Hello from David & Sheri Burns at Long Lane Honey Bee Farms!
Is there any better life than that of a beekeeper? I’ve kept bees long enough now and have such a love for bees and beekeeping that I even don’t mind being stung. You can always tell a new beekeeper from a seasoned beekeeper because the new ones tell you how many times they’ve been stung and where. Seasoned beekeepers have lost track and don’t care and know you don’t care to hear about bee stings :)
Here at Long Lane Honey Bee Farms we are in full queen production! Queens, queens, queens, everywhere there are queens in all stages. My youngest daughter Karee has work along side of me for 3 year now in our queen rearing operation and she’s a pro! All day long we are grafting, transferring cells, marking mated queens for sale, and dividing hives for more mating nucs. Karee knows the whole operation and is a great grafter too.
Our bees help out a bunch with our own garden. Here’s mating nuc number 40 doing double duty. Producing queens and pollinating our gardens. We enjoy garden, chickens, bees and generally living out in the country! We are in our 6th year now in the country and it’s a hoot.
GUESS THE PHOTO! Sheri took this picture of everything we made from our own property in these three containers. Anyone know what’s in the jars? The middle one is obvious, so good luck on the other two. You can click on the photo to enlarge it.
LESSON 76:The Success of Your Hive is Riding on Your Queen
You must keep an eye on your queen and make sure she has a great laying pattern. As we hit middle summer and slide down into fall beekeepers are more likely to kill their queen during super removal, or queens can fail toward fall. Don’t go into winter with an old queen or a missing queen.
There are three caste of bees in a hive: 1) The female worker bee, underdeveloped reproductive ability, 2) The male drones who only mate high in the air with virgin queens, then die and 3) The queen.
When a hive makes a new queen, they do so from a fertile egg laid by a queen. They feed this young, three day old larva or younger, a special queen royal jelly and build out the queen cell perpendicular to the comb. It looks like a peanut shell. From the time the egg is laid until the queen emerges requires 16 days. Workers take 21 days to emerge and drones 24 days.
When the queen emerges she, of course, is a virgin queen or what some call an unmated queen. The queen only mates one time outside  the hive. A few days after emerging, she will take her mating flight and fly away from her hive several miles to a drone congregation area (DCA). The DCAs are 40 feet or higher and have been an established meeting place for years. The DCA is a place where hundreds of drones hang out in the afternoon seeking a virgin queen. Virgin queens somehow know where the DCAs are and will mate with 12-20+ drones. She may take several mating flights over the course of a week, but once mated she will never leave her hive again unless the hive decides to swarm. For reproductive swarms, the original, old queen will leave with 60% of the bees and the 40% left behind will be headed up by a new queen.
The queen mates with many drones in order to increase the genetic mix in the hive for survival. During mating, the drone’s genitalia (shown in picture) breaks off and is left in the queen and can be seen upon the queen’s return to the hive. This is called the mating sign. However, since she mates with many drones, each drones removes the previous drone’s mating sign and then mates with the queen.
The sperm from each drone is stored in the queen’s spermatheca so that she is able to lay fertile eggs for years to come from her initial mating flight. She will never mate again. A poorly mated queen may have stored only a limited amount of sperm and may only lay a very short time and turn into what we call a drone layer, laying only unfertilized eggs which produces drones.
It is very important that beekeepers see the value in replacing their queens on a regular basis. Replacing queens especially after June 21 can dramatically increase your hive’s winter survivability.
More on queens next time.

Summer Hours:
Mon – Thur 8:30 am – 4 pm Central Time
FRI-SAT  visits & pickups by appointment only
Long Lane Honey Bee Farms
14556 N. 1020 E. Rd
Fairmount, IL 61841
(217) 427-2678
www.honeybeesonline.com
Email: david@honeybeesonline.com
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Hello From Long Laney Honey Bee Farms! We are David & Sheri Burns helping you to learn and enjoy keeping honey bees. If you have not listened to our Studio Bee Live broadcast, please do. We answer beekeeping questions and give out good advice. Click here to listen now or go to: http://www.honeybeesonline.com/studiobeelive.html

This is where we just sit around and talk about beekeeping with you. Tune in and enjoy the fun.


Your bees should all be doing well now that there is plenty of nectar sources for the bees to forage on. Keep an eye on your mite populations and if you see more than you should, then consider using the GREEN DRONE COMB. These combs are plastic and have the drone cell size embossed on them already. The strategy behind the green comb is to have the queen lay these full of drone eggs, because the mites like the longer brood cycle of the drones (24 days until they emerge). Once the green drone comb is sealed, remove it, freeze it for 24 hours, scrap out the dead mites (and drones), then put it back in. Use 1 or 2 green comb against the wall of a deep hive body.

