1 Introduction

One of the tasks of the Breeding Instructors is to pass on their knowledge related to queen rearing. They teach any beekeeper who wishes to rear his or her own queens the basics as well as the rearing techniques so that the beekeeper can become autonomous in the apiary.

For some, queen rearing means technical skill and the pleasure of mastering the finer points of beekeeping; for others, it is about obtaining queens more quickly and in greater numbers in order to multiply their colonies; for others still, rearing goes together with race, quality bees and enjoyment in the apiary. One may even identify with all of these themes at once!

Whatever your motivations, this document is intended to be didactic and to help you learn the basics of rearing. I am going to explain a simple and effective way of producing your queens. It is not THE method, nor the only method, nor the best one, but MY method, which works very well when one is content with rearing one series of queens per year.

The Breeding Instructors and queen producers who produce large numbers of queens will use more advanced techniques, but the basics remain the same.

When one begins queen rearing, one is often intimidated by grafting or by the rigidity of the rearing schedule. But once one has understood the basics of reproduction in the honey bee, everything becomes crystal clear.

I suggest that you start by following this method and then, according to your curiosity and your wishes, consult other works so as to broaden your field of competence and develop YOUR own rearing method, the one that feels instinctive to you. In chapter 6 you will find a series of documents to go further.

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 will create his or her own F1s in the apiary. To do so, an excellent pure F0 queen is required. By rearing from this queen and producing new queens in the apiary, the beekeeper will obtain fine F1s which will be excellent queens for honey production (thanks to the phenomenon of heterosis), while inheriting the characteristics of their ancestry selected by the Breeding Instructors.

To obtain the F0 needed as a genetic source and mother of the F1s, the beekeeper may either buy one directly from a Breeding Instructor, or go and take brood from one of them, rear queens, and go up to the mating station to produce his or her own F0s. This is the method that will be described in this document.

Every beekeeper can thus benefit in the apiary from the enormous conservation and selection work carried out by the Breeding Instructors and thereby have quality bees.

1.2 Breeding Instructor or Breeder-Beekeeper

Rearing and selection are by no means reserved solely for the Breeding Instructors. Quite the contrary: the transmission of knowledge through rearing courses in the local sections is one of the essential points of the Breeding Instructor’s specification. It is their duty to share their knowledge and to pass on to everyone the queen reproduction techniques as well as the methods of selection. The aim is that every beekeeper should be able to become a Breeder-Beekeeper and carry out his or her own rearing and selection. What you are reading is one of the clearest examples of what the Breeding Instructors do to train beekeepers and help them become Breeder-Beekeepers. The courses organised each year in the local sections and the various courses given by the Valais group of SAR Breeding Instructors complement this document.

The other essential points in the Breeding Instructors’ specification, which distinguish them from Breeder-Beekeepers, are that they must maintain lines recorded in the Herdbook (queen register) by preserving the purity of the Carnica race and therefore avoiding any hybridisation with other subspecies, as well as operating the mating stations and the test apiaries. These tasks are carried out under the supervision of the Breeding Commission of the Société Romande d’Apiculture (CE-SAR) and our technical supervisor, who ensure strict compliance with the directives of Apisuisse and provide scientific follow-up of SAR breeding.

The whole of the work carried out by the Breeding Instructors is therefore based on transmission. Transmission of knowledge, as described above, but also transmission of high-quality genetics. To do this, every beekeeper can go and take selected brood from a Breeding Instructor and thus benefit from the enormous amount of work provided by our group.

Once a beekeeper has become a Breeder-Beekeeper and masters rearing, and even selection, he or she may quite legitimately enter F0 queens in the Herdbook and continue selection on that line. The only condition is that the queens must meet the purity requirements of the CE-SAR (morphological measurements and DNA). Any Breeder-Beekeeper wishing to commit to this path may contact the cantonal head of the Breeding Instructors, who will be pleased to coach them through this transition.

2 Equipment

In this chapter we shall describe the equipment required for rearing a series of 15–20 queens.  This is the ideal number of queens that can be obtained with the rearing method described below, using the bees from about one hive to populate the nucleus boxes.

