[rniles]

I'm a noob at queen rearing - so sorry for the question.

I understand the need for a queen starter but why move them to a finisher? Can't the bees in the starter finish working with the queen cells for the 10 days before moving the queen cells to the mating nucs?

 

[Oldtimer]

You do not HAVE to use a finisher.

They are used when raising cells commercially. What commonly happens in a commercial setup is the cell starter starts 64 cells or even more. However the bees in the cell starter are queenless and have started these cells from their perspective, to make a replacement queen. It does not take them long to figure out they do not need 64 queen cells and they begin to neglect a lot of them.

So after 24 hours in the starter, the cells are usually moved to a finisher. Finishers are strong hives with a queen set up to simulate a pre-swarming situation, and are commonly given 16 cells, which is a number they are happy to care for to a high standard, as any hive thinking about swarming would.

With queen cell raising, it is important to see things how the bees see it, or, think like a bee, if you like. We have to work with the bees, not force them to do things. So we set things up so the bees just do what comes naturally in that situation.

 

[rniles]

Thank you Oldtimer - a very interesting answer and helped me understand why a finisher is used. Thanks!

 

[AmericasBeekeeper]

They are also physically exhausted after feeding cells. You can dump fresh nurse bees in every day, but you would be better off with the larger finisher population. The royal jelly comes from hypopharyngeal glands in the head not direct transfer. They can only be overstimulated so long.

 

[Michael Bush]

A lot of starter systems are not free flying. If you use a swarm box, you have to put them in a finisher. Some starter systems are free flying and you can just leave them there until they are finished. The idea of splitting the two (starter and finisher) is that the goals are different so you can focus on that goal. A lot of confined, queenless, nurse bees with no brood to care for except the queen cells will start a lot of cells. A compressed queenless hive will not start as many but will start quite a few. Some people want a queenright finisher, partly so they don't burn out the hive that is being used for the finisher. I you only want one batch of a few queens a starter/finisher works fine.