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  • Home
  • News
    • Honey Show
    • News Archive
    • Calendar
    • Events
  • About
    • Tom Shaw Article
    • Membership
    • Committee
    • Gallery
    • Our Constitution
  • Education
    • Swarms
    • Beginners
    • Beginners Course
    • Intermediates
    • Seniors
    • Third Level Education
    • Reference
    • Microscopy Course
  • Contact
  • Online Shop
  • Blog

Queen-rearing

Why rear your own queens?

Every year we see many beekeepers panicking about queenless hives. If they had reared queens as a matter of course, this would not be an issue since they would always have a supply close at hand. Rearing queens is also a must for anyone doing their FIBKA exams. Even if you simply raise your swarm cells with no sophisticated grafting,  you will always have plenty of queens.

Louth Beekeepers' Association Queen-Rearing Group

In 2021, we decided to participate in the national queen-rearing effort organised by NIHBS. The idea is to be able to provide good quality virgin queens to anyone who needs them. In 2022 we continued this effort, with the Kevin Griffin Apiary being used for queen-rearing and the new motorway apiary being used as our mating apiary. In 2023 we are continuing with our queen-rearing efforts, although without direct support from NIHBS. 

When our queens produce drones, they flood the area with good quality genetics (the drones are an exact copy of the queen), so that the virgin queens will mate to produce even better quality queens. 

Queen-rearing references

  • ​​Reference information on queen-rearing, covering a dozen different methods, by Dave Cushman
  • Queen-rearing methods from BIBBA
  • Cloake Board queen rearing 
  • Beespoke.info on queen-rearing
    • ​​How to graft
    • Timetable for Cloake Board and Jenter Kit
    • Queen-rearing timeline

Queen-rearing Documents

  • The Morris Board method of Queen Rearing
morris-board-v3.pdf
File Size: 115 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

  • The Hopkins method of queen-rearing
how_to_raise_a_queen_bee_by_the_hopkins_method_8_17_10.pdf
File Size: 314 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

  • Here  is a spreadsheet that makes it easy to calculate the progress of your queen-rearing efforts
  • How to make a plug kit used for selecting larvae for queen rearing (see pic below)
queencalculator.xlsx
File Size: 19 kb
File Type: xlsx
Download File

instructions-on-making-queen-rearing-plug-kit.pdf
File Size: 950 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

Picture
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