What To Do With Your Grafted Queen Cells... Make a Nuc

OK, it has been eleven days since I grafted the queens in the last post to my blog. Those eleven days plus the three or four days (most likely three) makes fourteen or fifteen days since the grafted larvae were laid as eggs. It takes sixteen days from egg to queen so we need to do something with the queen cells quickly. Pictured below is some cells I grafted last year. I got in a hurry today and used and sold most of my queen cells before I remembered to take any pictures so I'll use this old picture so you can see what to expect if you do a fairly decent job when you are grafting your larvae.



One of the great things about rearing queens is that it gives you many more options for which you wish to do with your bees. I used some of the cells to replace some queens I sold a few days ago. One cell was used to replace a queen I accidentally killed while marking. It's hard to admit but I do mess up pretty badly sometimes. When replacing queens that were sold or if I'm simply requeening the acceptance rate of queen cells is pretty much guaranteed. After a colony realizes it is queenless you can give it a queen cell with a queen which shall soon emerge you do not need to worry about acceptance. Like I said, it is guaranteed when the queen emerges from her cell within the colony.

Now today I made some nucs since I had some queen cells. I put the old queens in with the nucs and used the queen cells for the colonies. This method may be somewhat opposite of what most beekeepers would do (I'll explain a little more in detail later), however I find that with a smaller population of bees in the nuc that it will not suffer without a laying queens and will build up nicely. The colony from which the nuc is made can handle the absence of a laying queen better than the nuc. The colony can sometimes benefit from not having a laying queen. I have in the past purposely removed a queen prior to a good nectar flow in order to allow the bees in the colony to concentrate on gathering nectar, drawing out supers, and making honey rather than spending all of their time feeding larvae. After the flow you can reintroduce the queen or allow the colony to requeen itself. Remember to always cutout capped queen cells four days after removing the queen from the colony or you may choose to leave the colony queenless for a longer amount of time if necessary to accommodate the nectar flow. The important thing to remember is that you remove the queen at seven days before the flow hits so most of the brood will be capped, nine days is actually more preferable. I would not recommend a novice beekeeper to attempt this. However if you feel that you have enough skill you should try it sometime because you may be impressed what a strong colony can do without having to take care of larvae during a strong nectar flow. OK, enough talk of this. I'm way off subject so let's get back on track.

I went to my outyard at the black raspberry patch to make a few nucs and took my camera along.



The raspberry patch is only a few acres big and I only have four colonies there at the present. I really wish I would have had more colonies there because I feel that I could have harvested more than the eleven supers of raspberry honey I got. I definitely feel that I would not have got nearly this much honey if the bees had to draw their own comb. It is important to save all of your drawn comb to reuse. Drawn comb is almost like gold to me. The raspberries were in bloom for slightly less than two weeks but I can still find a scarce bloom here and there. Shortly after the berries bloomed I grafted the queens so I could make some nucs right after I harvested the surplus honey after it had cured and was capped. The key to getting an early crop of honey from the raspberries is to have strong colonies. This is achieved by feeding your colonies syrup and pollen patties to the point where the brood chamber is full of "syrup honey", bee bread, brood, and bees. If you would like to know how to strengthen your colonies to get an early crop of honey refer back to my posts on Feeding Pollen Patties To Your Colonies, Feeding Inside a Colony, and Strengthening a Weak Colony. You must start making preparations in late February or early March to make sure that you can get an early crop instead of a bunch of swarms, or no swarms, or even some late winter dead outs from starvation. Also, if you need to know how to make syrup and pollen patties for your bees refer to Recipes for Beekeepers.

OK, so when the honey supers with drawn comb went on the colonies the feeding of syrup stops during the flow. We do not want syrup in the honey supers. After the flow the supers are removed. Then it is time to make some nucs. This is all about timing. Knowing your bloom dates, the life cycle of the bees (required for raising queens on a specific timetable), and having the proper equipment (nuc boxes, preferably drawn comb) ready to go is very crucial at this juncture.

Let's put the nuc together. First a good frame of honey is selected.



Now I need two frames of brood. These frames can be one of open brood (eggs and larvae) and one with capped pupae or two frames with a mixture of open and closed brood. The frame pictured below was selected due the fact that it had the queen on it. It also had open and sealed brood, honey, and bee bread which made it a good frame to select.



