Raising Queen Bees

the queen bee is the most important single bee of the hive her genetics determines the characteristics of your ecology how gentle they are how productive how disease resistant and light resistance and how adapted they are to local conditions [Music] my name is Tom repass and I breed queen bees I used to graft in the front seat of my pickup truck now in a small shed I have a truck battery for electricity for a light stand he kicked me out of the wind and out of the Sun inside I have a chair a small desk a light with a magnifying lens and a wooden rack upon which I place the brood comb [Music] on the day that we're scheduled to graft I go into the breeder colony and select a brood comb with larvae of the proper age [Music] [Music] about five days earlier I placed an empty dark brood comb in the center of the brood nest these eggs take about three days to hatch which means there should be a mix of eggs young larvae and older larvae you can't see it in this video but the Queen has been laying eggs and there's plenty of young larvae here to grab from [Music] let's take a look at one of the other combs look at that beautiful pattern of capped brood hardly any missed cells when there's the Queen good we don't want to take her out on me other Como's eggs and young larvae before we begin grafting let's go over some of the supplies that we use so here are Jays vbz clean cell cups there's many types of clean sell cups available but I like these with em they come in various colors you can use different colors that you're grafting from different breeder Queens the pushin cups go into a wooden bar that we later hang into the cell starter colony every Queen breeder has their preferences for grafting tools I prefer the Chinese grafting tool lévesque it has a spring-loaded top with a flexible tip to place underneath the larvae and a movable plastic plunger to push it off gently [Music] after gently brushing the nurse bees off of the brew come we bring it into the grafting shed and look for young larvae to transfer from the brood comb into our queen cell cup although bees can raise Queens from older larvae the quality of the Queen's will be inferior those two larvae are obviously too old are filling up the entire bottom of the cell you're looking for a larva before it forms the shape of a letter see that one there in the center of the screen although it could be grafted is about 36 hours old or older and that's also a little bit too old there's an egg I usually find the larva the proper age right where the eggs are beginning to hatch what you're looking for is a small larvae 12 to 24 hours of age about one and a half times the size of egg floating in a pool of royal jelly there it is see how it's more of a shape of a comma rather than the letter C that's exactly what you want it's best to go straight down push the flexible portion of the grafting tool underneath the larva pulling her out without touching the sides and with a small portion of royal jelly you then put her very carefully into the center of the queen cell cup [Music] about 24 to 48 hours before grafting day I make up a self-starter if the highs into which I shut young nurse be without any young lore of our age these these are definitely queenless can you hear them buzzing and whirring like that they're ready to make clean all we have to do is add the grafted queen so [Music] after I'm done grafting I put the soak up from the film bars onto a frame and then I gently slip that right into the middle of the self-starter the bees will go right to work see that cup with the white substance inside it that's royal jelly they're just beginning to draw the wax ten days after grafting the Queen cells are ripe the Queen's are ready to emerge in a day or two in order to raise great Queens we need to be well bred from breeder colonies of good genetics stock well mated they mated with drones from colleagues with the characteristics that you want and they need to be well fed even though this queen has pew pated there's still plenty of royal jelly left within the cup and that's exactly what you want to see look at how absolutely beautiful this Queen so is it's like a work large the day before the Queen cells are ready to emerge we put them into mating nucleus hives which we call mating nooks for short these are set out in our mating yard among the ponderosa pine trees the entrances face in different directions so the young Queens can more easily find their way back and not get confused we have to put each Queen into a separate colony otherwise they'll fight I also use queen castles these are hives with dividers that allow us to mate up to four young Queens in one hive there are two combs in each section with a divider keeping the bees apart each Queen Castle has an entrance facing in a different direction making it easier for the young Queen to find her way back we take the ready to emerge queen cells and put them either on the face of the comb earlier in the year when it's more cold so the bees can keep it warm or later in the season we put it right between the top bars of the frames [Music] another thing I like about clean castles is that the dividers are removable if a queen of souls or if it's later in the season and the population is increasing we can remove the divider and make it into a side by side four frame new [Music] Queens will go under mating flights around age seven or ten and begin laying eggs three days later once she's laid eggs we can marker the frame point be gentle to grow up by the wings or the thorax but never by the abdomen we use a little paint pen and marker with the color of the year every year has a different color to give it a few seconds for the paint to dry and then we put her back in the hive we like for our Queens to lay for at least 21 to 28 days to assure that they're of high quality but once an order comes in for the Queen we need to cage her for the beekeeper again pick her up by the wings and put her head first whoops she didn't really want to go in there put her head first into the clean cage we then carefully pick up nurse bees again by the wings and put about five to seven nurse bees to care for and feed the Queen while she's been route to her new home [Music] we then plug the hole in the end of the cage with some candy and she's ready to be introduced to a new colony [Music] this is tom repast of canyon rim honeybee in western South Dakota thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Canyon Rim Honey Bees

Views: 595,136

Keywords: honey bee, queen bee, raising queen bees, mating nucs, grafting queen bees, beekeeping, Queen breeding, Queen rearing

Id: fBxATFjDlBA

Length: 9min 24sec (564 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 06 2017