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How many queens do you plan to make this year and by what method.

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#61 ·
After last year (my second year of beekeeping) ending up with too many queens and having to find places to put them; I’m considering trying to produce and sell some queens to help finance what has turned into an expensive hobby.

I currently have two langstroth hives, two top bar hives and one nuc. Thinking about getting a queen castle to manage swarming impulses, etc. So far everyone is still buzzing. Remains to be seen if I take any losses. I didn’t lose any last winter, but I may have just got lucky.

The splits I did last year ended up splitting again on their own and I think a few swarms got away. I’m hoping if I can let them requeen when they want to, by moving queens into the castle, it will stop them from swarming?

Hopeful I’m not thinking about it backwards
 
#63 ·
kcarroll said:
After last year (my second year of beekeeping) ending up with too many queens and having to find places to put them; I’m considering trying to produce and sell some queens to help finance what has turned into an expensive hobby.
Click to expand...
Selling queens can be a source of income...to help pay for your hobby. Think about this...Queens in nucs will be worth considerably more than the queens alone. Learn how to manage your nucleus colonies so they don't swarm. Also, with your queens in nucleus colonies, you can evaluate the queen before you sell them.
 
#64 ·
Michael Palmer said:
Selling queens can be a source of income...to help pay for your hobby. Think about this...Queens in nucs will be worth considerably more than the queens alone. Learn how to manage your nucleus colonies so they don't swarm. Also, with your queens in nucleus colonies, you can evaluate the queen before you sell them.
Click to expand...
Michael, sure hope you are planning to sell some virgin queens from the tested queen mums from the UBO assay last summer. ;)
 
#66 ·
I loaded 26 of 75-80 mating nucs last year and said this is enough. Somewhere around 60 is doable. Any more and I’m ragged.

I hope to load more on the front end, then combine/quit earlier. Last year I told everyone my bees were clocking out Aug 1. Had a deep discount sale on small nucs probably late August with the full disclaimer that my reasoning was the amount of care needed to winter them.

Grafting will be my principle method.
 
#67 ·
Gray Goose said:
As we while the winter away in the northern reaches of the Apis Mellifera range, I have a little discussion to start.
I realize some of our southern brethren are already at it so for them the game is closer in time.

And to those south across the pond you may need to speak in past tense .

Basic 2 part question
How many queens do you plan to raise and by which method.

This hopefully can be more of a survey type thread, And discussions to the merit of each , or the shortfalls, can be personal and never ending, and IMO will not add to the thread.

thanks to all for helping with my winter entertainment. and enlightenment.

extra credit:
If you can,, kindly post a pic,, of what YOU consider a good queen, and why. (this years queen) or even a bad queen and why.
Some new queen rearing folks perhaps can use some enlightenment.

GG
Click to expand...
Grafting
Snelgrove boards
Splits.
Goal is fifteen to thirty
 
#68 ·
Cool thread, @Gray Goose. I've enjoyed reading the varied methods folks are planning to raise queens.

I am gearing up to add about 30 queens using swarm cells via Doolittle nucs and swarm trapping and retrieval. The Warre 'Swarm Generators' are starting to percolate and I'm hearing footsteps behind me as I'm busy getting equipment ready for the season.

Image

Image

Image
 
#77 ·
AR1 said:
Viking or Cossack blood in you?
Click to expand...
Viking more likely (more of a Northern type).
The Swedish raiders were everywhere they could find rivers to row along.

Cossacks were more Southerly bound and East - raiding all way down to Persia and all of Siberia.
One of these years I will test my DNA.
 
#79 ·
I’m just learning and using OTS as a guideline along with help from my mentor. Last year I purchased two NUCS and had help catching a swarm. We went from three to 13 by doing OTS splits in early June, then OTS splits on the other colony in early July. One didn’t thrive so I have 12 that have seemed to overwintered well so far. I was drawn to OTS as it seemed to be well scripted for beginners and the author, Mel, is local too. The information in his book is relevant for our area near the 43rd parallel in Michigan.

One interesting POV is that MP mentioned his queens mated in late June do really well. This POV is shared in Mel’s OTS book as well.

I would like to selectively make 1-2 or 1-3 OTS splits from the “best” colonies and sell some of my existing NUCS to help offset costs. The difficult part for me will be to decide what one’s to use for honey, what ones to split from and deciding what ones to sell. I hope to mate between 15 and 20 queens if all goes well so I better start building boxes!

I’d like to give a shout out to all the beekeepers from this community helping the newbs like me, especially my mentor GG.
 
Discussion starter · #80 ·
2FunKids said:
The difficult part for me will be to decide what one’s to use for honey, what ones to split from and deciding what ones to sell.
Click to expand...
2FunKids
Niced to hear all the different ways people are making queens, Many ways are used by the folks on BS.

In general, one can make honey OR Bees, less likely to do both, with the same hive.
I split my hives into 3 groups, by queen and hive evaluation.
you can include brood pattern, temperament, comb building, extra bur comb placement or any other criteria you prefer, your decision.
my labels are excellent, good, and poor can be 25, 50 25 in percent or 33 33 33 or 15 60 25 what ever makes sense.
the "Good" center group are hives too good to sell or break down for NUCs, they are supered and put in production.
the "Excellent" are ones I want to "duplicate" so they are used for queen making.
the Poor are all fodder for queen rearing. need be requeened as soon as possible, we do not want these drones in our yard.

so when you do OTS and have a set of frames say 10 frames of bees with 4 or 5 having queen cells.
Use frames from the poorest hive first, with a frame with queen cell to make a split.

so for example we will call the frames from the Excellent hive "e" and the Poor Hive "p"
we have for example 5 frames with a queen cell from the e hive
we can groupe them e,e,e e,e,p e,p,p e,p,p e,p,p e,p,p making 6 3 frame splits using up a poor hives resources (dispatching the poor queen) we need one "e" frame with queen cell in each split. (try to add 1 frame of stores from either hive as the field bees will drift back to the parent location, and this split will need stores till it gets its own field bees going)
the result for the 6 splits is in general ,5 mated queens from an excellent hive, and the removal of the poorest hive in the Apiary.
conceptually I promote the excellent, and cull the poor,, place the good in production

If we have several poor hives, we can simply go in the poor hive dispatch the queen, pull 1 frame, add a frame with cell created from a excellent hive, and allow the poor hive to requeen. try to add the cell in the center of the nest to prevent chilling.

try to not make splits in a dearth as they can get robbed out.
try to remember the old hive locations, these are better to have a 10F deep than a NUC, as field bees will drift back and may over fill a NUC, causing the first queen hatching, to swarm out due to crowding.
you can make 3,4,5, or 6 frame splits. I prefer the stronger ones. But if I had the cells I do make smaller ones, then cull a couple, and add back the resource to the better queens.

GG
 
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Gray Goose
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