Simple Method To Raise LOTS of Queen Bees

Today I'm going to show you how I rear my queens. So this must be the number one video in terms of people asking for requests, so I finally got around to doing it. I've been waiting for good weather, but I've been also waiting for my breeder queen to come. So there was a bit, a bit of a delay of the breeder queen coming out of Germany due to that cold snap, but it's arrived. It's been safely introduced into a nuc, so within the next kind of 10 to 15 days I'm going to have eggs and larvae to graft from. So it's about the right time to do my queen rearing video. So the method is called a 10 over 10 method. The reason it's called 10 over 10, it's very simple. You've got 10 frames of brood in a brood box, queen excluder in between them, and then 10 frames of brood above. And then what you're doing is you're forcing the colony into a swarming mode, and you're going to create these cells under the swarming impulse. So you'll learn more as we go through the video, but it's very, very simple. All we're going to do today is I'm going to show you the first step of that video, which is I'm going to take 10 separate frames of brood and put them over another 10 frames of brood in a really strong congested colony. And that's how we start the cell builder. We then come back in 10 days and there's further manipulations, but for the purpose of this part, we're just going to focus on that very, very simple step— 10 over 10. Let's get on with it. Okay, so I'm starting this video off a little differently. What I like to do is I like to find the queen in the bottom box and I like to mark her. It means when I come to have to make sure I'm removing all the queens, at least I know I've got the main one, um, so I can just take her out and then I haven't got to chuck her through a queen excluder. Just makes the process easier. This box is going to be teeming with bees in 10 days, so anything I can do to make that job easier, I like to do it now. So she's marked under there.

Yeah.

So just giving her a quick blob. She's absolutely fine though, and then she goes back in the bottom box. So then this— but this bottom box needs to be 10 frames of brood. So if you've got a colony that's at the point of swarming, you've got 10 frames of brood, great. use that. If you haven't, just make sure you've got 10 frames of brood in there. You can pinch a couple of frames from another couple of colonies. This one, we're running it as a double brood, so all I'm doing is I'm just taking out the frames from the top box that have got brood and putting them in there. You want 10 frames of brood at the bottom and the queen, and then the queen excluder.

Drop in.

Nice big frame of brood. Frame of brood, frame of brood, frame of brood, frame of brood. So then I go into my top box. And you want to pick out the frames of brood in there as well. So this one's got a bit of nectar in, but probably half nectar, half brood. That's fine. That one, whole frame of eggs. That's fine. Right, so that's the setup of the bottom box. Like I say, if you've got a colony that's like that already, great. If not, you want 10 frames of brood, preferably capped brood, preferably emerging brood, and you want the queen. Make sure the queen's downstairs, and then you put a queen excluder on. And what you do next is you take another empty brood box and you place that on top. Then what you want to do with this brood box What you want to do is you want to go and fill that with 10 frames of brood, 10 of your best frames of brood. So I go around and I search throughout the apiary and just steal 1 or 2 frames of brood from each of the emerging colonies, and then I put them in here. So I'll fast forward and come back with 10 frames of brood. So as always, when you're dealing with bees and opening up colonies, you get sidetracked looking for the brood. Swarm's averted for the time being though, so we're going to finish this off now. So what I'm doing is I'm going to put the 10 frames of brood that I've collected, just brood, no bees. I'm going to put them into our cell builder colony here in this top box. Nice frames of brood, that's what you want. I'm actually just going to put this whole box on. So as we've got in there 10 frames of brood, I'll run through them and show you. You need to make sure there's enough bees in the bottom to cover both layers of brood. If you're doing it in really, really nice warm conditions like this though, it makes it a lot easier. No worries about any brood being chilled, just make sure there's enough bees. So the bees will immediately come up, you can see them starting to come up now. All you do now, put the roof on and leave it for 10 days. First part of this manipulation, dead easy. You've got 10 over 10, so 10 frames of brood and the queen underneath, queen excluder, and then an additional 10 frames of brood that you've harvested from all of your colonies on top. Roof, leave it for 10 days. Right, we're back at the queen rearing colony. The queen This is the queen starter and it's day 10, so we're going to do the manipulation now to turn this into the queen starter. It's terribly windy today, so I'm going to be as quick as I possibly can. I really don't want to disturb the bees more than necessary. Right, so we open up, and again, this is my method. Everyone does this slightly differently, but you take the main colony with the queen in and you put it down there. I don't put that on the floor. I leave the existing floor where it is. I shake out all the bees from the floor, make sure there's none left. I then put the floor, put the floor back in position. I then take my top box and I put that back on the spot. Now in that top box, I know there's going to be no No queen cells whatsoever, no eggs. I'm just going to go through it one by one though, just to double-check. Don't want to see any eggs. Should be plenty of young nurse bees. At this point, you want to go through and double-check for queen cells. You can't do this with queen cells. Shake off absolutely every frame, make sure there isn't any. At this point, check your veil's done up. Always helps to do it with a veil, doesn't it? I've got a couple of bees in the veil, so no doubt take some more stings to the face. Right, so I've gone through my now bottom box and I've made sure that there's absolutely no queen cells. So we've got bees, lots of nurse bees, bees in my veil, but don't worry about that. So in this bottom box we've got bees, nurse bees, no queen cells, no queens. Happy with that, but how do we turn this into a really, really strong queen starter colony? What we do, we take the queen excluder, we make sure there's no bees on it, put that queen excluder on the colony like this. You then get a spare box. Now what other people do at this point is they just shake everything in there. I like to go and find the queen, and I'll just make up a little nuc with her. You can easily kind of sacrifice a frame of brood with the queen, so I just do that. It's kind of just my way. So I found the queen, and you'll be really happy you marked her early on because it's always, always difficult to find the queen. Like, there's so many bees in this box.

