The session was held in my home/queen rearing apiary, where all the equipment is on hand, instead of the teaching apiary. This is to be the last opportunity to rear queens as I’ve already noticed a drop in the number of drones and the amount of drone brood in all my colonies.
Half a dozen brave souls defied the heat to spend a hot Sunday morning playing with bees.
We talked about the reasons for rearing one’s own queens, including the danger of importing bees from other parts of the world, the benefits of locally adapted bees selected from your best stocks, and the satisfaction you feel every time you produce one of your very own.
We learnt about the queen rearing timetable of:
0-3 days egg
3-8 days larva
8-15 days pupa
Day 15 emergence of virgin queen
An introduction to the Apidea mini mating nuc was followed by the double nuc way of cell raising and finishing without then with a queenless followed by a queenright
We looked at doing a simple split, with or without seeing the queen, then went on to a brief description of the Millar Method.
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