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Loading ...rearing queen bees??? Help please!!!!!!!!!!?
I need a step be step simple to follow guide. I also have a few questions.
1. When can I start?
2. Can I make the equiptment by hand?
3. The quide has to be simple, I already have 3 good established hives.
Posted in Queen Rearing
2 Responses to “rearing queen bees??? Help please!!!!!!!!!!?”
Rearing queens is a very time consuming process. Most people that rear queen do it as more then a hobby. I would read up on queen rearing, because the larvae have to be under the age of 24 hours when rearing queens. Larvae of this age will have had minimal exposure to worker diet and given a higher protein diet needed to produce the queen ovaries.
To answer your questions
1.You need to start in the spring
2. You should use nuc boxes (smaller hive) with grafting tools and cell cups. You will need to purchase them.
3.For larger scaled queen rearing and to get a well fertilized queen for selling you will also need to have a bank of drones that are not of the same strain as the queen. you might need need more hives
If you just want a queen to start a new hive just split the hive in the mid early spring. Find the queen and install her with workers and honey enough to start laying again and enough 2 – 3 frames of capped brood. The other bees will make a new queen since theirs is now gone but you will need to feed them both
Try this link for more information
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesqueenrearing.htm
For the record- bees don't keep a queen on hand
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I know you say you have three hives but I think you need to study a bit about bee keeping. Queen bees are raised in the colony and fed a special diet to make they capable of reproducing.
The colony usually keeps a couple of queen bees in waiting in case the reigning queen bee dies or has problems.
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