Hello, little one.

She's there. So I've removed— I've now removed the one queen, um, that I know is in the box. There could be other queens in the box. That's why you have to shake them through a queen excluder. So there's some queen cells on this frame as well. Doesn't matter, you can safely just take those queen cells down. Doesn't make a massive difference on this bit though. What you need to make sure is there's no queen cells in this box here. So I've got the queen, she's going to go safely in this box. Now what I can do is I can knock all of the additional bees in through this queen excluder, and you never know, we might find another queen. So then what we can do, and then what we have to do, is go through every single frame, shake the bees off in there. You'll probably find queen cells in here. If you want to use those queen cells, use the frame before you shake the, the bees off, otherwise you could damage the cells. So nothing on that one.

Nothing on that one.

So now we're on to grafting, um, and like I say, when, when you're grafting, you just need to take your time doing it. Everyone starts off and they're really rubbish at it. I'm not very good at grafting, I have to say. I've never once had over 50%. But I just put more cells in, you know what I mean? So I've got this frame here, I'll put that one frame in, I've got 8 or 9 on there, and I'll stick that one in as well. I've probably got the same on there, so I'll put about 30 cells in at once, and that's probably a bit too many for a colony, but the way I see it is that if I graft 30 and 15 of them are decent, then all they're really going to do is feed the 15, so I'm not hurting them by putting any more in. If I got to a point where I grafted 30 and they accepted, say, 27 or 28 of them, I think I would reduce it down Because I think it would be detrimental to the quality of the queens putting that many in, personally. I know other people put kind of a bit more than that in, just my own way of doing it. So I like to kind of have like 10 or 15 per batch, and I think that's about the right, in terms of an acceptance rate. Just wanted to show you a couple of other things while I'm in the car. It's a bit difficult doing it in here, but Here is my pollen frame. Now you might think, wow, that's a really odd looking pollen frame, but what that is— and I'll show you again— um, I've just extracted my spring crop and a lot of it's come from brood frames, and I've had some really, really nice pollen frames within that. So obviously that's rubbish for extracting honey. Eat that. Um, But it's great for grafting. So those frames there are absolutely saturated with honey, full of pollen as well. So they're probably kind of like 60-70% full of pollen, but it's not just any old pollen, it's honey-saturated pollen. So the bees are getting that kind of additional— so the bees are getting that additional feed at the same time that they're getting the pollen. And then also on top of that, what I've done— so if you see This side of the frame is different, so that is absolutely full of pollen, and it's really, really heavy, this frame, as well, because it's got honey on it. But on that side, if you can see this kind of heart shape here, that is pollen, natural pollen that I've trapped, and I've kind of put that into the frame. So it's a really super frame in terms of a pollen frame. You can get good natural pollen frames, but you're better off kind of finding one and then improving it if you can. And I find, uh, if you're just doing your honey extraction— and spring crop always coincides with kind of first batch of queens for me— if you find a nice frame in your honey extraction line, that's the good frame to use because it's soaked in honey. It's going to give them a really nice kind of carbohydrate boost, but it's also going to give them that protein boost that they need as well. So I'm just going to flick the camera around just so you can see the pressure That I have to kind of deal with when I'm grafting. I get an absolute full audience every time because this is where I like to graft. So we don't take the car in anymore to go and get valeted. We get it licked by lots of local Welsh cattle. Always good fun. Love the cows. They love me, I think. But yeah, anyway, enough of the cows. So we'll carry on with the grafting. So I've got a cell here, a frame here from my breeder colony. First batch of bees, you know what I mean? That is the first bee coming out of it there, pretty much. So these are really, really nice fresh cells. It's going to be so difficult. I don't know how I'm going to show you this kind of on video. So I'm going to have to do a separate video and try and zoom in or something. But I'm just going to, I mean, I'll take my Chinese grafting tool. That's my grafting tool of choice. I've got a stainless steel one here as well, don't like that one as much. I find I damage the larvae a bit more on this one. This is my one of choice. So I'm just going to sit here, take it easy with the cows. I'm sure they enjoy it as well, it's like a spectator sport around here. Do some grafting and then I'm going to go and stick the frames in the hive. So then after an hour you want to find a nice frame of brood, And then set up your colony. So I have a frame of brood, then I take my grafts, then I took my pollen frame facing Into the grass. And then I take my second frame, so this is a bit of a backup frame, this one. And then I close it all up. So I apologize for this video, I've had to work quickly because it's cold. I've had to do the grafting quickly, and I've had to do that step really, really quickly because I don't want the grafts to be damaged by the cold, and they will. You know what I mean? Individual grafts that you've kind of put into a cup, they're not going to last very long in 12 degrees weather, so I've had to do that very, very quickly. But ultimately what you've got is bees in a box. The