Laurence Edwards and Richard show how to manage breeder queens year-round. Keep colonies small in summer by removing two frames of sealed brood when you hit five frames, which cuts population by three weeks. In autumn, feed for two months and let the colony grow strong for winter. A queen approaching five years is near her lifespan limit.
In this video today, we're going to talk about pure breeder queens and how to manage them throughout the season. So earlier on this year, Richard showed us his favourite breeder queen. He was keeping it small, but now we're getting it ready for winter, and today we're going to have a look inside. So Richard, tell me about your breeder queens and how you manage them throughout the season.
Right, so the breeder queens are very difficult to manage in terms of— because you want the egg quality to be the best you can, you need to downsize the colony. Which this causes quite a lot of issues if you're in a big apiary with other big colonies. But if you can manage that successfully, the outcome is far superior to something that you're trying to graft out of, say, on 12 frames. But it's what you need to remember to do at this time of year is to build it back up so as it has a big quantity of nurse bees so they can survive the winter. And this has definitely got to that point.
So my fear with breeder queens, and fingers crossed it's never actually happened to me, I've been relatively good at managing the few that I have, is that they build up so strong because they are— they're bred to be huge, massive colonies, super healthy, calm bees, and then they just swarm. And then once they swarm, that's it. They leave behind some cells and you're effectively down to an F1 if you leave those cells in there to go and mate. So you are kind of in this constant cycle of trying to keep it as small as possible so they don't swarm. And previously I thought that the way to do that was just to remove brood, but I found taking brood out of a colony consistently doesn't really keep the size of the colony down. Do you find the same?
If you let it hit the walls, it will definitely go out the front. So when I say in the summertime, I keep mine down to probably 5 frames with 1 frame of foundation in at all times. So if I go back in and it's back up to the 5 frames, I'll probably take 2 frames of sealed brood out, which then knocks that colony back by at least 21 days.
So do you just take the brood out? Do you like shake the bees off, take the brood out, give the brood to something else, or do you take the brood and the bees? No, so generally at that point in the year, I can take them 2 frames and I can put a cell with it, which will make And I think that's what I was getting at there in terms of not just taking the brood out, because if you've got a box full of bees and you've got a turbocharged breeder queen and you just take that brood out, okay, you're going to stunt them a little bit in terms of brood emergence, but all the queen does is within literally 2 days is she just fills out all of those new frames with eggs and you're kind of back to square one. So you're just, you're taking emerging brood and you're replacing it with eggs. So what I do now and what Richard does now is we consistently go in taking out the frames of brood and bees. making up little splits and keeping that colony small in terms of the actual number of overall bees and the brood, not just in terms of the number of frames of brood. So going into winter, it's completely different though, isn't it? So how are you getting this colony here set up for winter?
So this colony's probably had 2 months of feeding, and I probably haven't taken anything out for over a month, so it is up to its full strength for winter. There's plenty of young bees, I mean, I've got big hopes for this queen because she is my favourite. She is also getting on in, in bee terms, life. She's probably 4 and a half coming up to 5, which is pretty pushing the limit.
It's quite amazing, isn't it, that Richard's managed to keep this queen going for so long. When we bought this queen from Duncan, I think she was maybe like 2 and a half, and then we've had 2 seasons out of her. So if we can get her into next season, that'll be her 5th year. She's almost getting to the point where she's going to be correctly marked in terms of the colour. for the actual year that she's in. Fingers crossed we can get her there. It's not out of the question to get them living that long, but I have to say, I think she's probably gonna supersede next year. That's about a year.
If she hasn't already.
If she hasn't already. Like you say, you've not actually checked in there now. It could be that they've superseded. But all good things do come to an end, and we've got plenty of other good breeder queens that we can use to rear our queens. So we definitely need to get inside this colony here, Richard, and have a look. Do we need to put our bee suits on?
Yes.
Should we not put our bee suits on?
No.
Richard's incredibly sensible when it comes to not getting stung. Right, I'm going to have a look in here if you want to go and take cover. Should we do it?
Wow. Are you sure? Bear in mind they've been hassled by wasps.
Yeah, do you know what, so many times I've taken Richard's advice and it's been good and so many times I've not taken his advice and I wish I had taken it, so okay. We will bow to your experience and we will not open this because that is a lot of bees in there. Wow. Huge amount of bees. So is this kind of indicative of what you want the colonies like going into winter?
This, if I could put every colony into winter like this, it'd be an ideal situation. That obviously doesn't happen in the real world. But no, this is perfect.
Very good. So there you go. That is the cycle in terms of management of breeder queens throughout the season. You're building them up early in the spring to get them going, to get good larva, good eggs. You're keeping them small, both with brood and bees, all the way throughout the season. But then don't leave it too late to build them back up to make sure they're strong for winter. Otherwise, you might get a little bit of a surprise come the next spring.
