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.
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
- Rearing queens using the Twin Towers (the John Harding method)
- 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
Queen-rearing Documents
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