1 Introduction

One of the tasks of Breeding Instructors is to transmit their knowledge related to queen rearing. They teach any beekeeper wishing to rear their own queens the fundamentals as well as the rearing techniques so that they can become autonomous in their apiary.

For some, breeding rhymes with technical skills and the pleasure of mastering the subtleties of beekeeping; for others, it is about obtaining queens more quickly and in greater numbers in order to multiply their colonies; for others still, breeding coincides with strain, quality bees, and enjoyment in the apiary. One may even identify with all of these themes!

Whatever your motivation, this document aims to be didactic in helping you learn the basics of queen rearing. I will explain a simple and effective way to produce your queens. It is not THE method, nor the only method, nor the best, but MY method, which works very well when one is satisfied with rearing one series of queens per year.

Breeding Instructors and queen producers who produce large quantities will use more advanced techniques, but the fundamentals remain the same.

When starting out in breeding, one is often intimidated by grafting or by the rigidity of the breeding calendar. However, once the basics of honey bee reproduction have been understood, everything becomes crystal clear.

I suggest that you begin by following this method and then, depending on your curiosity and interests, consult other publications to broaden your field of competence and develop YOUR own breeding method, the one that feels intuitive to you. In Chapter 6 you will find a series of documents for further study.

1.1 Queen management in the apiary

F0, F1, hybrids, local bees or foreign bees? Which queens should I have in my apiary?

The Breeder Beekeeper is therefore a beekeeper who creates their own F1 queens in the apiary. To do so, they need an excellent purebred F0 queen. By rearing from this queen and producing new queens in their apiary, they will obtain fine F1 queens which (thanks to the phenomenon of heterosis) will be excellent queens for honey production, while having inherited the characteristics of their ancestry selected by the Breeding Instructors.

To obtain the F0 needed as a genetic source and mother of their F1 queens, they may either purchase one directly from a Breeding Instructor or collect brood from one of them, rear their queens, and go to a mating station to produce their own F0. This is the method described in this document.

Each beekeeper can therefore benefit in their apiary from the enormous conservation and selection work carried out by the Breeding Instructors and thus keep quality bees.

1.2 Breeding Instructor or Breeder Beekeeper

Breeding and selection are by no means reserved exclusively for Breeding Instructors — quite the contrary! The transmission of knowledge through breeding courses within the sections is one of the essential points of the Breeding Instructor’s mandate. It is their duty to share their knowledge and to pass on to everyone the techniques of queen reproduction as well as the methods of selection. The aim is for every beekeeper to become a Breeder Beekeeper and to carry out their own rearing and selection. You are currently reading one of the clearest examples of what Breeding Instructors do to train beekeepers and help them become Breeder Beekeepers. The courses organized annually within the sections and the various courses given by the Valais Group of Breeding Instructors SAR complement this document.

The other essential aspects of the Breeding Instructors’ mandate, which distinguish them from Breeder Beekeepers, are that they must maintain lines recorded in the Herdbook (Register of Queens) by preserving the purity of the Carnica strain and therefore avoiding any hybridization with other subspecies, operate mating stations, and manage testing apiaries. These tasks are carried out under the supervision of the Breeding Commission of the Société Romande d’Apiculture (CE-SAR) and our technical manager, who ensure strict compliance with the directives of Apisuisse and provide scientific monitoring of SAR breeding.

All the work carried out by the Breeding Instructors is therefore based on transmission. Transmission of knowledge, as described above, but also transmission of quality genetics. To this end, each beekeeper may collect selected brood from a Breeding Instructor and thus benefit from the enormous work accomplished by our group.

Once a beekeeper has become a Breeder Beekeeper and has mastered rearing, and even selection, they may introduce their F0 queens into the Herdbook and continue selection on that line. The only condition is that the queens must meet the CE-SAR purity requirements (morphological measurements and DNA). Any Breeder Beekeeper wishing to engage in this path may contact the cantonal head of the Breeding Instructors, who will gladly coach them through this transition.

