A Year on a Honey Farm: May : 33


Checking for mated and laying queens two weeks after cell introduction


colonies and inserted within each a new frame of drone-cell wax foundation. This, by now, will be well laid in. New drones will have already emerged and will be becoming sexually mature. It is extremely important that the colonies used to rear the drones that will be used in queen mating are free from varroa. To achieve this, these selected colonies are given their normal Apiguard®


treatment


in the autumn but will also be treated with Apistan®


in the


spring to ensure no mites, or very few mites, are present. The last thing we want is inferior drones caused by mite infestation.


Grafting To coincide with these new


drones reaching sexual maturity, we need to start our first grafts. The Buckfast queens that are used as our breeders were carefully selected and brought in from Germany last year. Their colonies overwintered very well and have become strong and robust during the spring. They are now ready to be engaged in the queen-rearing process. Over many years of queen rearing, I have used a wide variety of methods for transferring larvae from brood frames to queen


May 2015 Vol 97 No 5


cells. Some methods were very good and others were less so. I am sure that all the systems are equally as good in the right hands but it is all down to operator preference. If it feels right for you and you get success with it then that is the one to use. I have heard of and used many different tools and procedures during my time that other beekeepers have used with great success but I found some of these to be awkward and produced a lower success rate. For many years I used a stainless steel grafting tool, but then changed to a sable 000 artist’s brush.


Now I am in my fifties and my eyesight is not what it used to be, hand grafting has become awkward. My preferred system is now the Nicot Cupularve cage system. With this system we never have to touch the larvae so there is no risk of damaging them. I have had my best success rates using this approach.


The cage is inserted into a standard brood frame and screwed to the top bar. This frame is then placed into the queen breeder hive for the bees to draw out the foundation surrounding the cage. Leaving the cage within the hive for a couple of weeks (very important)


I still graft from time to time to keep my hand in


allows the plastic to take on the odour of the hive which increases the success rate of eggs laid into the cups by the queen. After this two-week period, the breeder queen is placed into the cage and is held captive within it for 24 hours. During this time she will lay into the plastic cells. She is then released from her cage and allowed to go freely about the hive. On the fourth day after egg laying, when the larvae are all one day old, the cell cups are removed and placed onto a queen-rearing frame. This is then placed into a queenless colony for the bees to feed and nurture the larvae and then seal the cells.


Once the cells are sealed, usually around the ninth day after egg laying, they are removed from the colony and very carefully transferred to one of our incubators. The capped cells are removed because the bees do not continue to feed the cells’ occupants once they are sealed. Only warmth and humidity are provided, which can be supplied artificially by an incubator, and this allows us to use the colony to rear further batches of cells.


Mating Nuclei


On the fourteenth day after egg laying (two days before


emergence), the queen cells are removed from the incubator and are now ready to insert into queenless mating nuclei. The mating nuclei consist of four half-sized standard super frames, a good quantity of young bees, sealed brood and stores which have been taken from one of our special supers which were part of a stand- alone colony.


Once the nuclei have been queenless for a 24-hour period, the queen cells are inserted and left for at least two weeks. The nuclei are undisturbed for this period because it will take a few days after emergence for the queens to reach sexual maturity and start to fly out on orientation flights. Two or three days more may pass before mating actually takes place. Once mated it can take a further two or three days before a queen starts to lay her first eggs, so to reach this stage will take at least two weeks if weather conditions are favourable. No queen will be removed


from a hive for sale until sealed worker brood is present in her colony. Once she has been removed from the mating nucleus she will leave behind her a colony with sealed brood, eggs and larvae and so ensure the viability of the colony until


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All photos supplied by Duncan Simmons


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