We've been busy trying to get our queen operation up to full speed. I want to try and wet your appetite about raising your own queens. It is very simple to do. There are many methods and one that we use is a combination of the Doolittle method and the Smith method. Jay Smith was a beekeeper in the late 1800s and early 1900s in Indiana. I like his method the most. He grafted larva into queen cells, and then placed them in a starter hive, then after a day or two he placed them into a finishing hive. We have found this to be very effective. Some people do not even use a starter hive, they just place the grafts into a large hive above a queen excluder.

LESSON: 53: THE DETAILS OF QUEEN REARING

In our last lesson, I gave you an overview and some simple approaches to raising your own queen. Today, I want to go into a bit more depth on this subject. Before I do, let me remind you that on May 16th, I will be offering a one day hands-on course here on our honey bee farm just on queen rearing. This is on Saturday from 9am - 3pm with lunch provided. I'll teach you the fundamentals on queen rearing as well as take you out into the apiary to see first hand how to build a starter hive and what to look for in a finishing colony. If you'd like to take this class, please call us as registration is limited to 12. Call 217-427-2678.

Several people have asked me to explain about making my own queen cell cups from our own wax. Because some wax has been found to be contaminated with chemicals used to treat mites, we prefer either to use plastic cell cups or to make our own cups from our wax.

My father-n-law made me my cell cup maker. He started with a 1/4 inch dowel rod. The harder the wood the better, but anything will work well. He then used his grinder to shape the ends down to about 3/8 of an inch that tapers down as seen in the picture, which you can click on for a larger image. He then drilled holes slightly smaller than 1/4 inch and inserted the rods into a piece of wood. To dip these rod, you must first dip the tips into cold water. The more wet the tips are the easier it is to remove the queen cups.

Now, heat up your wax. We use a skillet we bought for $50 at Wal-mart. It works great for us.It has a thermostat so controlling the wax is very easy.

Now, the trick is to not make your cups larger than they need to be. Otherwise, it makes grafting more difficult. Dip them so that the wax goes up onto the rods between 3/8-5/16 of an inch. Now, I dip once, pull it out for about 20 seconds and re-dip. And I do it again. I usually dip around 3 or 4 times. Then, I have a large pan of icy water near by and I dip my cells down into the cold icy water for a minute or so. Now, I can gently twist off my cells. The first time or two on new wood can make it hard to remove the cells. But always dip the wood tips in cold water prior to dipping into wax. The more you use it the easier it is to get the cups off because the tips are not as porous. You can see my hot skillet in the picture, and I leave it just like this all the time. When I'm finished, I turn it off and put a lid on it. Then, the next time I want to use it, I crank it up and it's ready. Never anything to clean up and my wife has more pots and pans since I bought my own.

Now you need to prepare to graft. It takes proper planning to graft successfully. I use a cutter's board for easy clean up and keeps my graft area clean and tidy. When grafting larvae, it is important to keep them moist. Temperature is not a factor but moisture is. You do not want them to dry out. I use wet paper towels. As you can see, I place several wet paper towels flat on the cutter's block so that when I set my frame of larvae on it, the underside will remain moist. By the way, larva is one and larvae is more than one.

So set up your area, whether it is the kitchen table or the dash of your pickup truck, make sure you have everything you need. Grafting tool, flash light, magnifying glass or reader glasses, wet paper towels (a box of wet wipes works fine too and can be stored easily), cell cups on bar and cell cup frame.

Here's one of my experimental cell bars. As you can see, I'm trying to see if any of these cups make better queens. The first cup on the left is a plastic cup which I dipped into wax. The second and third cups are plastic and not dipped. The forth cup is a homemade wax cup and the rest are plastic. Most have found very little difference between the above cup configuration and therefore most grafters use the plastic cups. We use a combination now, but we do enjoy making our own cell cups. One reason is we do not reuse our plastic cups. So we always feel bad just throwing away hundreds of these cups. They can be cleaned but the effort is too hard and not worth the time.

Now, go out to the hive of your choice, a gentle hive that produces great honey and is not prone to have pest and disease issues. You now want to find a good frame to take back to graft from. Obviously you do not want a frame of honey, sealed brood or pollen. Some sealed brood is fine, like in the picture, because around the edge of this frame are some perfect aged larvae. An egg stands up in the base of a cell. But it lays down around day 3 or 4 and becomes a larva. We want to find the perfect age larva which by the naked eye will look like a comma on this page , and is about the same size only without the little dot at the top of the comma. Slightly curved laying flat on the bottom of the cell in royal jelly...that's what you are looking for. If it is too old, it will be more shaped like the letter c. In which case, they will not be able to feed it the "queen's food" as early as needed and the quality of the queen will suffer.

Once you find the perfect frame with the larvae you want to graft take it into your grafting room. Some people transport their frames in a cooler with some moist towels or rags and this is needed if there is considerable distance between your hive and where you will graft. I have actually grafted out in the apiary if the weather is not too bad. Try not to mishandle the frame. Just don't toss it in the back of your pickup truck.