2.1 Cell builder colony

As your cell builder colony, you should choose in your apiary a strong hive with a large bee population, gentle enough to make manipulations easier, and with a strong propensity for rearing: several starts of queen cells can be observed.

As a rule, I choose a hive that is bringing in a crop, which guarantees that there are plenty of young bees and enough bees to keep the brood warm in the event of a cool spell.

2.2 Brood

In order to go up to the mating station, it is necessary to rear your queens from selected brood. In French-speaking Switzerland, the SAR Breeding Instructors are available to provide this free of charge. Their queens are measured (morphological measurements and DNA) in order to guarantee racial purity.

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

2.3 Rearing equipment

There is a multitude of different tools for carrying out queen rearing. Whether for grafting frames, cell cups, or grafting tools, dozens and dozens of references can be found from suppliers of beekeeping equipment.

I am going to present here the equipment that I have used for many years. This equipment is intended to be simple, economical and easy to use. I advise you to begin by using this equipment and then, once you have mastered the basics of the rearing techniques, to test other types of equipment in order to find what suits you best. But using what I suggest is a good way to begin.

Grafting

Fig. 1: Chinese grafting tool at the top and Swiss grafting tool below

The grafting tool is used to transfer larvae from the selected brood frame into the cell cups. With a little practice, the Swiss grafting tool is extremely effective (especially when the wax of the frame is fairly soft), and the Chinese grafting tool is very practical when the wax is fairly hard.

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

As a grafting frame, I use a frame with Nicot cell cups for 30 cells. This is a good compromise for successfully obtaining a series of 15 to 20 cells each time, and the distance between the hair roller cages (plastic protections to prevent a queen that emerges before the others from destroying the other queen cells) is small, which will limit the building of brace comb between the cells in the event of a strong nectar flow.

Fig. 3: Cell cups New plastic cell cups from the Nicot system

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

We still need to speak about the essential element for going up to the mating station without drones: the filtering box. The purpose of this device is to filter the bees mechanically by making them pass through a queen excluder, so as to be sure to populate our nucleus boxes only with bees and thus avoid bringing foreign drones to the station.

Fig. 4: Filtering box 6-frame nucleus box with a super fitted with a fixed queen excluder.

There are many systems available commercially. I am going to present here the one I use, in my opinion the simplest and the most common in French-speaking Switzerland. It consists of using a standard 6-frame nucleus box (wooden or an Apibox) together with a super under which a queen excluder is fixed.

 

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

In the cover of the nucleus box, a 50 mm hole is made in order to pass the funnel through it. This hole must be able to be closed again with tape or with 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 allows smoke to pass through in order to direct the bees.

We also need a removable cover which can be slid inside the super so as to force the bees to pass through the queen excluder.

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

Last indispensable item: the bee measurer. Indeed, it is necessary to populate the nucleus boxes with about 100 grams of bees. To measure this quantity correctly, one may use a yoghurt cup, a soup ladle, or even a cube with a 7 cm edge.

2.4 Nucleus boxes

Fig. 9: Mating nucleus Apidea model

As a mating hive, I use Apidea boxes, ideal for cool nights in the mountains and of a size that represents a good compromise between the quantity of bees needed to populate them and the mating results. The boxes can be prepared during the winter, but the candy must only be added when they are about to be used. Otherwise, it will harden and the bees will have difficulty eating it.

The first step consists of preparing the mini frames. A strip of foundation 2–3 centimetres wide is cut and glued to the top of the frame using a little melted wax. No need to add more, the bees will build the rest. A longer strip would be inconvenient when populating the boxes.

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

The feeder is filled (to about ¾) with honey-free candy (for example Apifonda or a mixture made at home in the following proportions: 10 kg of icing sugar and 3.8 kg of bee syrup available commercially). It is forbidden to put candy containing honey in it, in order to avoid the spread of diseases on the station.

