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  • Home
  • News
    • Honey Show
    • News Archive
    • Calendar
    • Events
  • About
    • Membership
    • Committee
    • Gallery
    • Documents
  • Education
    • Swarms
    • Beginners
    • Beginners Course 2022
    • Intermediates
    • Seniors
    • Third Level Education
    • Reference
    • Microscopy Course
  • Contact
  • Store
  • 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 Intermediate or Senior 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 this year. Next year, when these queens produce drones, they will flood the area with good quality genetics (the drones are an exact copy of the queen), so that next year's queens will mate to produce even better quality queens. As of the last week in May, we have produced 14 queens with a further 19 cells maturing, ready to emerge in the first week of June. It is hoped that this will accelerate over the coming weeks.

Queen-rearing references

  • ​​Reference information on queen-rearing, covering a dozen different methods, by Dave Cushman
  • 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

  • How to make a plug kit used for selecting larvae for queen rearing (see pic below)
instructions-on-making-queen-rearing-plug-kit.pdf
File Size: 950 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

  • Here  is a spreadsheet that makes it easy to calculate the progress of your queen-rearing efforts
queencalculator.xlsx
File Size: 19 kb
File Type: xlsx
Download File

Picture
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