And another frame of brood is selected.



The nuc is finished off with a frame of drawn comb.



All that is left to do to the nuc is to put the lid on. The entrance was sealed with screen before any bees were added.



The main colony now requires a queen cell for it is queenless.



I prefer to place the cell between the top bars near the center of the colony. This cell was placed between the fifth and sixth frames of the lower hive body. If you choose to let the queen remain in the parent colony you can place the queen cell into the nuc in the same manner as described above. Be sure that your nuc is in place and will not be moved when you put the queen cell in it or it could get damaged from the top bars should they be moved any.



I got lucky when I found the queen to make this nuc. She was on the fifth frame I looked at. I already had the honey frame in place, the the brood frame with the queen, another brood frame, and a frame of drawn comb. It was a very easy nuc to put together. I had to replace the frames I took from the main colony to make the nuc. Luckily I had some empty frames of drawn comb. When you save your comb and keep it safe from wax moths it makes things so much easier on your bees. This picture is of the top hive body after taking the frames from it to use in the nuc.



The thing to do when you put frames back into the hive body is to center the remaining frames within the box and put the empties toward the outside. This helps to consolidate the brood near the center of the hive. After the upper hive body is back in place it is time to put the inner lid and feeders back in place.



With the feeders in place the must be filled to feed the bees. I now have a short amount of time to coerce the colony into filling the empty frames I gave them before the next nectar flow which will be tulip poplar.

Taking some brood from this colony will set it back some but not too badly. Taking the queen from the colony has set back more than taking some bees and brood from it has. The good thing about it is that this colony will not be set back as far as it would have if it had swarmed. In a sense, I made it swarm, or made an "artificial swarm". Most beekeepers make artificial swarms as a last ditch effort to stop a colony from swarming after it has made swarm cells and gone through the preparations to swarm. My reasons for doing this is because I want more colonies, to stop a swarm before it starts, and to requeen a colony with a new queen. Some beekeepers would not dream of doing this before the main honey flow starts. Then again, these are the same people who will most likely have their colony swarm and lose half their colony up in a tall tree and then lose their honey crop because there was not enough bees left in the colony to take advantage of the honey flow.

There are many things to consider in beekeeping. There is no "right" or "perfect" answer to every situation. This is why beekeeping is an art to be performed at the discretion of the beekeeper. One of the many things to consider is what kind of goals do you have concerning your bees. Most beekeepers goals are to let the bees make surplus honey and then harvest that honey. If this is your goal I hope you are working to achieve it. Don't let your bees do all the work. You can be proactive and share the burden. Don't be one of those guys who only goes out to his colony just add a super when needed and then take them off in July, if your lucky enough to get anything. Be one of those guys who starts feeding in late February or early April. Look in the brood chamber and see what's going on. What if your colony is pollen bound? What if you got sac brood? What if you got swarm cells? What if you have a queen that lays very poorly? What if the colony is infested with mites and on the verge of collapse? Please go out and look in your hives, and I don't mean tomorrow.. See what's happening in there. Maybe you need to make an artificial swarm so you don't lose half your bees and half or all your honey. Maybe you find a bunch of swarm cells and could use them to make some nucs, or put them in some mini nucs, or use one in a queenless hive before it becomes a drone layer. The list goes on and on. Be proactive with your bees, be a beekeeper.

I really did not intend to talk about a bunch of stuff other than making a nuc and what to do with a queen cell. It is just hard to contain my enthusiasm, especially this time of year when the bees are bringing in nectar. I love it. I hope you love it too.

Splitting a Colony

There is a quick and easy way to split your colonies. You can simply separate your hive bodies into two colonies. Take the top deep and put it on a floor with a lid. Let whichever half raise its own queen and not worry about them. This is the easy way. However, I like to have more control over what happens to my colonies. I like to leave the existing colony with the new queen, queen cell, or maybe it's raising its own queen, in the old location. I prefer to put the old queen in a new location. When doing this be sure to put extra bees with the old queen as many of them will drift back to their old location. As long as you have enough brood in the split you should not lose many bees. It is OK when some of the bees drift back to their original location because there is going to be an interruption of egg laying in that colony so some extra bees are a good thing. If you have a mated queen she should be accepted and laying eggs within a few days. A ripe queen cell will take around ten days. If you let them make a new queen you could be looking at nearly 28 days before any eggs are laid. So let's make sure we have enough bees depending on how we are going to queen the split.