Check that the opening in the crown board is properly aligned with the opening in the mini frames. It seems obvious, but it is very annoying to have to reopen a box in order to turn a mini frame around. Finally, if the boxes have already been used a little and the lid does not hold firmly, I add a strip of tape to make absolutely sure that the crown board will not open during population or during the introduction of the cells in my cellar. Fig. 10, 11 & 12 : Preparation of the boxes Mini frame with a foundation starter strip (top left) Ready box with candy filling 2/3 of the feeder, correct positioning of the mini frames and tape if the lid does not hold well. (top right) Queen excluder open before going up to the mating station. Do not forget to close the door before populating the boxes.

2.5 Treatment against varroosis

In order to avoid the proliferation of varroa in the nucleus boxes and in accordance with the regulations for going up to the mating station, a treatment against varroosis is compulsory. In this respect, the simplest approach is to use an oxalic acid solution by spraying. In chapter 4.4 we shall explain how to populate the boxes 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, one obtains a 3% mixture that can be used in a sprayer.

You can obtain it from all suppliers of beekeeping equipment. (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, one obtains a 3% mixture, which is ideal for this treatment.) For more details, consult the product data sheet.

2.6 Bees

We saw above that we need a cell builder colony. We shall also need bees to populate the nucleus boxes. In order to spare this fine colony that we have used as a cell builder colony, we shall take bees from weaker hives, those that do not produce / will not produce a crop, for example. What matters is that they have many young bees.

To obtain the 100 grams of bees that must be placed in each nucleus box, one should count one side of a Dadant brood frame packed with bees. I count about one frame for two boxes. For a series of 20 boxes, we therefore need 10 frames of bees, which represents almost an entire hive. I

always put 1–2 more frames than necessary so as to have enough bees at the end and not have to repeat the filtering operation a second time to complete the last boxes.

2.7 Marking and introduction equipment

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

When your queens are ready to be introduced into your colonies, they will have to be marked and confined in an introduction cage. Here too there is a whole range of different types of equipment; I am going to present here only the equipment that I use. To mark the queens, I trap them in the marking plunger and with the glue varnish I fix a coloured disc onto the queen’s thorax. For introduction, I use Nicot cages with a little candy to block the entrance.

3 Planning

Planning a rearing programme is as essential as all the beekeeping practice related to it. Indeed, in order to go up to the mating station on the correct date with nucleus boxes in which the queen has emerged for a few days and which show good cohesion among their inhabitants, it is crucial to observe a strict schedule.

This schedule means that, unlike general beekeeping practice where one can always postpone work in the apiary, here strict compliance with the timetable is necessary, and this sometimes means having to work in the rain or in bad weather.

3.1 When should rearing be practised?

The first essential question is: “When is it wise to rear queens?” The answer is simple if one observes nature: during the swarming season! Yes indeed, not surprisingly, it is when the nectar flow is strong, temperatures and sunshine are present, that conditions are optimal for the bees’ natural instinct to lead them to rear new queens in order to swarm and multiply, or else to requeen.

It is therefore during this period (from the beginning of May to the end of June depending on the geographical location of the apiary) that the optimal conditions are met for queen rearing.

There is no point in starting too early, because if one wants to have queens mated in the apiary, drones will be few in number and not sexually mature, and if one wants to go up to the mating station, one risks having queens ready too early. What is more, temperatures in the mountains at the beginning of June are often cool and may reduce mating success.

The Breeding Instructors, for their part, often start earlier and finish later in order to make maximum use of the station opening period. But for a beekeeper who will do only one series in the year, the ideal is therefore to begin rearing at the beginning of June so as to go up to the mating station in mid to late June.

3.2 Queen development cycle

To understand properly how to plan the rearing process, 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 sealed and the queen emerges on the sixteenth day.

The egg laid in a queen cell is exactly identical to a worker egg. The transformation is triggered by a change in food during the larval stage. If workers are fed royal jelly and then a porridge of water, honey and pollen during this phase, the queen, for her part, is fed only royal jelly, and moreover royal jelly with a particular composition.

