Let's talk about raising queens this summer

willywarthog
Posts: 7
Joined: Fri Feb 12, 2021 2:42 pm

Let's talk about raising queens this summer

Post by willywarthog » Mon Apr 19, 2021 6:44 pm

Hi,
The season is started for everyone. Overwintered hives are expanding, packages are arriving. Now is the time to think about what to do with raising and using local queens. I'm in Pine City and plan to begin raising queens from my overwintered hives starting mid June. I'm not in a rush to have queens available because I'm just making up nucs to overwinter this coming winter and to requeen my hives late summer.

If anyone would like to get involved with either seeing how to do it or wants to try getting virgin queens or whatever, now is the time to start talking about how, where, when, etc. I'd love to be able to actually make more use of my queens. It's almost as easy to make 100 queens as 10 but I don't need too many for myself.

Eventually, I think it would be great if we could end up with some "club" use of local queens. One very useful and easy way is to requeen local hives in late summer using virgin queens. There are methods to requeen that are easy for beginners and don't require much to succeed. Also, virgins then mate with your area drones and you have a nice mutt that starts your hives off with a new queen going into winter instead of an old queen from California that dies mid winter.

Lots of possibilities but we need to get talking and start some ideas going. Please put in your thoughts or this forum is going nowhere. Thanks,
Billy Head

jcbbsadmin
Site Admin
Posts: 18
Joined: Mon May 01, 2017 12:15 am

Re: Let's talk about raising queens this summer

Post by jcbbsadmin » Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:31 am

Billy
Agreed it's time to get moving on this topic.
I have one concern I have not yet been able to think through - while making 100 queens might be relatively easy, I'm not so sure that getting them mated won't pose problems initially. I don't think members of our group have wrapped their heads around the concept of acquiring unhatched queen cells or virgin queens. We are used to the instant gratification of putting a mated queen in a cage into our hive and seeing eggs and larvae a week later.
Do you have suggestions on addressing these issues?
Thanks
Jeff

willywarthog
Posts: 7
Joined: Fri Feb 12, 2021 2:42 pm

Re: Let's talk about raising queens this summer

Post by willywarthog » Fri Apr 30, 2021 8:48 pm

Jeff, thanks for your reply. I guess the easy answer is that if you want to raise queens then getting comfortable with queen cells and virgin queens is going to be part of the process. All mated queens that members are used to buying have been handled while just a cell and then cared for by someone until they were ready to sell as a mated queen.

This forum was started as a way to raise queens locally. Can't do that if no one is willing to move past the familiar to do the possible.

Again, I've done it. I'm going to be doing it this summer. If anyone wants to learn or use extra queens, let's get connected and get some planning started. If no one wants to actually raise and use local queens then the option of buying poor wintering queens from far away remains. Billy

jcbbsadmin
Site Admin
Posts: 18
Joined: Mon May 01, 2017 12:15 am

Re: Let's talk about raising queens this summer

Post by jcbbsadmin » Mon May 10, 2021 11:29 am

When will you be starting in earnest? Considering the difference in our micro-climates, I'm pretty sure you are a week or two further into the season than those of us sitting by the big lake. I would like to drop by for a visit to see your setup.

willywarthog
Posts: 7
Joined: Fri Feb 12, 2021 2:42 pm

Re: Let's talk about raising queens this summer

Post by willywarthog » Mon May 10, 2021 1:20 pm

Jeff,
I'd be happy to have you visit. Most days will work but nice weather makes it easier to disturb the bees, obviously.

I'm planning to requeen all my hives and make nucs to overwinter starting as close to August 1st as the main honey flow allows.

This means I'll be grafting queen cells for my use in the second half of July. I'll probably aiming for 75 queens to make sure I have plenty.

Some of my larger hives have plenty of capped drone brood now. Means they think the drones need to be getting ready for late May swarming season. Of course I'm not planning to let them swarm but the bees are going to try.

If anyone wants to learn hands on how to do any part of breeding queens or wants to make some June splits, then let me know and we can do something earlier than August.

If there is an interest in simply having a local source for buying queens that you can drive to and pick up, I can talk about it but would rather get a few people doing it so we can all benefit from spreading better wintering genes.

My phone service is terrible. Too far east of town near the Chengwatana state forest. So email or calling with an Internet app like Telegram works best. A text sometimes comes through after a few hours.
My contact email is willywarthog@msn.com and phone is 612-202-3171.

Billy

Farmhand671
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Feb 24, 2021 8:22 am

Re: Let's talk about raising queens this summer

Post by Farmhand671 » Wed May 19, 2021 10:55 pm

I set up my cell starter yesterday. My starter consists of a double brood box separated by a double screened board the top box with the queen was placed on top with entrance facing backwards. The bottom box was left queenless for 24 hours with the entrance facing forward I packed it with plenty of nurse bees. all the foragers will return the bottom box. I grafted 30 cells and placed them in bottom box between to frames of pollen. After 2 days I plan on replacing the double screen divider board with a queen excluder and reversing the boxes moving the queen to the bottom facing forward again. making the hive queen right again.

Farmhand671
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Feb 24, 2021 8:22 am

Re: Let's talk about raising queens this summer

Post by Farmhand671 » Fri May 21, 2021 8:50 pm

Update: Day 2 after grafting moved bottom queenless box to top removed double screen board replaced with queen excluder. counted 20 cells with royal Jelly. Hoping to get at least 10 good cells for requeening and making nucs to try and overwinter.

willywarthog
Posts: 7
Joined: Fri Feb 12, 2021 2:42 pm

Re: Let's talk about raising queens this summer

Post by willywarthog » Mon May 24, 2021 9:32 am

Great, keep us posted on how it goes

Sass
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Feb 26, 2021 10:28 am

Re: Let's talk about raising queens this summer

Post by Sass » Tue May 25, 2021 7:44 pm

I appreciate the step by step procedure. are you using a Chinese graft tool? Any other objects you are using for the grafting?

jcbbsadmin
Site Admin
Posts: 18
Joined: Mon May 01, 2017 12:15 am

Re: Let's talk about raising queens this summer

Post by jcbbsadmin » Sun May 30, 2021 8:48 am

It sounds like you are making good progress.
Since I started with new packages, I am waiting for my populations to increase to give me some spare nurse bees to work with. My plan is to build a combined starter/finisher hive as detailed in Dr Connors book. I hope to do some grafting late June to have young queens available for mid to late July nucs.
I have a 3 section queen castle available at the pit that we could try to use for mating some of your newly hatched queens if you have extras from your grafting exercise. Let me know if you are interested.

Post Reply