bees are the Correct age of bee. You want as many young bees as you possibly can. You've got no queen because you've shaken them all through a queen excluder. You've got no cells because you've gone through each and every single frame and you've ensured that there's no queen cells on it. You've got protein in the form of a really good proper pollen frame. You've got feed. We're going to put the feeder on in a minute once the bees have calmed down. Carbohydrates coming in, it stimulates a flow. That means they're still in swarm mode. They're going to draw those cells out nicely for you. And that's it. I mean, that's the perfect recipe for creating nice, well-drawn-out swarm cells. So we'll fast forward a couple of days, and I'll show you how well they've taken to the cells. Right, so it's day twelve now, two days after we put the grass into the colony, and the weather has come. They've come back. Like, if you can hear the buzz in this apiary, it is incredible. Every single colony is out foraging, bringing back lots of fresh nectar. Um, got really, really high hopes for this colony, high hopes for the graft. So let's get in, see what the take is. So as you can see, the bees are really Really, really interested in them, all over those grafts, feeding them that royal jelly that you've created by giving them plenty of protein in the form of pollen, natural pollen, and plenty of carbohydrate in the term of either a natural flow, which there is now, or the feed which I gave them when there wasn't. So we're going to gently brush these off and see what the take is. And believe it or not, first bar of the season, we've got 9 out of 9. So really, really happy with that. Doesn't always work like that. I've only ever got a full bar a couple of times previously, but definitely not on the first bar that I've done in the whole season. So we put 9 larvae in here and they fed 9 larvae. So that means the grafting— my grafting is getting a bit better. They've taken all of those. We know now that these will definitely kind of go on to create really, really good strong queens. You can see the number of bees. We know that there's that good flow. They're going to be packed full of royal jelly. We're going to produce some really, really good queens. This, this is what the grafting frame should look like. Absolutely jam-packed full of bees. That's what it should look like. You sometimes get it and there's a few bees on it. This is a frame where they're interested in what's in those cells. If your grafting is not very good or you've left a queen or a queen cell in there, you will not get a grafting frame like this. This is what you want to see. So again, I'll blow them off, we'll see what the take rate's like. So this is what your grafting frame should look like. Absolutely tons of bees there. You can't get more bees on there than that, paying those larvae so much attention. All they want to do, feed the larvae as much royal jelly as they possibly can to produce big strong queens. So really, really happy with that. We'll brush them off and we'll see how many we've got to take. So we brushed them off and I'm counting now. I've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. Got 12 out of— I'm not sure how many I've got there. I'll work it out in a bit. So 12 taken. I'll go and have a look at the other frame. And then we'll change them up and we'll go and put these onto the cell finisher. So this is the second cell grafting frame, 9 cells, 9 larvae, so full bar, really, really happy with that. Takes it up to about 24 in total for this colony out of 36, so 66% strike rate, really, really happy with that. I'll rearrange them now, give them a second run, and these can go off into the finisher. So setting up cell finishers are much, much easier than setting up a starter. All you need is you need to take one of your really, really strong colonies and do a couple of manipulations just to get it into a state where it can receive started cells. So I'm going to use these 2 colonies behind me as my cell finishers, and the reason I've chosen them is they're the 2 strongest colonies in the apiary. They've also got boxes above the queen excluder that fit my grafting cell, so that makes it a lot easier. And the setup is, you don't really need to do a huge amount. So the box remains the same at the bottom. You have a queen excluder with a brood box and the queen underneath, so it's a queen-right colony. So above that you have your supers, no matter what size the boxes are, and then all you need to do is move up some open brood, which will attract the young nurse bees, and you need to put another pollen frame in. And then you need to feed them. So I'm going to take my grafts from the cell builder colony and bring them over to the cell finisher colony. A couple of easy manipulations though, so I'll show you how you do them. So then I've got my grafting frame, try and get as many bees as you possibly can off it. So thankfully the weather has improved a little bit. Um, I'm really sorry for the poor audio throughout this Like, we've been having to battle with terrible weather, terrible wind, and then it just makes the bees really angry as well, and then they go and attack the camera, um, and it turns it into a bit of a rubbish video. So I do apologize for that. I will do it again. And as I speak, the wind kicks up. I will do it again at a later date and try and make it a little bit clearer, and we'll break it down into the certain elements of the video. But we are at the end of the video now. I'm going to show you the finished cells in the cell finisher. So there we have it, there are the finished cells. You can have a little bit of a close-up. Um, I don't bother going through and taking them out and making sure that I've got full frames of finished cells in my finisher. I've got loads of cell building frames. I don't like to handle them any further, so I'll just put them in as they are.