2 Equipment

In this chapter, we will describe the equipment required for rearing a series of 15–20 queens.  This is the ideal number of queens that can be obtained using the rearing method described below and by using the bees from approximately one hive to populate the mating nucs.

2.1 Cell builder colony

In your apiary, select as a cell builder colony a strong hive with many bees, gentle in temperament to facilitate handling, and with a strong propensity for queen rearing: several queen cell cups can be observed.

I generally choose a hive that is in a honey flow, which guarantees a sufficient number of young bees and enough workforce to keep the brood warm in case of cool weather.

2.2 Brood

In order to go to a mating station, it is necessary to rear your queens from selected brood. In Suisse romande, the SAR Breeding Instructors are available to provide this free of charge. Their queens are measured (morphological measurements and DNA) in order to guarantee breed purity.

You will find the updated list of Valais Breeding Instructors on the FAVR website. In addition, blind testing apiaries provide valuable information on the quality of these lines. As the ancestry of these queens has been recorded for generations, the instructor will be able to advise you optimally on which mating station to use in order to maintain a low level of inbreeding.

2.3 Rearing equipment

There is a wide variety of tools available for carrying out queen rearing. Whether for rearing frames, cell cups, or grafting tools, dozens upon dozens of references can be found at beekeeping equipment suppliers.

I will present here the equipment I have used for many years. It is simple, economical, and easy to use. I recommend starting with this equipment and, once you have mastered the basics of rearing techniques, testing other types of equipment in order to find what suits you best. However, using the equipment I propose is a good way to begin.

Grafting

Fig. 1: Chinese grafting tool above and Swiss grafting tool below

The grafting tool is used to transfer larvae from the selected brood frame into the cell cups. With some practice, the Swiss grafting tool is extremely efficient (especially when the comb wax is sufficiently soft), and the Chinese grafting tool is very practical when the wax is rather hard.

Fig. 2: Rearing frame Frame with 30 cups and Nicot system

As a rearing frame, I use a frame fitted with Nicot cups for 30 cells. It is a good compromise to successfully rear a series of 15 to 20 cells each time, and the distance between the rollers (plastic protectors to prevent an early emerging queen from destroying the other queen cells) is small, which limits the construction of wax bridges between the cells in case of a strong honey flow.

Fig. 3: Cups New plastic cups from the Nicot system

Each year, the small cups that will receive the larvae can be replaced in order to work cleanly.

It remains to discuss the essential element for going to the mating station without drones: the filtering device. The purpose of this device is to mechanically filter the bees by passing them through a queen excluder grid to ensure that our mating nucs are populated exclusively with worker bees and to avoid bringing foreign drones to the station.

Fig. 4: Filtering device 6-frame mating nuc with a super fitted with a fixed queen excluder.

There are many systems available on the market. I will present here the one I use, which in my opinion is the simplest and most common in Suisse romande. It consists of using a standard 6-frame mating nuc (wooden or an Apibox) together with a super to which a queen excluder is fixed underneath.

 

Fig. 5: Opening for funnel 50 mm hole in the hive cover. Fig. 6: Opening for funnel

In the cover of the mating nuc, a 50 mm hole will be made so that the funnel can be inserted. This hole must be able to be closed again using tape or a removable piece.

Fig. 7: Removable cover This element forces the bees to pass through the queen excluder. A fine mesh allows ventilation of the hive and lets smoke pass through to direct the bees.

We also need a removable cover that can be slid inside the super in order to force the bees to pass through the queen excluder.

Fig. 8: Candy without honey 2.5 kg pack of Apifonda candy.

Last essential item: the bee measurer. Indeed, it is necessary to populate the mating nucs with about 100 grams of bees. To measure this quantity correctly, you can use a yogurt cup, a soup ladle, or even a cube with 7 cm edges

2.4 Mating nucs

Fig. 9: Rucheon Apidea model

As a rearing/mating nuc, I use Apidea nucs, ideal for cool nights in the mountains and of a size that represents a good compromise between the number of bees needed to populate them and mating results. The nucs can be prepared during winter, but the candy should only be added when you are going to use them. Otherwise, it will harden and the bees will have difficulty eating it.