When splitting a colony one must first ensure that the colony to be split is of sufficient strength. I usually will not split a colony which has less than eight frames of bees. Splitting a colony before it swarms is an easy way not to lose a swarm. It is also an easy way to increase colony numbers. After choosing a colony to be split I like to smoke the colony well and let the colony sit for a few minutes before beginning work.



Letting a colony sit for five minutes or so after smoking it will give the bees enough time to fill themselves with honey because they think they may need to leave the hive due to fire because they smell the smoke. Bees with a belly full of honey are less likely to be aggressive because they feel important to the colony's survival. Dry bees, or bees with empty bellies, can get pretty nasty sometimes so it is important to use your smoker properly when going into a colony.

After smoking the colony and before opening it, be sure to gather all the necessary hive components needed to make the split.



In the picture above you can see two deep hive bodies, hive base, floor, inner lid, and outer lid. Also there are twenty frames of drawn comb. Drawn comb is a beekeeper's best friend when making early splits. Bees need to consumes an estimated eight pounds of honey in order to produce one pound of wax. When making early splits it is essential to feed your bees even when using drawn comb. Here you can see that I am removing the inner lid with two jars of 1:1 sugar syrup placed over the ventilation hole.



In addition to sugar syrup, it is also imperative to provide the split with pollen. You can use a good pollen substitute or in my case I am using frames of drawn comb which contains bee bread. In order for the colony to raise one frame of brood it must have one frame of nectar and one frame of pollen available to feed the larva. So make sure your bees have resources available especially when making splits before the honey flow.

So now I'm going to tear the hive down in order to split it. The top super contains bees and brood. I will sit it aside for the time being.





Pictured above is the colony to be split after the shallow super on top was removed.

The top deep hive body contains nearly five frames of bees.



Now it is time to examine the lower deep hive body for content.



The lower hive body appears to have a little more than four frames of bees.



After separating the individual hive bodies it is time to sit up a new hive to transfer some frames of brood, honey, and the old queen into.



Pictured below is a frame which has been drawn out for drone brood. Drone comb is easy to spot out due to the larger size of the cells. Early in the season is does not do much good to replace this frame with foundation because the foundation will most likely be drawn into drone comb as well. Later in the season the bees are less likely to build drone comb, but for now I will replace this frame of drone comb with a frame of drawn worker comb. It is important not to simply throw away the drone comb. It can be used in a drone mother colony for breeding queens, can be used to catch varroa mites, or can be used to store honey above a queen excluder.



Here is a frame with some fresh pollen. I will put this frame into the new box.





I also want to select a few frames of brood to put into the new box.



A few frames of nectar, or sugar syrup, with bees are also essential to the split.



After putting enough bees and brood into the new box I fill in the rest of the space with drawn worker brood.





The above hive is the one I want to put the old queen in. After having gone through all the frames in order to make the split, I still have not found the queen. So I looked through the shallow super and found her in there. You can see her near the middle of the frame. Remember that you can click on the pictures to enlarge them if you want to see the pictures in more detail.



An easy way to put the queen into the split would be shake her off of the frame. I would rather pick her off the frame and place her into the split by hand. This way she does not get shook too hard or suffer an accident from being shook. It is important when handling queens not to ever hold one by the abdomen. They are very easily injured when they are full of eggs. I prefer to hold them by their thorax when handling them. All I had to do was simply place her onto a top bar and she disappeared in the hive body.



After placing the queen into the split a second deep hive body with drawn comb was added. This is the colony pictured below on the right. Pictured on the left is what remains of the original colony minus the shallow super.



The hive on the left will have a ripe queen cell added to it. It is always handy to have some queen cells on hand if you aspire to split your hives or make nucs. Queen cells are also nice to have should you decide to requeen your colonies. As a beekeeper you can save yourself a considerable amount of money by rearing your own queens. First I need to select a cell to place into the colony. This cell looks like a nice big one.



