The Queen has returned

After introducing the queen cells into mating nucs 10 days ago, I finally got to the mating yard to look at the results of my grafting attempt of July 1st.
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Left: The mating yard offered to me by two fellow beekeepers, Paul and Claire.
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With much anticipation I opened the first mating nuc, and pulled out the queen cell and queen cell protector. It had emerged!

My next step was to inspected the two frames of bees in the mating nuc to see if the queen had successfully bee accepted as part of the hive.

In order for her to have been successful she would have to have completed the following.
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Right: Opening the first two frame nuc to see if the queen had emerged from her cell. You can see the plastic cell protector resting between the two frames of bees.
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1. Successfully emerge from the queen cell.
2. Be accepted by the bees as leader of the hive
3. Conduct two to three mating flights where she would have to successfully mate with up to 15 male bees (drones)
4. Finder her way back to the hive without being lost or eaten by a bird
5. Start to lay fertilized (female) eggs.

Sure enough I found her on the first frame I checked. Could she have begun to lay eggs? Sure enough she was on a frame containing eggs and very young larva. Success!
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Right: An unmarked mated queen was found in the first mating nuc. 6 mated queens were produced from my second grafting attempt.
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Needless to say I was pleased.

I had brought yellow paint (the marking color for 2007) so I could mark any queens I found, but as I attempted to pick her up to mark her back (Thorax) with the paint, she flew away onto a bush. I rushed over and tried to pick her up, but she flew out of my hand into the grass. I quickly went to grasp her but she flew into the dirt, I went over and picked her up, and she flew away into the cranberry bog.

I was not pleased.

Would she return? Was she lost forever?

Sure enough after a few minutes she returned, and I was able to mark her. I guess she was not about to go through all that work only to have me mess it up.
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Right: A marked queen. The newly produced queens are marked in yellow. Yellow is the standard queen marking color for 2007.
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I continued to check the other mating nucs. Out of 9 queen cells 6 hatched and mated successfully. One of the mating nucs had an empty queen cell, but no bees or queen were found inside.

Perhaps they did not like their new home and decided to find a new place to live.

Of the 7 queens, 6 are large healthy looking queens. One however is on the smaller size.
Here is the summery of the July 1, 2007 grafting attempt
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Left: A closeup of the marked mated queen.
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July 1: >90 grafts are made into plastic queen cups.
The queen cups are placed in a queen cup frame and placed into a cell builder
hive

July 3: >Queen cups are inspected. 10 cells have been started from the grafts.

July 15: >8 cells are introduced into two frame mating nucs containing bees. Two cells are
destroyed. One accidentally when removing it from the cell cup frame, the other
is dissected to see if the queens are developing

July 22: >7 queens successfully emerge, mate, and start producing.

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Right: Activity outside the mating nucs. Four, two frame mating nucs are contained in one standard deep super. Each two frame nuc has a seporate entrance.

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Now we will watch and evaluate them. Over the next two months they will show their true colors.

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I will be looking for a nice brood pattern (laying pattern), and a quiet disposition from her offspring.

Looking for genetic diversity

To continue documenting my progress with raising queens let me first say this….


It ain’t been easy.

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Left: A queen cell frame containg 7 queen cells. Out of 90 grafts 10 queen cells were made by the bees.

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Out of 90 grafts I made two weeks ago, 10 were accepted by the bees and made into queen cells. The cells that were produced by the bees were smaller than the two cells I got from the 30 grafts made on my first grafting attempt.

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Right: A close up of two of the queen cells from my second grafting attempt.

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Grafting is the process by which a small 3 or 4 day old worker bee larva is transferred into a larger artificial cell. This cell containing the grafted larva is then placed into a queenless hive. The bees, being queenless, will attempt to raise a queen bee in these artificial cells by adding wax to the artificial cell, and feed the larva royal jelly. If all goes according to plan, 12 days after grafting the cell a mature virgin queen will emerge from each cell.