One then understands why it is important to take the youngest possible larvae to make our queens, because if the larvae are too old, they may already have been fed with porridge and this will subsequently have an adverse influence on the queen’s development (risk of the rearing being rejected by the bees or incorrect development of the queen).

Another key stage: the sealing of the queen cell between the 8th and 9th day after laying.

During the 10th and 11th days, the final moult 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 the 13th day the pupa starts to develop pink eyes and the queen will emerge on the 16th day.

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

She will still need another four to six days to become sexually mature and able to be mated. That is why it is important that she remain in the box for at least two days.

3.3 Rearing calendar

Contrary to what was explained in the previous chapter, and in order to make calculations easier, breeders take as the reference day the day on which rearing begins rather than the day on which the eggs were laid. That is to say that day 0 is the day on which larval transfer (grafting) is carried out. With this calendar, the queens will therefore emerge on day 12.

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

I am not going to describe the rearing technique in detail here for the moment (what type of starter to use, etc.), because that matters little for establishing the calendar.

Working backwards from this date, we shall be able to define the rearing calendar. Taking into account the fact that, before going up to the mating station, the queen should spend at least 2 days confined in the nucleus box with her bees in order to establish good cohesion in this mini-colony, and taking into account the development cycle seen above, one obtains the following calendar:

Day	Operation
-1	Preparation of the starter
0	Grafting and introduction of the grafting frame
10	Preparation of the boxes and introduction of the queen cells. Put everything in the cellar
12	Emergence of the queens
15	Going up to the mating station
29	Retrieve the boxes from the mating station

In order to make this calculation easier and avoid mistakes, I have created an Excel file that allows us to prepare our schedule easily.

It then becomes possible to note the important milestones of our rearing schedule in our diary and thus not miss any step.

4 Rearing

As explained previously, the rearing method that I am now going to describe 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 gives excellent results. I have used it for many years and it is ideal for rearing only one series of queens.

Breeders speak of a Starter for the colony that will begin rearing queens during the first 24–48 hours. The bees of the Starter will build the first centimetre of the queen cells and 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 up to emergence. When one wants to have many cells drawn or when nectar flow conditions are not optimal (outside the swarming period, for example), the use of a Starter in which one ensures there is a huge quantity of young bees often gives better results. However, this requires a certain technique and many manipulations, which makes this method less accessible to the novice breeder.

The method that I am going to describe in detail is the method that I call the Cell Builder Colony Method. It is one and the same hive that will play the role of Starter and Finisher. Moreover, since we use a strong hive that will almost certainly bring in a very fine crop, with this method we shall make minimal use of this colony and the loss of crop will be minimal. Refer to chapter 2.1 to know which colony to choose.

4.1 Preparation of the cell builder colony

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 colony specially before the big day. Indeed, we are sufficiently advanced in the season for the hive to have enough young bees, honey and pollen. A small inspection of the colony 3–4 weeks before rearing can reassure you as to the presence of 2 good pollen frames and a large quantity of sealed 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 orphan my cell builder colony and graft the larvae on Friday 2 June. We are the day before. My colony is strong, it already has a super full of bees and with some honey. I am going to put bee escapes in place in order to remove the supers and concentrate the bees in the colony.

Day 0 | Friday 2 June

Fig. 16: Cell builder colony Situation of the cell builder colony after removal of the super.

I go to the apiary early in the day when calm still reigns there. To begin with, I take the opportunity to remove the super and brush off any bees that may still be there. I am going to place it on another hive that is strong and needs space in the supers. I then open the hive and am pleased to see that it is 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 at their disposal to draw cells. But 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 frame of honey from my reserve or remove one from another hive and put everything into a 6-frame nucleus box, at the opposite end of my apiary, with the feeder filled.

Fig. 17: Cell builder colony Situation of the cell builder colony after removal of the open brood and addition of foundation

I tighten the frames remaining in my colony, add a sheet of foundation on the edge of the brood (in order to give them building work so that they do not build between the queen cells), and prepare an empty space in the centre between 2 frames of sealed brood.

