I suspect it’s 10% or less.īut even that select group aren’t the target audience for this post. I don’t know what proportion of beekeepers ‘actively’ rear their own queens. DIY INCUBATOR HOW TOI know how to produce ‘spare’ queens, though need them less frequently as my swarm control has also improved □ 6 I got my nuc to overwinter and I’ve gradually improved my bees through selecting from the best and requeening the worst. It was probably the single most significant event in my experience as a beekeeper. I successfully reared queens from larvae I’d selected, transferred, produced as capped cells and eventually got mated. What about a queen or two ‘spare’ for those swarms I miss?Ī year or two later I had the opportunity – through the generosity of the late Terry Clare – to learn the basics of queen rearing and grafting.Īmazingly (though not if you consider the tuition) it worked □. Oh yes, and slightly better tempered bees.Īnd perhaps a nuc to overwinter ‘just in case’. Queen cells from grafted larvae … what a palaver! In fact I was so certain that, when repeatedly re-reading Ted Hooper’s book Bees and Honey, I’d skip the chapter on queen rearing all together.īy ‘queen rearing’ I mean larval selection, grafting, cell raisers, cell finishers, mini-nucs, drone flooding etc. When I started beekeeping I was certain I would never be interested in queen rearing. I’m going to discuss a pretty focused and specialised topic of relevance to perhaps a fraction of 10% of all beekeepers The 10% If you’re in this group then I suggest you look away now □ 5 I suspect the majority of these thousands of viewings are from new(ish) beekeepers. It has already been read more times this year than all previous years 4. Nevertheless, it is one of the most popular pages over the last couple of years. The post entitled Queen cells … don’t panic! contains little someone who has kept bees for five years doesn’t or shouldn’t already know 3. Going by the popularity of certain posts it’s clear that many readers are relatively inexperienced beekeepers. There’s no way I can write something relevant, interesting and topical for the entire breadth of experience of the readers 2. Much like my talks to beekeeping associations, the ‘audience’ (in this case the readership) ranges from the outright beginner to those with way more experience than me.Īn article, like the one last week, on transporting your first nuc home and transferring it to a new hive, is unlikely to be of much interest to an experienced beekeeper.Ĭonversely, a post on something esoteric – like Royal patrilines and hyperpolyandry – is probably going to be given a wide berth by someone who has recently started beekeeping 1. This is something I’m particularly aware of writing a weekly post on beekeeping. You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time … so said John Lydgate (1370-1450). I’m leaving this post here for those who wanted to read some of the background information. DIY INCUBATOR PORTABLENOTE: This post is now redundant as I have designed, built and tested version 2 of my portable queen cell incubator.
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