The first step is to prepare the mini frames. Cut a 2–3 cm strip of foundation, which you glue to the top of the frame using a little melted wax. There is no need to add more; the bees will build the rest. A longer strip would get in the way when populating the nucs.

Check that the queen excluder is firmly fixed next to the entrance and in the open position (Fig. 12).

Fill the feeder (about ¾) with candy without honey (for example Apifonda, or a homemade mix in the following proportions: 10 kg icing sugar and 3.8 kg commercial bee syrup). It is forbidden to add candy containing honey in order to avoid the spread of diseases at the station.

Check that the opening in the inner cover lines up correctly with the opening of the mini frames. This seems obvious, but it is very annoying to have to reopen a nuc in order to turn a mini frame around. Finally, if the nucs have already been used a bit and the lid does not hold firmly, I add a strip of tape to make sure that the inner cover will not open during populating or when introducing the cells in my cellar. Fig. 10, 11 & 12 : Preparing the nucs Mini frame with a starter strip of foundation (top left) Nuc ready with candy at 2/3 of the feeder, correct position of the mini frames, and tape if the lid does not hold well. (top right) Queen excluder open before going to the mating station. Do not forget to close the door before populating the nucs.

2.5 Treatment against varroosis

In order to avoid varroa proliferation in the mating nucs and according to the regulations for going to the mating station, a treatment against varroosis is mandatory. In this respect, the simplest approach is to use an oxalic acid solution by spraying. In Chapter 4.4 we will explain how to populate the nucs and how to use this product judiciously.

Fig. 13: Oxuvar 5.7%, 275 g container By adding 250 ml of tap water to this solution, you obtain a 3% mixture that can be used in a sprayer.

You can obtain it from all beekeeping equipment suppliers. (For example, the Oxuvar 5.7% solution from Andermatt BioVet AG, available in a 275 g format. By adding 250 ml of water to the solution, you obtain a 3% mixture, which is ideal for this treatment.) For more details, consult the product’s technical data sheet.

2.6 Bees

We have seen above that we need a cell builder colony. We will also need bees to populate the mating nucs. In order to spare this fine colony that we used as the cell builder, we will take the bees from weaker colonies, for example those that do not/will not produce a crop. The important point is that they have many young bees.

To obtain the 1titi grams of bees that must be placed in each nuc, count one side of a Dadant brood frame filled with tightly clustered bees. I estimate about one frame for two nucs. For a series of 2ti nucs, you therefore need 1ti frames of bees, which represents almost a full hive. I

always add 1–2 frames more than necessary in order to have enough bees at the end and not have to repeat the filtering operation a second time to top up the last nucs.

2.7 Marking and introduction equipment

Fig. 14: Small equipment for marking and introducing queens: varnish glue, Nicot introduction cage, marking plunger, and numbered discs.

When your queens are ready to be introduced into your colonies, they will need to be marked and confined in an introduction cage. Here too there is a whole range of different types of equipment; I will present only the equipment I use. To mark the queens, I hold them in the marking plunger and, using the varnish glue, I attach a colored disc to the queen’s thorax. For introduction, I use Nicot cages with a small amount of candy to plug the entrance.

3 Planning

Planning a rearing operation is just as essential as all the beekeeping practice associated with it. Indeed, in order to go to the mating station on the right date with nucs in which the queen has emerged a few days earlier and that show good cohesion among their inhabitants, it is crucial to follow a strict timetable.

This timetable implies that, unlike general beekeeping practice where work in the apiary can always be postponed, strict adherence to the schedule is required here, and this sometimes means having to work in the rain or in bad weather.