We are now ready to introduce the grafting frame. 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 have explained that it is necessary to take larvae that are at most 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 cell cup (top right and bottom right), Chinese grafting tool (bottom left)

Once the correct larvae have been identified and there are enough of them, there is not much to explain about the grafting technique: one has to practise! The aim is to transfer the larvae from the frame coming from the mother and place them gently into the cell cups. Do not be afraid at the beginning of piercing through the comb or of having to try several times; it is not one of the easiest gestures and it requires good eyesight. If necessary, 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 cell cup, starting with the extremities and then the back. With a little practice, one can easily graft about thirty larvae in five to ten minutes.

Tips: Depending on the light conditions, I often use a headlamp to illuminate the bottom of the cells. Several colleagues use glasses with strong magnification. One can even find some with built-in lights on the sides. It is also easier to place the frame on a slightly inclined support so as not to have to hold it.         Fig. 21 & 22: Miscellaneous equipment Frame stand for the grafting frame and magnifying glasses with built-in light.

Once all the cell cups are occupied, you can introduce the frame into the free space in your cell builder colony. If you go to a Breeding Instructor to do the grafting and have to return to your apiary to introduce the frame, it is enough to wrap it in a damp cloth and place it in a nucleus box.

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

The larvae can remain outside the hive for an hour without any problem. The essential thing is that they do not dry out. Our cell builder colony is now complete and the bees will immediately begin to take care of our larvae.

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

If for one reason or another you need more time before returning to the apiary, you can readily combine the use of a closed starter with that of the cell builder colony. To do this, you can take a few frames heavily covered with bees from the cell builder colony and place them in a closed nucleus box, leaving an empty space in the middle for our grafting frame. A sheet of plastic film should be taped on as a crown board. It is also important that this box be well ventilated. Personally, I use an Apibox from which I remove the bottom board.

When your grafting frame is ready to be introduced, it is enough to make a cut in the plastic film over the empty space with a cutter and introduce the frame through this opening. In this way, the bees that populate the hive will stay quietly in the box.

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

Day 1 | Saturday 3 June

Fig. 25: One-day-old queen cell About 1 cm of wax (base of the queen cell) can be seen, along with a large quantity of royal jelly surrounding the larva.

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

The number of larvae that the cell builder colony takes in hand depends on many factors: the rearing period, the weather during these 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 obtained a 100% success rate 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, one can count on a success rate of 50–70% (whatever the external influences). Having grafted 30 larvae, one reaches the desired 15–20 queens without difficulty.

4.3 Fitting the roller cages / incubator

Day 6 | Thursday 8 June

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

• Place the roller cages around the cells to protect them in case a queen cell elsewhere in the hive, outside the grafting frame, emerges
• Transfer the cells into an incubator

Fig. 26 & 27: Sealed cells Sealed cells (top) and cells protected with roller cages (bottom)

In the first case, it is enough to take the frame out and gently brush off the bees in order to slide the roller cages around each cell. This is usually fairly easy, but it may happen that the bees’ urge to build has been such that they have built between the cells. In that case, a heated blade must be used to cut away the excess comb carefully so that the cell will pass into the roller cage. If we have done everything possible in our favour by adding foundation and using a grafting frame in which the cells are as close together as possible, we should not have many problems. If you decide to use an incubator, it is enough to transfer your cells (protected by the roller cages) into it after having previously set a temperature of 35°C and checked that the humidity level is high (between 60 and 75%).

Small incubators for chicken eggs can easily be found commercially for around one hundred francs. These electronic incubators can regulate temperature and indicate humidity level. A small fan provides a homogeneous temperature throughout the box. It is easy enough to improvise a support in order to place our cells with their roller cages inside.

Fig. 28 & 29: Incubators Incubators for chicken eggs. Electronic settings, ventilation, humidity control.

This technique has several advantages: the cells will remain at the correct temperature whatever the weather, and you will have finished using the cell builder colony earlier. You can therefore recover the brood frames as well as the queen and reintroduce everything into your colony and put the supers back on. Your colony will only have been used for 6 days, and you will not even notice the difference in terms of crop.

See part 2: 4.4 Preparation of the boxes