These are reminders for those who took the queen rearing course or anyone trying their hand at this. Remember - The most important part of creating good queen cells is the cell builder colony.
- Choose a colony that has plenty of young bees that are already festooning. They are observed chained together as you pick up the frames.
- Make this hive queenless by removing a minimum of two frames - one frame with mixed open and closed brood and one honey frame - into a nuc box along with the queen to another position at least 50’ from this one.
- Remember the nurse bees are found in the nursery open brood area.
- Remember how we moved a hive nursery, sweeping the bees off into a lower box with the queen down there and laying down an excluder with the nursery frames above. After an hour, we took some of those frames and shook them into our cell builder.
- At this point, the now queenless hive should have 4 to 6 frames minimum shaken into it. Be sure not to shake in a queen from another hive.
- Close down the entrance and center a pollen frame and place fresh foundation frames either side of the pollen. Closed brood frames should be outside of these, then honey.
- These new foundation frames will be inspected for fresh wax before the cell bar is introduced.
- Open feed the cell builder started in the spring with an in-board or Miller-type feeder and keep this refreshed every three days. Make sure not to give them more than they can take up in three days in order to prevent hive beetle infestation.
- If doing queens in the fall or late summer, because of hive beetles, use a pail feeder above the cell builder with the same methods noted above.
- After feeding the hive of young bees at least three days, review every frame for emergency queen cells. Be sure to knock all of these off sides and bottom of frames.
- Pull the new foundation frames, shake the bees off, and inspect them for wax production. If they are pulling the wax on these frames, they are ready to do the work.
- If there is no wax being pulled, introduction of the cell bar will not work. Check for a queen and then add more young nurse bees.
- The presence of a queen will keep your graft work from being done. If you graft and get no results, check for a queen. A returning queen sometimes enters the wrong hive simply because she smells that it is queenless.
- Remember the nurse bees are found in the nursery open brood area.
- If the wax is there, remove the new foundation frames and introduce the grafted cell bars.
- Remember the best grafted queens come from the 12- to 24-hour larvae found closest to the egg line circle.
- Remember that older grafted larvae will emerge first. If you have a bar with 24-hour grafts and one 48-hour graft, this one will emerge a day early and destroy the other younger grafts.
- Remember to keep your larva size consistent.
- Remember to use good lighting that is directly over the hole to make the best grafts.
- Remember not to flip over the larva, but to lay it dead center of the cell cup bottom just like it was in the comb.
- Remember to take your time and don’t force it. It is a light touch that works best and is achieved by practice.
- The ready cell builder will tell you what you got right and wrong based on acceptance.
- Look at the grafts with a check at 48 hours. You will see what you got right. Place them carefully back in until day 5.
- Remember never to shake the cell bar. Use your bee brush lightly to remove worker bees. The cell bar should be kept mainly in the down position for inspections and cell installation.
- At day 5, you will remove the now closed grafts to a place in the same hive or a hive that is set up for storage to keep for another 5 days.
- At day 5, you will place a new cell bar in the place of the old one that was removed and repeat this process every 5 days.
- On day 10 from the graft, each ripe cell must be removed and placed in a queenless split colony for the virgin queen to emerge. Going past this day in a builder will be a disaster.
- An older age graft would also be a disaster in a builder, losing the builder and all of your graft cell work.
- The earliest check time for mated queen return is two weeks. Queens mated and returned early will be the best ones.
- Queens returning after three weeks will normally be drone layers or spotty brood type.
- At the end of 20 days you will need more nurse bees added if you intend to go past this point with your builder.
- At the 30-day mark you should introduce a new queen to your old builder.
- If you need more queens, start another new cell builder fresh.
