would be comfortable selling? Throwing bees in a box is essentially allowing the bees to make wild cells, with no efforts to ensure they use appropriately aged larvae and the resulting cell is properly fed.
Quality of a product is usually a function of how much care and attention is provided at each step of the production process. When I'm raising queens, I graft and use a cell builder, and have good reasons for each step in the process. I am clear with folks on one detail, I produce queens, I am NOT a breeder. We pick from our best for grafting, but, I dont spend endless hours doing freeze tests etc, I only use two criteria for selection. First is winter survival, but that's just a given, cannot graft from a queen that didn't survive the winter. Second is honey production the prior year. We weigh supers coming off hives, so I have a record of honey produced for each colony.
Why do I raise queens the way I do ?
- Grafting allows me precise control of the age of the larva that goes in each queen cell. Wild cells can come from larvae that isn't at the ideal age when it's chosen to make a queen cell. I always graft significantly more cups than I need, and they come from a frame where I have confirmed fresh eggs a few days prior. I graft on Wednesday, so we confirm frames that have eggs standing on end Sunday afternoon. When you look at them on Wednesday you will often see small puddles of jelly in the bottom of the cell, and without the magnification I cannot see a larvae in that puddle. that's ideal age larvae. If they are curled into the C shape they are getting a bit on the old side.
- I use a cloak board system for qeenless start and queenright finish. I create this colony at the start of the season by combining the core of two brood nests into a single stack with the cloak board in place. I go thru it on my weekly schedule and move capped brood up above the excluder, and make sure there is empty comb below. It's a two box system that's always on the verge of swarming, loaded with bees and I have to manipulate frames to keep it that way.
- My builder hive always has a 15% patty from Global patties on when they are raising cells. They also get 2 cups of syrup when the cell bars go in.
- I use jzbz cups and go back 48 hours after graft. Any cups that are not full to the brim with royal jelly get culled at this point.
- My mating nucs are made up with 5 half size deep frames, and they have _at least_ 3 seams full of bees at start of season to ensure they can keep the cell properly incubated till it emerges. As season progresses we have to shake bees out of them regularly. I harvest queens 3 weeks after placing cells if there is at least one full sheet of capped brood, and we look carefully at the pattern before marking and caging that queen. If it's at all a shotgun pattern, she gets pinched rather than caged.
The final product is something I would pay good money for to purchase myself because for us the raising of queens is about the quality at each step of the process.
So behind door number one is a queen in a cage, she came when somebody threw a bunch of bees in a box then returned in a month to cage her. Behind door number two is a queen in a cage that just came out of one of my mating nucs. Both are the same price, which would you rather have ?