3.1 When should you rear queens?

The first key question is: “When is it sensible to rear queens?” The answer is simple if we observe nature: during the swarming season! Yes, unsurprisingly, it is when the nectar flow is strong, when temperatures are warm and the sun is present, that conditions are optimal for the bees’ natural instinct to push them to rear new queens in order to swarm and multiply, or else to supersede.

It is therefore during this period (which runs from early May to late June depending on the apiary’s geographic location) that optimal conditions are met for rearing queens.

There is no point starting too early, because if you want to have your queens mated in the home apiary, drones will be few and not sexually mature, and if you want to go to a mating station you risk having your queens ready too early! What is more, mountain temperatures in early June are very often cool and may reduce mating success.

Breeding Instructors, on the other hand, often start earlier and finish later in order to make maximum use of the stations’ opening period. But for a beekeeper who will do only one series in the year, the ideal is therefore to start rearing in early June in order to go to the mating station in mid to late June.

3.2 Queen development cycle

To understand how to plan your rearing, it is necessary to master the queen’s development cycle.

Fig. 15: Queen development cycle Three days after laying, the egg hatches and becomes a larva. Between the eighth and ninth day the cell is capped, and the queen emerges on the sixteenth day.

The egg laid in the queen cell is exactly identical to a worker egg. The transformation is triggered by a change in feeding during the larval stage. If worker larvae are fed royal jelly and then a water–honey–pollen mash during this phase, the queen, on the other hand, is fed exclusively royal jelly — and what is more, a royal jelly with a particular composition.

We therefore understand why it is important to take the youngest possible larvae to rear our queens, because if the larvae are too old, they may already have been fed mash, and this will have a negative influence on the queen’s subsequent development (risk of the bees rejecting the grafting, or incorrect development of the queen).

Another key step is the capping of the queen cell between the 8th and 9th day after laying.

During days 10 and 11, the final molt transforms the larva into a pupa. The cells are particularly fragile during this transformation, and it is very important not to shake or jolt them during this period.

On day 13 the pupa begins to develop pink eyes, and the queen will emerge on day 16.

Depending on the temperature in the hive, the development time may vary by more than one day.

It will then take a further four to six days for her to become sexually mature and able to be mated. This is why it is important that she remains in the nuc for at least two days.

3.3 Rearing timetable

Contrary to what was explained in the previous chapter, and in order to make the calculations easier, breeders use as the reference day the day the rearing starts rather than the day the eggs were laid. That is, day 0 is the day when the transfer of larvae (grafting/picking) is carried out. With this timetable, the queens will therefore emerge on day 12.

The second time reference is the date of going to the mating station, because there is no flexibility at that level. In Valais, the stations are open on Saturday morning between 7:00 and 9:00, so the start date of the rearing must be calculated based on this information.

I am not going to go into the rearing technique in detail at this stage (what type of starter to use, etc.), because it matters little for establishing the timetable.

Working backwards from this date, we will be able to define the rearing timetable. Taking into account the fact that, before going to the mating station, the queen should spend at least 2 days confined in the nuc together with her bees in order to establish good cohesion of this mini-colony, and taking into account the development cycle seen above, we obtain the following timetable:

Day	Operation
-1	Prepare the starter
0	Grafting/picking and introduction of the rearing frame
10	Prepare the nucs and introduce the queen cells. Place everything in the cellar
12	Queens emerge
15	Go to the mating station
29	Pick up the nucs from the station

To make this calculation easier and to avoid making mistakes, I created an Excel file that makes it easy to prepare our schedule.

You can then note the important deadlines for your rearing in your diary and thus avoid missing a step.

4 Rearing

As explained previously, the rearing method I am going to describe now is one method among many others. But this method is the simplest, the one that requires the fewest manipulations and that most of the time yields excellent results. I have used it for many years and it is ideal for rearing only one series of queens.

Breeders refer to the Starter as the colony that will begin rearing queens during the first 24–48 hours. The bees in the Starter will build the first centimeter of the queen cells and will create the bed of royal jelly in which the larvae will bathe. The Finisher is the colony that will take care of the rest of the rearing process, up to emergence. When you want to raise many cells, or when nectar-flow conditions are not optimal (outside the swarming period, for example), using a Starter in which you ensure an enormous number of young bees often produces better results. However, this requires a certain technique and many manipulations, which makes this method less accessible to the novice breeder.