Now, we are in the grafting room. Hope fills the air. You feel like a scientist or a surgeon about to perform the unbelievable... the unimaginable. Okay...stop thinking that way. It's not a big deal. Calm down.

Place your frame on the board with the top of the frame closest to you. The cells are angled toward the top slightly so this will help you see down into the cells. Find your comma shaped larva and use your grafting tool to scoop under it, taking the royal jelly and all. Now, place it into your new cell cup. You MUST keep the larva on the same side. In other words, whatever side was facing up before you grafted, make sure she lands in the new cup with that same side facing up. Bees breathe through spiracles on each side, and if you flip the larva over they will suffocate.

I love the Chinese grafting tool. I'm fast with it. It has a nice feel for me, and even has a little click when I release the larva into the new cup. But you can experiment to see which cup you like best. As you can see in the image, the Chinese grafting tool has a red button at the top and a small tip on the end. The tip is flexible and made of some sort of animal horn. The tip is flexible enough to go down into a cell, bend underneath the larva and royal jelly and then you just lift it out, being careful not to scrap the wall of the cell on the way back up.

Now you press the tip down into the base of the cell, centering well and slowly push the red bottom which pushes a piece of wood forcing the larva and royal jelly off the tip and into the base of the new cell.

You can see the wood in this close up picture and the top of the flexible horn can be seen in this picture as well. These grafting tools are easy to clean and reuse again and again. However, many people make their own grafting tools out of used dentist tools, tooth picks and other items. There are even expensive, more professional type grafting tools as well, so you'll have to test and see which one works best for you.

Your grafting technique will improve with practice. If you are unsuccessful at first, try grafting older, larger larvae just to test with. They are too old to work as queens, but it might be a starting point for you to try and then keep grafting smaller and smaller until you are comfortable with a 4 day old larva the size of a ",".

When I first started I would watch my grafting, looking into each cell and watching the whole time. Now, once I see the right aged larva, I do not look but just scoop and drop.

You do need good lighting and you might need visual assistance if you can't see up close. I go to Wal-mart and purchase reader glasses that are around 2.75 or 3+ magnification. Then I can graft with the eyesight of a 10 year old.

The more you graft the more you'll set up your operation to your needs.

Once I find the right larva to graft then I allow my tool to go into the cell until the tip hits the bottom. Then I let it curve under the larva. Now, I tilt it slightly backward so that the sticky larva is lifted from the base of the cell. The smaller the larvae the better, but more difficult it is to see and transfer. You do not want to move eggs. Eggs are too attached to the bottom and can be easily damaged. Once you've placed the larvae into the cups, do not be afraid when you are finished to turn them over. They will not fall out as they are stuck!

I usually graft about 60 cells at a time. I have a second set of paper towels handy so that I can cover the cells that I graft to keep them moist. Remember temperature is not so much of an issue when larvae are this young, but they can dry out.

So when I finish each bar, I cover it with a wet paper towel and keep covering each one I complete until I am ready to place the frames of cells into my starter hive.

Last week I mentioned how to prepare your starter hive, but let me mention it again. You want young nurse bees packed into the starter nuc or hive. They need to be extremely over crowded! Your grafts will be much more successfully the more over crowded your starter hive is. It should be difficult to get the lid on! And, of course, it needs to be queenless and have some honey and pollen.

Now transfer your grafts into your starter hive for 24-36 hours. Then, move them over to a larger queenright hive above a queen excluder. Just remember, the cups are going to be capped around day 8 so you can remove the queen cells and place them in your nucs between day 8-10. In case you grafted older larva, you might have your timing of emergence off, so to avoid a queen killing the rest by emerging early, I like to gather my sealed cells on day 10, not day 11!

The reason we like the finishing hive is because of it's size, it can better tend to a larger number of grafts whereas the smaller nuc or starter hive may not raise all grafts due to limit resources.

Remember when handling queen cups after day 10 that you must be careful and they must stay around 92 degrees. Handle them gently and keep them in their vertical position. The wings are the last to develop and rough treatment could cause the wings to be underdeveloped and then they may not be able to fly and mate.

Once your queens emerge and you are ready to sell them, and you want to mark them. This makes it easier for the customer to find them in the future. The International queen color code is determined by the year. All years ending in their respective number determines the color as seen in this image.

The best way to mark your queen is to purchase a queen marking pen. These work really well. Some claimed a marked queen may not be as accepted, but we have never had hives act negatively toward a marked queen. I feel that marking a queen is a helpful way for you not only to find her, but to know if you still have the same queen.

