Well, that wasn't planned!

Last week (April 26) I took delivery of 3 Queen bees from the Eastern Missouri Beekeepers Association. I thought it was way too early to get queens (well certainly too early to make splits) as its been so cold here this winter. But there's not much that can be done if everything is firing in Louisiana and there are queens there ready to shipped out!

The 3 Queens.

Anyway, I took the queens and installed them the same day. One went into a weak hive, together with some eggs and brood from an adjacent stronger hive (I had already disposed of the resident queen the previous day). The other two Queens I put in a mating box along with frames of brood/eggs I took from the strong hive in my back yard and from a hive I have at the botanical gardens. No worries!

The strong hive in my Back Yard

I checked on the mating box on Wednesday; the candy plugs in the queen cages had been eaten away. I therefore assumed the queens had been released. So all good, right?

Wrong! I checked the hives this morning. One side of the mating box is raising Queen Cells! (can you spot one?) So that means the Queen in that side is dead! I found the other Queen dead inside her cage!

Spot the Queen Cell!

The dead Queen!

So that was a waste of time! Still, at least the Queen in the weak hive is alive! I found her still in her cage!  She hadn't been able to find her way out. She doesn't sound too clever to me!  All in all it wasn't a very encouraging start! But you have to look on the bright side...

1. I'm now raising my own queens which is actually what I wanted to do in the first place!

2. The hive in my back yard is nice and strong and it was no problem taking brood and eggs from it.

3. The single surviving queen walked out of the cage and onto a frame in the weak hive without being assaulted by the other bees!

I have hope!

Queen Rearing

I've not been that busy over the winter, but I have started to prepare some mating boxes for rearing my own queens! I intend to try (in a small way) to breed my own queens from whatever local bees are out there.

I was caught out in the late fall last year, when I tried to re-queen a hive but couldn't find anyone with any queens available. When I did finally did get hold on one, I found laying workers had established themselves in the hive before I could install the new queen. And as if this wasn't enough, the replacement queen I got hold of died the day after she arrived!  I ended up having to kill off this hive; my FIRST EVER loss!!!

As a result of this mess, I have decided to try some basic queen rearing. I've bought a couple of mating boxes (I call them my Pershing Boxes) and my intent is to take frames with swarm cells from my colonies (as and when I find any?) and install them in the mating boxes. I hope by doing this I'll be able to prevent both swarming but I will also be able to "bank" a few queens and have them on hand should I (or any of my beekeeper neighbours come to that) need them later on in the summer.

Completed Mating Box

I think there will be a good chance any queens I rear will have genes from good hygienic local stock as there are so many Beekeepers in my immediate area, and most of them got their bees through the EMBA.

It will be an interesting experiment to perform and I hope easy to manage. I don't want to get into grafting eggs, I just want an easy way to rear queens that anyone else feels they can copy and have fun with. With luck I'll be able to report back to the club in the fall and we might even have a simple model for swarm control and queen rearing that we can spread throughout the club!