Queen mating resources

As I've gotten a bit better with my grafting and the production of emerged virgin queens, I find myself in a dilemma. For every emerged queen I need a mating nuc, which means essentially 1 frame of brood, preferable a frame mostly capped with some food on it. The problem now, or what soon could be, is that as I'm grafting and getting more queens, I will eventually need 12 to 20 mating nucs. And I simply don't have enough brood frames to fill the nucs.  I'm asking the club if some members would donate a medium ( I use all mediums) frame of capped brood to put in boxes. Considering that I had 9 cells started in mom's yard, I should have some emerged queens Thursday and will need bees.
I will make some mating nucs this weekend and could use bees Wednesday evening. I figure 4 frames this week, and another 4 next week. Not going to do any grafts this week as they would emerge while I'm at bee college. I'll come to you and grab a frame.

Next season, if things work out, I'd like to have a yard where we could have two or three breeder colonies and 30-50 mating boxes. (since they would be doubles it would be 15-25 boxes). I'd also like to get one or two more people in the whole process. Something to remember when rearing queens is that once you start you are controlled by the calendar. You MUST either cage them or move them by day 12-14 because she can come out anytime after 14 days, especially if you grafted a day 6 instead of a day 4 larvae (been there done that). It's late in the year to try and start this now, but March will get here soon enough and the first week of March is prime time to start rearing queens. Once established, as a club resource we could feasibly raise 6-10 queens a week. Those which are not needed could be mated and banked for a time. Trying to figure out what to do with a bunch of mated queens is a problem I can live with, much better than scrambling to find one. 

If you can donate a frame, let me know by Tuesday. If you're interested in queen breeding, let's talk at the October meeting.

A timing belt and a tent

It's not about beekeeping, at least not directly, it is about life though. My wife's car is a 1999 Mercury, she travels all over the county for her job and as I don't know the maintenance history, decided it would be a good idea to change the timing belt.  Our schedules as they are, the only real time I had was Labor Day. Which for me turned out to be a day of labor. I'd removed a bee colony Sunday evening but couldn't get all of them, there are always some foragers out and about. So I promised the homeowner to return Monday morning to collect whatever clustered overnight. Did that, picked up a few more pounds of bees. Took them to the yard and added to the removal. Got home and started on the car, it was about 10:00.  Things were moving fairly smoothly until around 12:00 when the thunderstorm hit. I waited it out for a bit, looked a the radar and saw it was pretty bleak. Called a friend with a pop up tent, an EZ up. No problem, went and borrowed that. Back to the car now under a tent. The rest of the job went fairly well, I did have to go to the parts store for spark plugs, discovered that one of the originals had two pretty serious cracks in the porcelain. Felt pretty dumb too, her car has had an occasional miss for nearly a year, the computer diagnostic said it was the variable timing. There was a time, before car computers, when I would have pulled spark plugs first. A lesson learned, trust my instincts and not computers. The timing belt that came off had several small pieces missing from one edge and a pretty good flap, failure was eminent. A good decision to change it when I did. Thanks to my dad who taught me so much about cars so many years ago. And thanks to my friend with the pop up tent. I finished the job by 4:20 so Vicki could drive it to work at 6:00.

An all Bee weekend

Just doing lots of Bee stuff all weekend, started with Friday. Went up to PSJ with Eddie to take a colony out of a window behind the hurricane shutter. Big colony, a lot of honey but nearly no capped brood, and no larvae or eggs, so this was a queen-less colony and a real rescue. Saturday I spent the day with several other club members at the new Honey Bee Research Lab at UF.  Met some more odd people (they play with bees too). Toured the facility and made some friends. Excited about Bee College this October.  Last week Stuart removed two swarms from the local marina, both in relatively the same area. So we discussed the three removals, the swarms and the window bees and decided to combine both swarms, find one of their queens and re queen the window bees.  Sounded like a plan. Started in swarm 2, found the queen, caught her in a clip and tucked her away.  On to swarm 1. Did not actually see the queen but we found one side of 1 frame fully drawn and capped brood, larvae and eggs on the other side, even found eggs in some burr comb we cut off.  So the caged queen went in the window bees box and we were going to merge the two swarms through paper. Went to get yet another swarm from the marina, pretty easy, scraped them in a box, put on a queen excluder and waited a little while. The bees that we missed went in the box so we're fairly certain we got the queen. Back to the club yard to set things up. Going to merge the two swarms first. Opened the queen less box and there were no bees. Looked around, did not see a swarm. Thought they may have gone to the box with their old queen. Opened swarm 1 and found the missing bees. The box was packed full of bees, they merged themselves while we were gone, added the other box and frames to give them more room.   Always fascinated by these little bugs. Other events in the yard. Loriann got her second box started with some top bars that we hung on modified hangers. And John got a nuc split, two frames and a bunch of bees. They have the means to make a queen, just need to see what happens. I did another set of queen grafts today. While I am having a certain amount of success getting cells, my percentage of mated queens sucks. But I'm sure it will get better.  There are a lot of methods, I just need to find what works best for me.