In lesson 34 we demonstrated how to use a marking tube. But watch the video below as I show you how to mark a queen by holding her. First you pick her off the comb by her wings. Hold the tip of your index finger near her legs and she will hold on with her legs. Then, bring your thumb up and hold her by a couple of legs. We exclusively use this field approach to marking our queens. My video is a bit out of focus, but you can get the idea. Click on the image below to watch the video. If you are viewing this lesson within your Email program, you may not be able to view the video. If that's the case, then you'll need to read this lesson from our website at: http://basicbeekeeping.blogspot.com

For those of you who will sell your queens and ship them to your customers, you will want to make up your own cage candy. I just made a batch here. It is tricky, and you need to experiment. You use powdered sugar and a special syrup that you buy at most beekeeping places. Your mix cannot be too hard or the bees cannot eat through it to release the queen. But, if it is too runny, it can warm up and drip onto the queen and cause her to perish. So practice with the right mixture. When you think it is right, ship and queen to a friend or your brother to be sure it stays the right consistency when mailed.

Well, we've had a hard day grafting queens, but the day is over and you did a great job. You grafted, raised your queens, marked them, made candy for their cages and shipped them out. Now we can sit back in our lawn chair and sip on a nice glass of iced tea, sweet tea of course with lemon and look at our bee yard of mating nucs and ponder great philosophical questions like why does a smoker always work better when you don't need it any more?

Until the next lesson, BEE-have yourself!

David & Sheri Burns

Long Lane Honey Bee Farms

217-427-2678

www. honeybeesonline.com

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There's never a dull moment here at Long Lane Honey Bee Farms. Hi! We are David & Sheri Burns and bees are our business. We live in East Central Illinois and our entire family is involved in our honey bee operation. We manufacture and sell beekeeping woodenware and we always appreciate your business. We also sell everything related to beekeeping and always welcome your business.
The primary goal of our business is to give glory to the LORD Jesus Christ through our business. The Bible says, "And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him" (Colossians 3:17). So whether we are building hives for customers, making up nucs, raising queens or answering the phones, we do it all in a honorable way that would give glory to the LORD.

The last few weeks has been a whirlwind of activity. Last Friday we had another successful class here at our honey bee farm. We had 17 students who came to learn about raising queens. This class was in conjunction with the Illinois Queen Initiative, which is a work where several of us are hoping to produce queens that are more acclimated to the climate here in the mid-west. Dr. Joe Latshaw is a commercial queen breeder and he came and held a workshop at our farm and the next day presented the same workshop to another group in Chicago.

Our store/lab was full of eager beekeepers wanting to learn the fine art of raising queens. During the morning Joe gave great detailed presentations on just how to raise queens. Joe holds a Ph.D and also teaches at Ohio State University in Columbus in Ohio. He has worked bees almost all his life and has studied and worked along side the most well-known entomologist. He has become my main mentor for understanding the art of raising queens. Joe has made himself accessible to me whenever I have any questions about queens. He's a true gentleman, friend and excellent beekeeper. His knowledge, experience and wisdom in raising queens is superior.

I highly recommend Joe to other beekeeping associations who would like a special speaker. Joe's website is: www.latshawapiaries.com

After a full morning of presentations on the details of raising queens, we broke for lunch. We try to make our classes and workshops as comfortable and professional as possible, so we had a tent company bring in a nice size tent so that we could enjoy lunch outside. Again, during the lunch break, beekeepers continued to pick Joe's brain as well as talking to each other about failures and successes in beekeeping. It was a nice day, though a bit windy.

I enjoyed meeting beekeepers from around the state of Illinois and hearing about their special techniques of beekeeping. My wife Sheri is such a hard worker around our honey bee farm. She put the entire day together for me. She made sure our room was configured properly for the class as well as making sure lunch was brought in on time.
For the last few weeks Sheri has installed packages, fed bees, answered the phone calls from our customers, helped packaged hives, data entry, taxes, Internet orders and the list goes on!
Even yesterday Sheri was on the four wheeler running up and down the apiary feeding the bees. I am so blessed to have a help-mate like Sheri! Last week I needed to take a trip down to Kentucky to pick up a trailer load of beekeeping supplies. Sheri jumped in the truck with me and our little youngest son Christian and we enjoyed a two day trip down for supplies. Thanks Sheri!
In the afternoon of our class with Joe, I worked to prepare a starter nuc and gathered up 5 frames of larvae so the students could practice grafting.
With Chinese grafting tools in hand, flashlights, magnifying glasses in the other hand, students when to work, selecting the perfect aged larva and transferring them over into queen cell cups I had made earlier in the morning. Students helped each other and Joe was there showing each student the art of grafting. This was a great hands on opportunity.

You can read all the books you can get your hands on, but until someone walks along with you, somethings are difficult to grasp.