I have in the past cut a piece of comb from the frame large creating a space large enough to accommodate the queen cell. However I have had just as much success by placing the queen cell between the top bars and using a small amount of pressure from the top bars to hold it in place. I also prefer to place the cell above the most crowded or congested area in the hive.



Pictured below is two queen cells between the top bars.



I made this split on April 12, 2009. In a few more days I will have new bees hatching out from the new queen. The queen cells were from a split I did on March 30, 2009.

After placing the queen cells in place it was time to put the hive back together. The super went back on, then the inner lid, and the feeders.



The hive is topped off with a shallow super and a shim to accommodate the feeders. An outer lid seals it up.



The hive below on the left was the original colony which now has some ripe queen cells. The middle hive has the old queen and should not have its brood laying interrupted too much. Some bees will drift back to the original location. But once again, that is OK. Since it could take near ten days for the new queen to start laying eggs the colony will benefit from some extra bees. The colony with old queen is already hatching out bees which were laid after the split and is steadily increasing in population. It will not be much longer before I can split this colony again. The colony with the queen will most likely be split before the end of the month.

I hope this helps explain in some detail on how to split a colony. If you enjoyed this post please show your appreciation by clicking on the google sponsored advertisements. Thanks.

Cell Builder Colony

This is the first year that I have raised my own queens by grafting larva into cell cups. One of the main things that I needed to raise some queen cells is a cell builder. Some queen breeders will use starter colonies to start a large number of cells and then disburse those cell cups between multiple finisher colonies to build the cells and to cap them. Some will also use special nursery cages or banking bars in incubators to free their cell finishers up to increase production. Since I am just getting starting and do not need to make the amount of queens as those who sell them commercially I decided to use one queenless colony to start, build, finish, and incubate my queens.

The first thing you should do is make sure that your cell builder colony is populous and disease free. I would also like to recommend that the colony you use is extremely gentle. A colony which goes queenless for a while can become agitated rather easily and may become ill tempered. After you select your colony there there are few few manipulations that should take place. Keep in mind that this is only one scenario and that there are other ways to end up with the same results. This is just what I did and it worked for me. However I do wish I would have used a more gentle colony but now I know better and will next time.



This is the colony which I chose to build my queen cells. After I decided to use this colony I brought an extra hive body to the rear of the colony. As I went through the frames looking for the queen I placed the frames which contained the most eggs into the extra hive body. When I found the frame with the queen I placed it over to the side to isolate her from the colony. After finding and placing the frames with the most eggs into the empty hive body I then began placing the frames with the most youngest and most larvae into the empty box as well. After getting the frames with the largest patterns of eggs and larvae I searched for any other frames with open brood. After I had the extra full of those frame the remaining frames went into the bottom deep along with the frame with the queen. Once the remaining frames and queen was in the bottom deep I put a queen excluder over it and then placed the hive body which contained mostly all open brood atop of that. The picture above was taken nine days later when all the brood cells in the upper deep were capped.



At this point, nine days after putting all the open brood in the upper deep, I removed the lid and placed the upper deep onto it.

The lower deep is removed from where it is sitting creating a vacancy for the upper deep.



After placing a bottom board where the lower deep was I placed the upper deep upon it.



Once the top deep, now queenless, was in the place where the lower deep was originally, I placed a solid piece of plywood atop it then I placed the queenright hive body on that facing towards the rear.







Since the bottom deep now has all capped brood and is queenless there is no way, or should I say no larvae, for the bees to attempt to raise any queens. Also, with the queenright hive body on the top facing towards the rear all of the returning foragers which leave the top will enter the lower queenless half boosting the population for cell building. The queenless hive body, now on the bottom, also has many young bees in it. The bees have the most time and effort invested in the capped brood so they will stay on the capped brood to keep it from becoming chilled. After two more days many more foragers have left the top queenright hive body only to return to the queenless hive bottom.

After the two additional days I moved the queenright portion of the colony elsewhere so I can gain access to the cell builder more readily. At this point you will need to remove a frame so you can add a frame of eggs for some easy queens without any grafting or you can add a cell bar with some freshly grafted larvae.



If you don't think that there are enough bees in your cell builder you can always shake some in but be sure not to shake a queen in. After a while the population of your cell builder will become depleted but you can keep the population up by adding frames of capped brood.