The method I am going to detail is the method I call the “cell builder hive method.” It consists of one and the same hive serving as both Starter and Finisher. Moreover, since a strong hive is used that will certainly produce a very good crop, this method uses the colony as little as possible and the loss of crop will be minimal. Refer to Chapter 2.1 to know which colony to choose.

4.1 Preparing the cell builder hive

If you follow my advice and carry out your rearing during the fine season, in the middle of a strong nectar flow, there is no need to treat your cell builder hive in any particular way before day J. Indeed, we are far enough into the season for the hive to have sufficient young bees, honey, and pollen. A brief inspection of the colony 3–4 weeks before rearing can reassure you about the presence of 2 good pollen frames as well as the large quantity of capped brood. If this is not the case, it may be wise to choose another colony.

Day -1 | Thursday, 1 June

According to our planning, I have to make my cell builder colony queenless and graft the larvae on Friday, 2 June. We are on the eve of that day. My colony is strong; it has a super already full of bees and with a little honey. I am going to place bee escapes to remove the supers and to concentrate the bees in the colony.

Day 0 | Friday, 2 June

Fig. 16: Cell builder hive State of the cell builder hive after removing the super.

I go to the apiary early in the day while calm still reigns. I take the opportunity first to remove the super and brush off any bees that may still be on it. I will place it on another hive that is strong and needs space in the supers. I then open the hive and am pleased to see it overflowing with bees: the 11 frames of my hive are completely covered with bees.

Mission of the day: remove as much open brood as possible as well as the queen. Indeed, the more open brood remains, the more larvae the bees will have available to draw cells from. However, we want them to draw cells on the larvae that I am about to introduce. I therefore inspect the hive and remove 5 frames with open brood as well as the queen. I take a honey frame from my reserve or collect one from another hive and put everything into a 6-frame nuc, at the opposite end of my apiary, feeder filled.

Fig. 17: Cell builder hive State of the cell builder hive after removing open brood and adding a sheet of foundation

I tighten up the remaining frames in my colony, add a sheet of foundation on the edge of the brood (to give them building work so they do not build between the queen cells), and I prepare an empty space in the center between two frames of capped brood.

We are now ready to introduce the rearing frame. However, we must still wait at least 3 hours for the hive to feel queenless; otherwise it will not accept the larvae to be reared.

4.2 Grafting

We explained that it is necessary to take larvae that are no more than one to two days old. Here is what larvae of that age look like:

Fig. 18–20: One- to two-day-old larva Swiss grafting tool (top left) Larva placed in its cup (top right and bottom right) Chinese grafting tool (bottom left)

Once you have identified the right larvae and there are enough of them, there is not much to explain about the grafting (picking) technique: you have to practice! The goal is to transfer the larvae from the frame originating from the mother and to place them gently into the cups. Do not be afraid of piercing the comb at first or having to try several times; it is not the most obvious gesture and it requires good eyesight. If needed, the Breeding Instructor will gladly give you a hand. The only important point is not to injure the larva during transfer. With a Swiss grafting tool, the ideal is to take the larva from its back (outer side of the crescent) and place it gently in the middle of the cup, starting with the ends and then the back. With a bit of practice, you can easily graft around thirty larvae in five to ten minutes.

Tips: Depending on the light, I often use a headlamp to illuminate the bottom of the cells. Several colleagues use glasses with high magnification. You can even find some with integrated lights on the side! It is also easier to place the frame on a slightly inclined support so you do not have to hold it.         Fig. 21 & 22: Various equipment Frame stand for holding the grafting frame and magnifying glasses with integrated light.

Once all the cups are occupied, you can introduce the frame into the empty space in your cell builder hive. If you go to a Breeding Instructor to do the grafting and then have to return to your apiary to introduce the frame, simply wrap it in a damp cloth and place it in a nuc.

