Queen Rearing

 

Introduction

The quality of a queen is very important for successful beekeeping. Continuous selection and multiplication of the best colonies is vital for genetic improvement. Colony characteristics such as population growth, pollen and nectar collection, storage capacity, disease resistance, and gentleness are all determined by the genetic quality of the queen. All the bees in the colony, including the male drones, are offspring of the queen; thus she is the only member of the colony to pass on genetic traits. Requeening colonies annually helps to keep them strong and healthy.

Queens are required for division of colonies or replacing old exhausting queens. Any bee colony when rendered queenless will raise one or few new queens. But raising queens in mass in a colony is a wise practice since bee colony looses more than a month with respect to egg laying and brood rearing and hence gives a big setback. Best time for queen rearing is when colonies are preparing for swarming and pollen and nectar stores and income are in plenty.

It is easy to produce queens on mass scale in a queenless or queen right colony bygrafting technique. In case of queen right colony the queen is rmoved away from the queenrearing area by a queen excluder. Wax queen cups of appropriate size are attached to a barmade to fit in a special frame. Larvae of upto 24 hours age are grafted into the cell cups atoptimum temperature and humidity conditions. Same colony can be use both as cell builderand cell finisher colony. Sealed queen cells are removed after 10 days of grafting and kept inqueen nursery colonies or given to mating nuclei.

Requirements of Cell building colony :

• Enough honey stores or else should be fed with sugar syrup.
• Enough pollen stores; it is useful to provide pollen supplements.
• Bees overflowing in the hive.

After emergence and mating the queens can be shipped in queen cages. Ideal queen cage is a soft wooden block (2”x3”) with three cavities. Queen with few attendant worker bees are put in the cage and are provided candy in a cavity of the cage. The cavities are covered with a wire gauge screen, pinned to the wooden block. For queen introduction, about 3” long round cage of hardware cloth is ideal. Queen is confined in the colony in the cage and released after 24 to 48 hours. The queen will be accepted after the queen odour is familiar to the bees of the colony.

Artificial Queen Production

Queens can be produced artificially from a selected colony at a favourable time. The beekeeper prepares queen cells using beeswax and grafts 1–2 day-old larvae from the worker cells into the queen cells with the help of a grafting needle. The nurse bees feed royal jelly to the grafted larvae, take care of the cells, and prepare mature queen cells, which can then be separated and transplanted to a queenless colony or nucleus colony.

The ideal time for queen rearing is different in different parts depending on the specific geography and climatic situation. Ideally it should be carried out during the honey flow period and under favourable weather conditions (warm and dry). This means March to April and September to October in plains, hills, and mid-hills areas, and around June in mountain areas.

 

Colony selection for queen production

Each colony in an apiary should be numbered for easy record keeping. Records should be maintained of different functions so that the genetic characteristics can be evaluated. Selection of colonies to produce queens and drones should be based on the following qualities.

• Strong and Healthy
• Gentle
• Low tendency to swarm and abscond
• Population grows even in the dearth period
• Good nesting behaviour, cover brood combs even in unfavourable seasons
• Resistant against pests and diseases
• High capacity for honey and pollen collection and storage

Selection of a queen cell

The colony may have several queen cells of different quality. The following should be considered when selecting a queen cell:

• Choose a queen cell that is being attended and protected by a large number of workers.
• Choose a cell that is long and cylindrical (bigger cells generally have better quality queens).
• Retain two queen cells of different maturity.
• Remove any other queen cells to control swarming.

Requeening, queen release and replacement

If a new queen is placed directly in a colony she may be attacked and killed by the workers. The following methods can be used to avoid this.

Queening using a queen cage

• Remove all the queen cells from all the combs in a queenless colony.
• Make a queen-right colony queenless 24 hours before requeening.
• A queen that is going to be used for requeening should be kept in a queen cage with 5–6 attendant nurse bees and a cotton ball or pieces of cotton cloth soaked in honey.
• Place the queen cage with queen between brood frames in the colony.
• After 24 hours in the colony, give a few puffs of smoke and then release the queen from the queen cage.
• If the released queen is covered by worker bees or they start climbing on the queen or teasing the queen wings, then re-cage the queen for a further 24 hours.



 

Grafting a queen cell

• Use a knife to carefully cut out a selected queen cell together with a small piece of comb. Remove a brood comb from the centre of the brood chamber of the queenless colony and cut a space the size of the cell and comb piece at the edge of the comb. Place the queen cell and comb in the space and fix in place with a bamboo needle.
• Inspect the colony every 2–3 days to confirm queen emergence and queen laying. If egg laying does not start within 15 days, remove the queen and either introduce a new queen, graft a new queen cell, or unite the colony with a queen-right colony.
• Sometimes, the new queen may lay unfertilized eggs as a result of the absence of drones during her mating flight and/or an unfavourable environment for mating, and drones start developing in the worker cells. If this happens, the queen should be removed and another queen or queen cell introduced, or the colony should be united with a queenright colony.

 

Miscellaneous Management :

Moving Bees :

Flying bees return to their original location. Bee colonies can be moved by about a meter each day and by steps can be shifted to few metres. When the colonies are to be moved to ½ to 1 km then the colonies can be shifted directly during early spring, late fall or winter when few bees are flying or the bees are moved to 4-5 km away and brought back to the site to which the colonies are to be moved.

Transporting Bees : .

Bees can be transported in transport hives which accommodate 4-5 frames and have arrangement for ventilation through hardware screen pieces fixed on the top or side walls. Transportation is also possible in regular hives but it does not economize on the space inthe transport, however strong colonies have to be transported in regular hives. The frames should befirmly secured by fixing nails; bottom board and inner cover are also firmly fixed to the brood chamber. There should be enough food for bees to last during transportation or couple days after transportation.Combs full of honey are liable to break and bees will be killed with dripping honey. Colonies when transported in hot weather should be given a light sprinkle of water drops though the screen. Examine the colonies after they settle down.