Courses and teaching
Queen Rearing
Rearing your own queens from local bees is one of the most rewarding skills in beekeeping. I am one of the tutors on the Hampshire Beekeepers Association queen rearing course, and I teach simple queen rearing techniques to improvers in our teaching apiary.
Looking ahead to 2027
Local queens and nucs for our members
In 2027 the teaching team will embark on an ambitious programme of production of queens and nucs to supply members of the Association on a regular basis. Our aim is to reduce reliance on commercial suppliers and thus the importing of queens from overseas.
Why raise queens?
Better bees from local stock
- To improve the quality of our bees by reducing unwanted characteristics
- To replace lost or failing queens
- To keep young queens, which lay better, are less inclined to swarm and lead to better honey crops
- To save money and avoid buying queens from commercial breeders
- To raise bees more likely to survive in local conditions
- To avoid second-generation hybrids and potentially aggressive behaviour
What you will learn
From selection to mated queen
- Setting the characteristics you want in your bees
- Assessing your own and other people’s colonies, and recording the results simply
- Deciding which colonies to breed from and which queens to cull
- Using the natural queen cells the bees build
- Producing queen cells by grafting, cell punch and cup kits for those who want more queens
- Making up and managing mating nuclei, and getting queens mated
- Introducing, marking and clipping queens
Hampshire Beekeepers Association course · 16–17 May 2026
A two-day practical course
Day one covers why we rear queens from local bees, timings in bee development, selecting colonies (a practical session with recorded assessments), VSH behaviour, the importance of drones, and a competitive grafting and cell punch session. In the afternoon we look at self-starters and finishers, the bees’ responses in swarming, supersedure and emergency, and methods including Miller, Alley, Nicot cup kits, Hopkins, simple de-queening, modified Demaree and the Cloake board.
Day two covers handling queen cells, incubators and cell protectors, group demonstrations of each method, stocking and managing mini mating nucs, queen introduction, marking and clipping, and assessing the grafting results.
For details of future courses or one-to-one coaching, call or message me on 0747 896 1517 or email alanbaxter@me.com.
