Basics Of Queen Rearing and Common Techniques Used By Beekeepers

Basics Of Queen Rearing and Common Techniques Used By Beekeepers A honey bee colony may go through several scenarios naturally triggering the production of a new queen. However, with the right understanding of these triggers and their effect on the honey bee behavior, the beekeepers can make use of different queen rearing techniques and produce new queens for their hives. An actively laying queen is one of the most important components of a successful honey bee colony. She gives a continuous source of new workers and helps in directing the activities keeping the colony healthy and productive. While you can buy the queen rearing supplies and use then to produce new queen bees, there have been various scenarios that prompt a colony o naturally produce a new queen.

1.Aging An aging or sick queen often produces fewer and lower quality eggs, and her pattern of laying eggs becomes spotty. Combined with these and several other cues cause the workers to produce supersedure cells which is where the colony raises the new queens in lieu of falling ones.

2.Swarming Beehives that are overcrowded often cause the queen to for a new home. In this scenario, the queen takes more than half of the hive's workers with her. And when a colony senses that their queen is preparing to swarm, they start producing swarm cells to raise a new queen who will take her place.

3.Missing queen When a beehive loses its queen due to illness or injury, the colony quickly recognizes the absence as the levels of her pheromones starts dropping rapidly in the hive. This triggers the worker bees and they select different young larvae and feed them on royal jelly and create new queens.

A beekeeper who understands the different reasons behind these behaviors of bees can easily provide the environment to encourage the colony to create new queens. There are many reasons to buy the queen rearing supplies and try your hand at raising new queens on your own.

1.Replacing the aging queens If you notice dropping levels of new brood in the beehive then you may re-queen them. This will ensure that the colony has enough workers hunting for nectar and pollen when the nectar flow is at its peak to keep the beehive well stocked for winter.

2.Improving the production Introducing a new queen derived from the larva of an extremely productive colony can actually help in improving the output of a less productive colony. Various traits such as resistance to diseases and pests, levels of honey production, temperament and seasonal population adjustments have a great impact on the genes of the colony. In just a few weeks, the worker bees from the new queen start replacing the older population and the colony exhibits the expected traits.

3.Splitting hives To avoid swarming, you may also split a large colony into two or more than two new hives. If you supply one or both the new colonies with a new queen, it will ensure a steady source of new brood.

Similar to most other aspects of the beekeeping process, the methods of queen rearing can also vary greatly in the individual beekeepers. The most commonly practiced methods fall into two major categories. In the first method, a strong and actively laying queen is separated from the main hive and provided synthetic queen cups so that she can lay her eggs. In the second method known as grafting, the beekeeper removes the newly hatched larva from the brood to the already prepared cups.

You can buy the queen rearing supplies online and create new queens yourself.

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