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Left: A grafted cell 48 hours after the graft. You can see that the bees have already started adding wax to some of the cells.

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As I stated earlier, out of 90 grafted cells, only 10 were accepted. On my two attempts I am averaging about a 10% acceptance rate. This could partially be due to the dry days I have grafted on. It is said that there is a better acceptance rate when the relative humidity is around 70%.

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Left: A queen cell in a plastic cell protector. The cell will be removed from the frame and placed in a small nuc hive containing two frames of bees and brood, but no queen. If all goes well, a virgin queen will emerge from the cell and be accepted by the bees.

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Yesterday I harvested the cells and placed them into small nuc hives containing two deep frames of bees. The queen cells should be emerging today. We will see in a few days if it has been successful.

So far this is where my attempts have failed. My two original grafted cells failed to emerge. Looking back this was probably due to the fact that I transferred the cells into small nuc hives on the 8th day after grafting when the cells were just capped. We had two cold nights after that. The small amount of bees in the nuc hive may not have been able to keep the cell warm. Now that the temperatures are consistently in the 80’s, that problem should go away.

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Right: A frame of bees. This frame has young bees emerging from the cells. A 2007 queen laid eggs on this frame. It was a solid beautiful pattern of brood. You can still see some of the original solid pattern of brood in the left part of the frame. Every cell is filled with brood.

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As part of this queen rearing exercise I have introduced a new queen into one of my hives. She is a northern queen from a survivor stock of bees. A survivor queen means just that. The bees have survived for a number of years with out medications or any special help. Next year her genetics will be added to the gene pool in the area. Any queens mating with here offspring may inherit some or all of her ability to survive.

I was offered a mating yard across town by two local beekeepers. The area has a large number of managed hives so there should be plenty of male bees for the virgin queens to mate with. In addition there is a good amount of genetic diversity, something I am looking for in this experiment.

It is my hope that increasing the amount of genetic diversity will allow a greater combination of matting possibilities.

Who knows, perhaps we will get a spectacular queen.

The "mother queen's" daughter

This weekend I checked the nucs to see if the queens had mated. Neither of the two miller frame queen cells were accepted by the nucs. At least the queens were no where to be found.

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One of the two queen cells produced from my first attempt at grafting. 2 out of 30 cells were accepted.

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It was obvious that the queens had emerged from the queen cells, but the queens did not return from their mating flights. I did find one emergency queen cell in one of the mating nucs. These bees must have rejected the queen in favor of one that they are raising themselves.

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My first mated and laying queen. She is the only daughter from my best queen who went missing a few weeks ago. This daughter will be introduced into her mothers hive.

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Of the 30 grafted queen cups placed in the cell builder hive, only two queen cells were produced. That is less than a 10% acceptance rate. This is not as good as I expected, even for a first try at grafting. Since the queen cells were capped I placed them in cell protectors and introduced them into mating nucs consisting of two deep frames of bees each. These grafted queen cells are scheduled to emerge on July 4th or 5th.

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A frame of eggs and larva. Newly hatched larva was taken from this frame and grafted into queen cell cups.

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One happy discovery was to find a mated queen in the third mating nuc. This queen was raised by the bees from an egg from the mother queen which has since gone missing. Since she is the only daughter produced by my favorite queen, I am introducing her into her mothers hive (which is still queenless, and now broodless). With in a few days she should be accepted by the hive and be laying. To introduce her I placed the frames of bees from the nuc into a deep hive body. The hive body was then placed over two sheets of news paper above the queenless colony. The bees will chew a hole in the newspaper within a day or so. By that time the new queens scent will be distributed in the hive and with any luck the bees will accept her as their new queen.

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90 grafted queen cups

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Since the cell builder hive is now without any queen cells, I added two frames of brood an bees, as well as two grafted frames holding 90 grafted cell cups. If I only have a 10% acceptance rate I should end up with at least 9 queen cells if not more.

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A closeup of the grafted cells. You can see the very young larva floating on a drop of royal jelly

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48 hours will tell.