The queen in the yellow box must go

I started to call her something that begins with a B but thought better of that. I'm sure that you can figure it out.  We typically have anywhere from 7 to 15 beehives in the club yard at any time. With recent additions I believe we are at 9 plus the twin mating nuc. We have a colony in the back of the yard in a yellow box. Been there perhaps two months. Every time I've been in that box they've been pretty nasty. Yesterday we went in and sure enough they came out pretty mean. Stuart thought perhaps they had a high mite load. I thought that's possible and made plans to do a mite wash and OAV treatment.  Yesterday evening, Eddie and I went to Titusville and removed a colony from under a storage shed. There were perhaps six frames of capped and uncapped honey in nice new almost white comb. Eddie took that home. We had to pull up the floor in two places to find the whole colony, the brood nest was fourteen combs, each five inches deep and 16-18 inches long. We cut the comb and put six pieces in an 8 frame box and two in a nuc. The rest I am rendering down. It was late when we got done so we put the vacuum box on a hive stand and the 8 frame on top, then pulled the divider. I like that aspect of the box, it just lets the bees migrate up and I can dump the trash later. The nuc I put at mom's house. I wanted to check them today and re-stack so I figured I'd do a mite wash on the yellow box while there. For those who were there yesterday, if you thought they were bad then you should have seen them today. Maybe it was because yesterday there were five of us and just me today but I was surrounded. Wore sweatpants and a sweat shirt, no stings through the clothes but at least 100 stingers in the fabric.  One got in my veil and I took a hit to the left forehead. Did an alcohol wash, shook off five frames from the second box up, mostly brood frames. I let some of the fliers go and did a pretty good look for the queen, although considering the temperament I really wasn't that concerned. Did not see her. First wash showed no mites, thats zero.  Thought no way right. So I did another. Looked specifically for drone comb, shook off three frames, with drone brood, did another wash. One mite. So much for a heavy mite load.  Took all of the bees from the wash home and counted, 496. From 496 bees I got 1 mite. This queen needs to go. As soon as I have a mated queen she has an appointment with destiny. On some positive notes. The cut out from yesterday was attaching the comb to the frames and bringing in pollen, way cool. I looked for the queen but did not see her. Stopped by mom's on the way home to check some QC's, I caged two capped cells that will come out Friday or Saturday. In a matter of contrast, In the yellow box I had a sweatshirt tucked into sweatpants as body armor. In mom's box I was wearing a T shirt and shorts, no gloves but a veil and they didn't even care that I was there.  I want more of these kind of bees.

Hard lesson on queen rearing 2

Some queen breeders advocate having brood frames in the finisher box. It ensures more nurse bees to feed these larvae. I think the idea plausible.  Also, in the method I'm using, to ensure I get nurse bees in the cell starter, there ends up being one or two brood frames in the finisher. I know that I've read this and heard it in lectures, one must check all brood frames for queen cells. Michael Palmer said it in one of his lectures like five times. Ian won't have any brood frames in his finishers. I forgot. I'll bet every queen breeder forgets at least once.  Had some cells started last week, went in to put on cages and they're all torn down.  Sure enough, on a brood frame was an open queen cell. Missed it from the previous set of grafts. And although it's a controversal subject, I do believe that bees can move eggs so even with the queen excluder they could still raise a queen above it. So yes it's important to check all of the frames for cells. I only lost five queens, would hate to lose 10-30. So I had a rouge virgin running around in the top box.  Looked but couldn't find her. Took a chance and shook everything down to the lower boxes, did another set of grafts and on day two, of eight grafts, I have five cups of royal jelly. I know there is the potential of this rouge virgin killing the current queen. Might not be so bad, she's a year and a half old and they're not the nicest group. It certainly could be worse and better both. Due to my current resources I'm limited in what I can do. I like the idea of a finisher box with no brood, just shake in some bees each week or so. But I don't have those resources.  Will certainly check for cells diligently in the future. Failures are indeed the best teachers.

Real small scale queen rearing

I've watched so many Youtube videos on queen rearing, I have information overload. There are some issues I have with nearly all of them. They're designed to raise a lot of queens.  I've seen Michael Palmer, Jason Chrisman, Don the fat bee-man, Ian Steppler up in Canada, and some others. One thing they all have in common is they have lots of bees. Brushy Mountain did a small scale queen rearing webinar with Larry Conner. Excellent video and great lessons but my definition of small scale and their's are very different. They show pictures of frames with 10 to 40 queen cells. What these videos don't tell us is that for every little peanut, you need a mating box which means at least a frame of brood and frame of comb. Or maybe a frame of food and comb.  Either way for every queen cell a breeder needs a frame of bees and a box.  I think I heard Michael Palmer once say he had over 300 mating nucs, and I know Ian said he ran 100 plus.  Other things they have in common are that you need a queen-less colony with a lot of bees. There are countless videos on how to put together a cell starter. Michael Palmer has a starter that's four boxes tall and overflowing with bees, probably more bees in that thing than I have in my back yard. The first thing one needs to do is find and remove the queen. Right! I played where's waldo with my kids years ago and wan't very good at it then, eyes certainly haven't gotten better. In the video they all simply pull up a frame and say; "oh there she is".  I have a theory about this, if you look at the same things all day every day it gets easier to spot the one that's different. These videos are great and I hope that all of you keep at it. Fact is that in about six years I plan to retire from machine work and breed queens, (will look for a teenager with good eyes and steady hand to do my grafts).  In the meantime I want to learn as much as possible.