As you can see, I've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

About 24, so 50% strike rate on this frame. Like I say, that's what I normally get, that's what I'm happy with. You can see the cells though, really nice big chubby cells.

They always look a little bit smaller, um, on a frame like this, but you'll see when the queens emerge, they're really nice big fat chubby queens, which is what we want. So these will go now and these will be taken into nucs that I've set up ready to accept the super. You can see that in another video.

So that's it, that's the end of the video. Again, I apologize for the poor sound throughout this video. It's, uh, it's very difficult rearing queens in North Wales, what with the weather. We've gone from drought and 25-26 degrees to 50 mile an hour winds to floods in a week. It's really, really hard to kind of prepare for that kind of weather, and it's almost impossible to try and record in that kind of weather as well. Like I say, it means the Bees are angry. The bees attack the camera. The camera is shaking in the wind, so I do apologize. But I just wanted to say, I think everyone should have a go at grafting. So there's loads of different ways of doing it. Do you know what I mean? I start with a cell starter, a cell builder, and then a cell finisher. So two different hives, two different colonies to do two different functions. The last round of grafts that I did, I did them all in the cell builder. I didn't have it as a starter. I just did it in a builder, and that's absolutely fine. The only reason that I use the finisher is because it's an efficient use of resources. I want to be able to start 50, 60 grafts off at a time, and unless I use a starter and a finisher, I can't actually do that. So you can kind of use it in a bit of a rolling system, and that's the reason that I use it. If you just want to do it for yourselves though, I mean, you can find a really, really strong colony, but Bolster it with 10 frames of brood that you've pinched from elsewhere, and then just use that colony to raise your cells. So you put them in there and then you take them out of there just before they're about to emerge. That works really, really well. And then what you can do with that colony as well, you can break it up and then you can add your cells to that colony. So it is actually quite a neat way of doing it. I've done that before, and I'll make up 2-frame nucs. So if I've got 10 frames of brood in that cell builder, and then I've got I'll break that up into 2-frame nucs, so 5 2-frame nucs, fill the rest with drawn comb, feed them, give them a cell each, and then you've kind of disbanded your cell builder. So it does work, and you can do it many, many different ways. But please do have a go at grafting. Um, use your best stock. I mean, that's what everyone says. That's what Mike Palmer says. That's what Richard Knowles says. Use your best stock. I do it with my best stock. I also do it with breeder queens. I like what I get from I like the consistency across all my apiaries, and that's the reason that I do it. When I do it with my own stock though, they come out great. I just choose the best colony. And now that can be whether you're going for temperament and you just want bees in your back garden as like nice friends and a friendly colony, or you can do it for honey production, or you can do it for disease resistance. I mean, there's loads of different variables, there's loads of different criteria that you can breed for. Obviously you're probably looking for You don't want super honey producers that are going to die at the end of each season because they're really unhealthy. And again, you don't want super honey producers that are mega aggressive because that's— it's not nice to keep mega aggressive bees. So it's up to you what criteria you use. I mean, this video though shows you and breaks it down how to graft cells and how to rear them through the different stages.