LESSON 52: QUEEN REARING MADE SIMPLE
I have noticed that most beekeepers feel that raising queens is complicated and mysterious. I say that because I hear so many beekeepers say they are buying different types of "systems" for raising queens. These systems do work, but in my opinion there is much more control over raising queens through grafting than using systems. Besides, I like hands-on experience.
Here I am standing in David Miksa's apiary among his finishing colonies where he raises his famous queens. I told you that I visited with David Miksa. He and his operation was featured in the May edition of the American Bee Journal. It was a great article! Having seen his operation and now having read about it too, I am very pleased with his queens. I am incorporating several of his techniques into my queen rearing operation. And, of course, I'm using some of his stock in my yards for breeding as well. He has some very nice and very productive queens. I visited a hive two years ago that was headed up by a Miksa queen and I was impressed! We placed David Miksa's queens in 200+ packages, the ones that were picked up from our farm.
Raising your own queens can be very rewarding as well as save you money and time. I think every beekeeper should have a 5 frame nuc with an extra queen in there as a backup emergency replacement. Or if you want to make splits then you can raise your own queens to increase your hive count.
So let me give you a brief rundown on how to raise your own queens.
Create the perfect 5 frame queenless starter nuc. The nuc should consist of:
-One frame of honey
-One frame of pollen
-2 Frames of nurse Bees under 16 days old
Leave it queenless for at least 2 hours, but not too long or they might start raising their own queen if there are eggs present, which there should NOT be.
The starter nuc must not have any open brood so that the nurse bees can give all their resources to the cell cups. And this 5 frame nuc must be severely overcrowded with nurse bees,
completely blocked off and kept in a cool, dark place for the 24-36 hours they start the cups. When I make up my starter nucs, I leave an opening to place my queen cell frame into the nuc. I like to close off my nucs so that the bees stay in for the 24-36 hour duration.
The nuc should not have any open larvae. I want my nurse bees to only care for the grafted queen cups. The goal is to make LARGE size queens and to do this, I need copious amounts of royal jelly in each cup. So the bees in the starter nuc feed the queen cells. Because this hive only has nurse bees primarily, I close it off. Nurse bees do not need to fly out, so I close it off and keep it in a cool place for the 24-36 hour duration. Because I usually graft between 30-40 cell cups, I have to move this frame out to a larger hive that can continue doing what this starter hive started.


After 24-36 hours in the starter nuc, transfer cells into a queenright finishing hive.

The finishing hive must be very strong with two deep hive bodies with the queen in
the bottom hive body below a queen excluder. Leave the cells there until 8-10 days
old. Then, on day 8-10, transfer the cells into a queenless mating nuc. The mating nuc can be anywhere from a complete large hive that is queen less down to a mini-mating nuc with only 2 or three mini-frames.
It works best to transfer the 10 day old queen cell into a queenless nuc on day 10. Bees always accept a queen cell, much better than an emerged virgin queen in a cage.

When I graft, I make my own queen cups from my wax that I know is chemical free. Then, I attach the cups with wax and then I place large amounts of wax on the bar so the bees can use my wax to continue to draw out the queen cells.

I also make my own frames and cell bars. I dip my wax after melting it in a large electric pan that I bought at Wal-mart for $50.

I place my graft into a queen cell cup frame that I've just made up myself. They are easy to make by modifying a deep frame . The one in the picture, of course, is upside down. Don't worry, when you flip it over the larvae will not fall out. They are sticky and stay put. Also, you really do not have to worry about temperature when they are this young, 1-2 days old. Notice I graft with several layers of wet paper towels because the larvae do need to remain moist.

The grafting technique must be hands-on. For example the larva must only breathe on one side when they are this young. Therefore, you must place them in the new queen cell with that same side up. If you flip it over, they will suffocate because they are not yet breathing on both sides.

Then I go out to my bee yards and transfer the 10 day old cells into queenless mating nucs. I mainly use 5 frame nucs with deep size frames or 3 frame nucs with deep size frames. As you can see, these nucs make nice chairs too when working down the line. You can click on any of these images for a larger view. I work my bees with only a hat and veil because my bees are gentle and I hate wearing gloves. Though I do not have to wear a hat and veil, I feel it is essential to protect the eyes from stings. I never want to take a chance, nor should you.

The success of the beekeeper will be greatly increased by his or her ability to raise their own queens.

That's all until next time! If you'd like to contact us, please give us a call or email us. Here is our contact information:

GENERAL PHONE: 217-427-2678
QUESTION LINE: v217-427-2430
EMAIL: david@honeybeesonline.com
WEBSITE: www.honeybeesonline.com


Bee-have yourself!
David & Sheri Burns
Long Lane Honey Bee Farms

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[Information contained in this blog is my opinion after careful study and personal experiences. It is an expression of what's working for me today. Also, this is a blog which means the information is time sensitive. Prices may change and practices may change with new development and discovery.]

Hello from David & Sheri Burns at Long Lane Honey Bee Farms in Central Illinois. We've had a blast working our hives so far this year. The weather was cold and wet for so long, but finally it has warmed up and dried out.

This year there has been more swarms than what is typical. Here's a swarm I removed from a tree stump in Danville, Illinois. My father-in-law goes out many times a week retrieving swarms. I collected a swarm from a tree in Tilton, Illinois. It was the largest swarm I've ever collected. It's not the one in the picture.

