Monday, April 11, 2011

Queen rearing

Today (on the last warm day of this week!) I am starting my queen rearing process.  I confined the queen in the hive I want to breed from in a part of her hive (with a frame made from queen excluder plastic) and today I hope to take the comb of hatching eggs (she should have laid!!!) and make strips  of comb with eggs in to put into a queen-less hive, I will rub out two cells out of every three in a row to make more room for the bees to make the (larger) queen cells .  I am hoping the bees will make these remaining cells into queen cells.  If all goes well I will put the sealed queen cells into some mini hives (stocked with a cup full of bees each!!) and hope to have a supply of mated queens in about a month to use when needed.  Lots of things could go wrong so wish me luck!!

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