Fig. 23: Cell builder hive with the rearing frame The rearing frame is introduced into the empty space in the middle of the hive. The bees will quickly start rearing our larvae.

Larvae can easily tolerate being out of the hive for an hour. The essential point is that they do not dry out. Our cell builder hive is now complete, and the bees will immediately begin to take care of our larvae.

Fig. 24: Closed starter Using a 6-frame nuc as a closed starter makes it possible to transport the rearing frame under good conditions.

If for one reason or another you need more time to return to the apiary, you can easily combine the use of a closed starter with the cell builder hive method. To do this, you can take a few frames well covered with bees from the cell builder hive and place them in a closed nuc, leaving an empty space in the middle for our rearing frame. Take care to tape a plastic film in place as an inner cover. It is also important that this box is well ventilated. Personally, I use an Apibox from which I remove the floorboard.

When your rearing frame is ready to be introduced, simply make a cut with a utility knife in the plastic film over the empty space and insert the frame through this opening. In this way, the bees that populate the box will remain nicely inside it.

Once the frame has been introduced, it can remain like this for a few hours without any problem. As soon as you return to the apiary, you can put all the frames back into the cell builder hive again so that as many young bees as possible can take care of the larvae.

Day 1 | Saturday, 3 June

Fig. 25: One-day-old queen cell You can see about 1 cm of wax (base of the queen cell) as well as a large amount of royal jelly surrounding the larva.

After 24 hours, you can take a look at your rearing frame to see how many larvae have been accepted. You can see that the bees have built a small piece of wax about one centimeter long on the cup and that the larva is bathing in royal jelly.

The number of larvae the cell builder colony takes into rearing depends on multiple factors: the rearing period, the weather during those few days, the colony’s propensity to rear, the quantity of food and pollen present in the hive, and many other criteria. For example, I have sometimes achieved 100% success during a rainy period when the bees could not leave the hive and, conversely, had poor results during a strong nectar flow.

However, by following this method, you can count on a success rate of 50–70% (whatever the external influences). Having grafted 30 larvae, you reach the desired 15–20 queens without any problem.

4.3 Placing the cell protectors / Incubator

Day 6 | Thursday, 8 June

Between the fifth and sixth day, the bees will cap the cells. Depending on the age of the larvae you grafted, this can easily vary by one day. At this stage, you have two options:

• Place the cell protectors around the cells to protect them in case a queen cell emerges elsewhere in the hive than on the rearing frame
• Transfer the cells to an incubator

Fig. 26 & 27: Capped cells Capped cells (top) and cells protected with cell protectors (bottom)

In the first case, simply remove the frame and gently brush off the bees in order to slide the cell protectors around each cell. This is usually quite easy, but it may happen that the bees’ building instinct has been so strong that they have built between the cells. In that case, use a heated blade to carefully cut away the excess comb so that the cell fits into the protector. If we have done everything possible by adding a sheet of foundation and using a rearing frame where the cells are placed as close together as possible, we should not encounter many problems. If you decide to use an incubator, simply transfer your cells (protected with cell protectors) into it after having set a temperature of 35°C and verified that the humidity level is high (between 60 and 75%).

You can easily find small incubators for chicken eggs on the market for around one hundred francs. These electronic incubators can regulate the temperature and display the humidity level. A small fan ensures a uniform temperature throughout the box. It is easy to improvise a support to hold our cells with their protectors inside.

Fig. 28 & 29: Incubators Chicken egg incubators. Electronic control, ventilation, humidity monitoring.

This technique has several advantages: the cells remain at the proper temperature regardless of the weather, and you are finished using the cell builder hive earlier. You can therefore retrieve the brood frames as well as the queen and reintroduce everything into your colony and replace the supers. Your colony will only have been used for 6 days, and you will hardly notice any difference in honey production.

See part 2: 4.4 Preparation of the nucs