For those of you collecting swarms you should consider purchasing one of our bee-vacs for easier removal. Also, a swarm might leave your hive once you catch them. So, be sure and try to put them on drawn comb and a frame of live brood if you have some. Also, keep the swarm closed off in their new hive for 24 hours so that they can settle into their new home.

Things have been pretty demanding since we are 100% into bees now. We had a great year selling packages of live bees and now we move into selling queens. As the season progresses, beekeepers will need to replace old queens or provide a queen to a hive that has, for one reason or another, lost their queen. Remember, that a hive dies quickly without a queen. We are having real good success in rearing queens and shipping them through the postal service. We prefer to ship our queens out Express mail, which only takes one to two days to arrive.

You could do the same thing! Some people have started their own queen rearing businesses and once you are established, this can be a very rewarding line of work. We ship our queens in a Tyvek envelop. That material is very durable and will not tear. We buy these at the local office store. We buy the larger size, 10 x 13 inch. Then, we punch a bunch of holes in the envelopes. While at the office store, we had them make us a red ink stamp that says, "LIVE BEES". Then, we use USPS CLICK-N-SHIP online (saves money over taking them to the post office) to print our labels.

I've worked with the post office so that I can get the best results in shipping queens. If they are placed in a priority mail container, the kind that are free, they can find their way into being handled by automation which is hard on bees. But the larger Tyvek envelop marked live bees express mail receives real good care. It does not take a lot of holes but some air is needed for the queen and her attendants.

Okay, before you ship queens you have to learn how to raise them, right. So in today's lesson I want to share my second lesson on queen rearing. Queen rearing is easier than it sounds, yet it can fail easier than you think. There are some very sensitive issues in raising queens and grafting is one of these. How well you graft determines the success of the queen's overall development.

TOOLS! There are many different grafting tools, some I have never tried. Probably the more common grafting tools are the ones that look something like a dentist's tool, but shaped differently on the end, like this one in the picture. Many folks make their own out of wooden tooth picks, plastic or metal. There are some very expensive, fancy tools that eject the graft from the spoon once placed in the cell. Others come equipped with a magnifying glass attached to the tool. Grafting does take exceptional eyesight, which very few of us have over the age of 40. So, some sort of reading glasses or magnifying glass along with a good light will be of much help.

A tool that has worked well for me is the Chinese grafting tool. It has a tongue that slips under the larvae and draws it out. Then there is a spring loaded plunger that helps push the graft off onto the bottom of the cell cup.

I'm pretty fast with this tool now, and sometimes speed is important, otherwise the royal jelly in the cell can dry out if you take too long grafting. These are inexpensive, around $5. It's hard to keep them clean, and the tool must be very clean when doing grafts. So, some people throw these away after they start looking too dirty.

So you have a tool, now what. I mentioned in my first lesson on queen rearing that you need to establish a starter hive. This can be a smaller 5 frame nuc box with lots of nurse bees, very young bees which you can shake off of a frame of larvae and sealed brood. Some suggest not putting any larvae or brood frames in the starter, just a frame of honey and pollen. Overcrowding this starter nuc is important. Get this starter hive prepared and ready so that when you do your grafting, you can quickly place it into your starter hive.

Now, with close up eye wear on, a good flash light and the grafting tool of your choice go and pick out a good frame to graft from. Remember, get the frame from the hive that has the characteristics that you want to keep. Usually it needs to have proved itself over a couple of years to be sure these are traits not just a fluke.

Remove the frame from the hive and brush the bees off. Try not to shake the frame in an attempt to remove the bees. Carry the frame into the area where your tools are ready, where you'll be doing your grafting.

Here we go!! I like to lay down a moist cloth beneath the frame I'm grafting from to increase the humidity, keeping the grafts moist. You must be careful to select the youngest larvae possible. Not a egg standing upright, but a larvae that has just started to lay in the base of the cell with the slightest curve. A full curve is too old. Notice in the picture that you are looking for a slightly curved larvae. It is best to scoop up the larvae from the opened end of the curve. And remember, you must place the larvae in the new cell on the same side it was on when you removed it so that the larvae will continue to breath from that side. You can click on the images to enlarge them.

I took this picture just for you, to help you know what you are trying to accomplish. Boy, the things I do for you:) Actually, until someone shows you what you are looking for, it is impossible to really achieve good grafts. Oh, and for those of you that have never seen what an egg looks like, where here you go!

Once you retrieve your graft, then place it into the cell cup. Repeat this until you have all your cell cups started. Then, take the frame (explain in the previous lesson) and place it into your starter hive, a queenless 5 frame nuc with nurse bees that a) would love to swarm if they had a queen, and b) would love to have a queen, and c) are young and can produce the needed start to your queen cells. However, I have found that I must remove the cells out of this starter hive after 24-36 hours. They just don't seem to have the royal jelly and proteins the queen cells need to seal the cells all the way by the 8th day.

