Speaker A
Hi there, I'm Alex, and I'm just getting the smoker lit so I can check on the bees.
Alex demonstrates the 16-day process of queen bee rearing, from grafting larvae to raising new queens for hive expansion.
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Key Takeaways
- Queen rearing is essential for colony survival and expansion.
- A strong, populous colony is necessary to build queen cells effectively.
- The queen bee's development follows a precise 16-day timeline.
- Controlled grafting and removal of unwanted queen cells improve queen rearing success.
- Raising queens impacts honey production but strengthens apiary resilience.
What the video covers
- Alex introduces queen rearing and its importance for maintaining healthy bee colonies.
- He prepares a strong cell building colony by adding brood frames to increase bee population.
- Small mating boxes are painted and assembled to house new queens.
- A breeder queen is placed in a cage with imitation cells for laying eggs.
- The queen's life cycle is explained: egg laid on day 1, hatching on day 3, capping on day 9, and emergence on day 16.
- Larvae are grafted at 12-24 hours old and transferred to queen cells for development.
- Unwanted queen cells are removed to control the queen rearing process.
- Alex balances hive expansion with honey production considerations.
- Additional tasks include apiary maintenance like grass trimming and building a shed for honey box storage.
- The video is supported by Patreon and is ad-free.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Queen Rearing Overview
- 00:49Preparing the Cell Building Colony
- 02:58Setting Up Mating Boxes
- 05:35Goals and Apiary Maintenance
- 06:53Managing the Cell Building Colony
- 08:08Breeder Queen and Imitation Cells
- 10:44Queen Life Cycle and Larvae Grafting
- 13:23Placing Grafted Cells and Shed Construction
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
The colonies need their usual weekly inspection, but I'm also going to give queen rearing a go.
Speaker A
Now, queen rearing is the process of taking a number of grafted bee larvae and turning them into new queen bees that can then be added to new colonies.
Speaker A
[music] A queen bee is a vital part of a colony of bees, and without one, the colony of bees will simply die off.
Speaker A
So, it's so important to either buy queen bees when you need them or raise them yourself.
Speaker A
This is another ad-free video made entirely possible thanks to [music] my very kind supporters on Patreon.
Speaker A
There's a link in the video description if you want to [music] support.
Speaker A
The first step in queen rearing is making up a cell building colony.
Speaker A
This colony's job is to build the queen cells, and so [music] needs to be large and strong enough to do all this work.
Speaker A
I'm placing another box on top of an already strong colony and then adding 10 more frames of brood from other colonies.
Speaker A
These frames of brood will soon hatch within the next 10 days or so.
Speaker A
And the result of this is a mega colony with a serious amount of bees.
Speaker A
With so many more bees in the hive, this colony [music] will be strong enough to raise plenty of queen cells.
Speaker A
[music] Whilst at the apiary, I also removed some of the entrance blocks to give the bees more space to move in and out of the colonies as [music] they grow in size.
Speaker A
[music] Whilst I waited for the new bees to hatch, I spent some time [music] preparing some small boxes where the queens would live out the first part of their life.
Speaker A
I painted a couple of five-frame boxes as well as these mini mating boxes, [music] just big enough for a few hundred bees and a queen to live in.
Speaker A
[snorts] [music] After finishing [music] the painting, I spent an evening putting together the inside parts of the mating boxes.
Speaker A
This consisted of three plastic [music] frames which simply click together into place.
Speaker A
These are then fitted with a small amount of beeswax foundation held in place by some melted wax.
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This foundation [music] gives the bees a head start in building their comb.
Speaker A
My goal with this queen rearing project was to raise four or five new queens.
Speaker A
[music] These queens would be used to head new colonies that I would make up from splitting my current hives.
Speaker A
This, of course, has an impact on honey production, but it does put you in a good position going into the winter with a few extra hives in case one or two die.
Speaker A
[music] As we come to the end of April, cow parsley is dominating the roadside verges and dandelions are everywhere in the [music] fields.
Speaker A
It's just mind-blowing how quick the vegetation grows up, and so I needed to do a little grass trimming [music] at the front of the hives just so the entrances to the hives wouldn't get smothered by weeds and grasses.
Speaker A
The bees, understandably, really don't like me coming close to their hives with loud power tools, and I'm pretty sure that if I didn't have my suit on, I would be covered with stings.
Speaker A
I took a look through the cell building colony that I made a week before.
Speaker A
There were plenty of young bees hatching as well as some unwanted queen cells.
Speaker A
These were removed so they wouldn't interfere with the controlled queen rearing operation.
Speaker A
So, what I'm doing now is putting imitation plastic cells inside a little cage in which my chosen queen bee would lay her eggs into.
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This was my breeder queen.
Speaker A
I bought her in 2024.
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She's not my calmest of bees, but one that has consistently headed a strong colony for 3 years in a row.
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And so, I've had a couple of years of really good honey harvest from her colony.
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[music] I'm placing that frame of imitation cells into the hive.
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The queen can't get in just yet, only the worker bees can.
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And over the next 24 hours, they will clean out the cells and get them ready for the queen [music] to lay into.
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[music] Before heading home, I took a little glimpse at my next project.
Speaker A
I've got to build this shed for storing the honey boxes in over the winter.
Speaker A
Luckily, it's only a flat pack [music] shed, so shouldn't be too tricky.
Speaker A
The following day, I went back to the apiary [music] with the aim to find the breeder queen and put her into the cage to lay eggs into.
Speaker A
[music] Luckily, this was no stress at all.
Speaker A
I picked her up by the wings and placed her inside the cage where she would now stay for the next 24 hours.
Speaker A
Raising queen bees is all made possible because we know the life cycle of a queen.
Speaker A
It goes a bit like this.
Speaker A
Day one, the egg is laid.
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Day three, [music] the egg hatches.
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Day nine, the cell is capped over.
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And day [music] 16, the queen emerges from the cell.
Speaker A
It's said that the best queens are raised when the larvae is grafted at just 12 to 24 hours old.
Speaker A
So, on day four, I went [music] back to the hive and removed these little cells and attached them onto a frame which would hold them vertically in the hive.
Speaker A
[music] [music] If you look really closely, you can see the tiny newly hatched larvae with a little puddle of food around it.
Speaker A
[music] Once all 20 were done, I placed this frame into the cell building colony that I made up and they could start their hard work.
Speaker A
In the meantime, I got on with the shed.
Speaker A
First step was to put down a type one stone base and flatten out the area for the shed to sit on.
Topics:queen rearingbee colonyqueen beegrafting larvaeapiary managementbee hive inspectionmating boxesbee broodhoney productionbeekeeper