So what about the middle aged beekeeper who has one or two hives. He/she is wearing bifocals, doesn't really want to try grafting microscopic larvae but has a colony with seven frames of brood and five frames of honey. Certainly a candidate to split. (I think I just described myself, except now I wear bifocal contact lenses which are awesome).   A simple split is to just put two frames of brood and a frame of food in a nuc with some frames of foundation or comb. Just hope they can queen themselves.  This is done every day somewhere with success. But for the do-it yourselfer, I want to make my own queen, or get my bees to make one for me.

I watched the Fat Beeman do a video where he cut comb with eggs and larvae and squashed it to a frame. Really pretty simple, I don't need to handle larvae and the age isn't really a factor. The bees will choose the one they want. This is just my speed to make a couple of queens.

So what do we need to do this?  First a strong colony, I run all medium boxes so I'm looking for at least three boxes full of bees. Could probably do the same thing with a deep and medium.  I want to mate the queens before doing the split so I'll need some sort of mating nuc(s).  I could make some or make a divider board and reduce a five frame nuc down to 2 frames. Could get bold and modify a 5 frame nuc with a small entrance on each side and split the middle, make a double mating box, sort of what people call a queen castle. Keeping things as simple as possible I'd just need two nuc boxes. Being in Florida, pretty much everything I have has a screen bottom. The cell starter needs ventilation, either a screened bottom or screened sides. Since I plan to do this a lot I made a deep nuc with 2 inch holes in the lower sides and covered the inside with hardware cloth. 

Getting started means I need a queenless box of bees. I don't want to spend hours looking for the queen so here's my solution. One to three days before I want to do my "grafts" I'll shake all of the bees down into the lower box(s), put on a queen excluder and put at least two frames of brood and 2 frames of food in the top box. On grafting day I'll take a frame of food with all of the bees on it and put it in my special starter nuc, then shake all of the bees off the brood frames. Might shake a couple more frames just to be sure I have enough bees. Seal them up in the box with 1 frame of food, at least 1 frame of comb or foundation and a wet sponge in a container of water. Now wait three or four hours. Four hours later, if I have another colony I'll go there for "grafts", if not I'm going straight to the bottom box. Looking for a frame of drawn comb with eggs and larvae. I'll cut strips about three cells wide and 20 long that have the youngest brood I can find. Maybe two or three strips. Lay them on a frame top bar so the cells will be vertical and smash the ends into the bar groove.  It might distort the cells a bit but the bees will fix them if they want. Put this bar in the cell starter and leave them closed up over night.  The next day, 24-30 hours later, I open the box and check for any acceptance. Then put the frame and all of the bees back in the first box above the excluder to be finished. 

Tried this just this past Sunday.  Check out the results.

So next Wednesday I'll put together some mating nucs and put cells in them.  There's a video in the works when this is all done.  Just wanted to get this part out there. Obviously there's no way to use everything they're making. I figure I could probably make some cuts and get cells to put in up to five boxes. I only need two so maybe I'll call around and see if anyone wants a cell.  Stay tuned. 

Hard lesson in queen rearing

I've been self teaching, with the help of YouTube, to breed queens. Or actually rear them, breeding would imply specific genetics and traits and all I'm trying to do is successfully get some mated queens. My purpose is simply to have some for the occasional club member who loses their queen. The thought is that even a poor queen is better than no queen. In any case.  I grafted on Sunday two weeks back, then last Monday put six cells in cages to emerge on Friday. I was going to be out of town and figured the bees would feed the new queens. Found out a hard lesson that it's not so. On Sunday, of the six caged, four emerged and three died.  Although it seems controversial, I think I'll put a little honey in the cages next time if I have to be away.  On a different note. While working the club yard Sunday we found a weak colony with a wax moth infestation in the top box. Moved the frames around and consolidated the best frames into one box. In the process we found the queen. I caught her and intended to mark her but she got away.  Looked in the box today and they have 4 capped and 4 un-capped queen cells. I look at it this way, the old queen wasn't very good, population was down and not a lot of brood. So maybe her daughter will do better.  Along the same lines. Mary, Ed and I went to Indian Harbour Beach Sunday and removed a colony from under an old bird gazebo. Very calm bees, we didn't even light a smoker.  Mary took home a nuc with five frames of comb and brood. I put together a single 8 frame box with brood comb and a frame of honey. Today there are at least five capped queen cells in the cut out (didn't look at all frames) and Mary says there are cells on her nuc too.  Will wait until the 24th to go in again.