So, after 24 hours in the starter hive, I moved them to my big hive. It is a regular hive, consisting of two deeps, lots of good brood in various stages, honey and pollen. I place the queen in the bottom deep and place a queen excluder on top of that deep. Then, I pull out a frame with bees all over it (and put them in a starter hive if needed) and place my queen cells in this hive in place of the frame I removed. This hive is large enough to care and finish off the 30+ queen cells. Now, on day 10, after the cells are good and sealed, I moved them into my incubator.

As you can see this is about as good as I am right now grafting. The empty cups are bad grafts that didn't take. The extra bit of comb is...an extra bit of comb the bees just built on the frame near the cups. I don't know why and it doesn't mean anything. Maybe they were bored on a rainy day.

You don't have to have an incubator. You can leave them in the hive. However, if one queen hatches, she will go through and kill all the other queen cells that have not hatched. So if you want them to develop fully in one hive, you will have to find a way to seal off or cage the cells. I'll explain of this in a future lesson. But for now, let me tell you how I do it.

I place the queen cells in my incubator that is VERY accurate. It has a digital thermometer and I've set it to 93.9 degrees. Be careful to handle your queen cells carefully, never tilt them from their vertical position. They must be kept at 93 degrees or the queen will die.

Keeping track of days is essential. You can be off a day or two because you may not know the exact age of the larvae you grafted, so play it safe. Be watching on day 15, because queens hatch on day 16 after the egg is laid.

When the queen emerges, I collect her, put a plug of my candy in her cage and place her in a queenless nuc, which some call a mating nuc. I use a 5 frame nuc rather than the smaller ones simply because I like all my equipment to be interchangeable. She will need some time to mate, usually a week, but sometimes longer if the weather is not right. Once she has been laying good for 2-3 weeks, then she is ready for sale. I've read that if she can lay for 21 days in her nuc, then she will be a better queen. This requires a lot more on our part, to have our yard flooded with 5 frame nuc boxes full of virgin queens. They actually have been mating and starting to lay a lot faster than I thought they would.

When I ship my queens, I mark them, if requested, and then I must add a few young bees to attend to the queen while being shipped. The queen does not like to feed herself, so the young bees will tend to her while being shipped. I choose the youngest workers I can find. I found a great way to do this, because checking the bees' flying license for their age is too time consuming. (Just kidding). When I see a young bee with its head stuck in a cell, then I know it is young, cleaning cells. Bees do different jobs as they age. And with their heads stuck in a cell their wings are straight up saying, "Grab me!". I do, I grab their wings and put them head first into the opening of the queen cage. I add 4-5 then I add the sugar plug.

I make my own sugar plugs. Too dry and it becomes hard and the queens can't get out. Too wet, and it will melt in warm weather and the queen could die along with her helpers. I take a thick sugar syrup which is just dissolved sugar in water, and mix it with powered sugar and I usually knead it until it becomes like dough. Then I keep it in the refrigerator and pinch off what I need. When using wooden cells I like to use the wax paper that comes with the wax sheets to cover the top of the sugar to keep it from drying out so fast.

Finally, the mated queen is ready to bless someone with a hive that needs a queen! Your work has been rewarding and you can rest at night knowing that somewhere, you queen will be saving a hive, producing honey and bringing someone a lot of enjoyment!

I'll finish up my queen rearing lesson next time, so if I left out something or you have questions, email me at david@honeybeesonline.com and I'll answer these in the next lesson.

That's it for today, and if you need a queen, give us a call and we'll be glad to send you one, but do remember you may have to wait as they are selling faster than I can produce them right now.

Remember to BEE-have yourself!
David & Sheri Burns

Long Lane Honey Bee Farms

http://www.honeybeesonline.com/

217-427-2678 (9-5 Central Time)

FAX 217-427-2678

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[This is a blog and the information contained within each entry is time sensitive, meaning prices are subject to change and information, due to new discovery, can change as well.]
Okay, I really do intend on completing the lesson on the observation hive, but it will be delayed a few more weeks while I test and retrieve some vital information. And we are building a store which will house our large observation hive, so I want to wait until we have that up and operational to include in the lesson.
We have been EXTREMELY busy filling orders and building hives. It has been so good to have heard back from so many of our customers who are thoroughly enjoying keeping bees.

In today's lesson, I want to share about raising queens. I used to think raising queens was a monumental undertaking left to the more experienced beekeeper, commercial beekeepers or queen breeders. However, it is good for every beekeeper to know how to raise a queen, if in no other way, simply by placing a frame of eggs in a queenless hive and having them raise their own queen. That's queen rearing in the simplest way. Beekeepers need queens. They are in big demand and in short supply. There is a mystery that surrounds the queen, and most beekeepers are content never to handle her or monitor her performance. But the more we observe and know our queens, the better we are in control of the overall survivability of our colonies.
Also, by raising our own queens, we control much of the characteristics of our hives. Meaning, that we should choose to graft from the hive that has the overall most favorable characteristics such as:
1. Gentleness
2. Good brood pattern
3. Rapid spring build up
4. Resistance toward pests and disease
5. Minimal swarming
6. Good honey production
Once a good hive is selected, there are several ways to raise a queen. Some use a kit which makes gathering the eggs or larvae easy and requires no grafting. However, these kits can be somewhat restrictive in timing, whereas actual grafting of the young larvae provides much more flexibility.
Our operation has studied queen rearing for several years. In the last two years we have had more and more success understand queen rearing. To help us along, my wife and I have attended several workshops and conferences on queen rearing. At one of these conferences I had the pleasure to hear from Dr. Joe Latshaw of Latshaw Apiaries. www.latshawapiaries.com
Months after the conference I emailed Joe and I found him very helpful in answering some of my questions. Then, after talking with Joe on the phone, he offered to personally mentor my daughter, Karee, and me in queen rearing. So a couple of weeks ago my 14 year old son, Seth and my 17 year old daughter made our way to Ohio to meet with Joe. What a great day of education it was!
Joe's specialty is producing inseminated breeder queens. Commercial beekeepers purchase inseminated queens from Latshaw Apiaries and then raise their own queens from this queen because her genetics are more controlled through insemination. Joe is also the state coordinator for the Ohio State Beekeepers Association queen project which is called the Ohio Queen Project (OQP). It is a program designed to promote queen rearing through training and working with local beekeepers. In addition, the OQP is also a stock improvement program aimed at developing a regionally developed stock and then promote this stock through the production of locally produced open mated queens.
One more thing about Joe. He also invented and designed a very unique, flexible and easy to use, award winning insemination instrument which he sells.
I have a dream...of one day breeding a queen from Illinois (Midwest) survival stock which is more accustomed to the climate, conditions and pests in the upper US. I hope that all of my work and research that I am doing now will lead to that end, if not for others, at least for my own operation.
So, Joe took us out into his bee yards and explain the whole process of queen rearing. I've heard about the difficulties in grafting and so I started queen rearing using a particular system that requires no grafting. But after talking to Joe, he explained the benefits of grafting and I was sold.
Grafting means that you examine a frame of brood from your selected hive. Then you look for 1 or 2 day old larvae. This is an important step. Here's, my daughter Karee gaining experience in grafting very young larvae from a frame of brood. The younger the larvae, the better. I try to find the youngest larvae that has just barely started to curve on the bottom of the cell. They are harder to graft, but have a much more promising success rate. This is known as grafting, taking eggs or young larvae from a frame of brood and transferring it into the queen cell cups.

I took a shot a learning too and it really was not as difficult as I thought. I need lots more practice, but I'm looking forward to becoming a good grafter. It seems to be best to graft the youngest larvae possible.
I make my own queen cup bars and frames which is a slightly modified traditional deep frame.


As you can see, the horizontal cell bars are removable so that you can easily place them next to your frame when grafting and then place them back into the cell starter nuc. These dimensions are pretty standard. You want the bar to fit tightly so that it stays in place but still can be removed. The cell bars which old the cell cups have a small grooved cut into the middle to hold the cell cups. Finding the right size saw blade ensures a perfect fit.
I use a skill saw blade(1/8") thickness. The cups fit tight and have to be wedged into place the first couple of times.

Once the larvae are grafted into the cell cups and placed on the cell bar in the frame, the frame of grafted larvae are ready to be placed into a starter hive. Often, if the trip back to the starter hive is far, the larvae need to be kept in a humid box, to keep them from drying out. A cooler with a wet towel in the bottom is usually plenty of moisture. It is not extremely critical to keep the grafts real warm when they are at this young age.
In my case, the "cell starter" hive is a 5 frame queenless nuc. They have several frames of pollen and honey and a frame or two of young larvae which I retrieve from other hives.
It is very helpful if this starter hive is almost overcrowded. There has to be a lot of bees, packed in, well fed and lots of young nurse bees. They will build out the comb and feed royal jelly to your newly grafted cells. They do this because they know they need a queen, and you have given them the start of queen cells loaded with fertilized larvae and plenty of royal jelly.
Without a queen in this starter nuc, it will die, so I have to monitor their own brood, pollen, honey and growth, using resources from another hive.
So in summary, we chose a hive to graft from, then we graft 1-2 day old larvae into our queen cells and place them into a queenless hive with plenty of bees, pollen and honey. Now, you can leave the cells in the starter hive until they emerge or move them over to what is known as a "finishing hive" where the cells are drawn out fully and sealed.
Now, here's the challenge. You cannot let these queens hatch together. If you do, the first one out will meticulously kill all the other queens in their cells.
In our next lesson, I will discuss grafting tools and techniques, mating queens, saving queens (called banking), how to sell queens and how to ship queens.
Thanks for joining me today, and to contact us, feel free to use the information below. Remember, BEE-have yourself!

David & Sheri Burns
Long Lane Honey Bee Farms
217-427-2678
www.honeybeesonline.com
david@honeybeesonline.com

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