# General beekeeping > Queen raising >  The Rose method of queen rearing

## Rosie

Hi All

You might be interested in my queenright queen rearing method.  I tried it last year with a double queen hive but this year I have used 2 different single queen hives and it seems to be working even better.

It consists of a normal national hive with 2 half width brood boxes used above the queen excluder and below the supers.  Queen rearing can start as soon as the bees start to put nectar in the half width brood boxes.  I have played around with it and now have quite a simple routine that seems to work well even when the weather is awful.

day 1:  Find a frame of young brood and another of pollen from the brood box and put them in one of the half boxes with a dry grafting (cell cup) frame between them, making sure that there is nectar in the other 2 brood frames (the half box takes 5 frames).

day 2: slip a plastic sheet under the half box that contains the brood frame and pollen frame.

day 3: Graft into the grafting frame.

day 4: remove the plastic sheet.

9 days later transfer the queen cells into mating nucs.

After fiddling for a number of seasons and achieving poor success rates with different queenright systems this one seems to work like a charm.  In fact I am getting better results than I often achieve with queenless systems.

Here's a picture of the set-up with the supers removed.

P1000589.jpg

Rosie

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## Jon

Hi Steve
Good to see the system working. I have never understood why your bees struggle with the basic Ben Harden/ Wilkinson and Brown queenright system.
I get the odd cell raiser colony which wont start more than 2/20 grafts but I had one last week start 20/22 grafts and they were really good cells as well.
I do the grafting for our group and we have produced well over 200 cells this year for apideas of group members and cells taken home to requeen problem hives.

There are about 100 apideas at the mating site so the drones have got a full time job.

What do you reckon is the difference between your system and the basic Ben Harden or wilkinson/Brown in terms of cells started?

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## Rosie

I haven't tried Wilkinson/Brown but the best I have achieved with Ben harden is about 7 out of 20 although I have not tried it for about 4 years.  With my new system I just got 16 out of 18 and the one in the picture had 14 out of 18.  I know that Ben's system is aimed at non-prolific bees but, from your earlier posts, I get the impression that your colonies get bigger than mine.  The one in the picture, for example, only had about 5 frames of brood as I did this round of grafting after I had robbed the colony for nucs.

Rosie

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## Jon

Very rare for any of mine to need more than a single national for brood although I have the odd one needs more space.
At the moment I have colonies with ten frames of brood and others have reduced to about 3 or 4.
A lot of my queens have reduced egg laying during June due to bad weather and poor forage but I have still managed to get a reasonable number of cells started.
I was at the association apiary earlier this evening and got 15 more cells into apideas and another 5 or 6 went away with group members to requeen colonies.
I put a dozen cells into my own apideas earlier today.

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## prakel

Rosie, have you tried the Hybrid Cloake Board method used by John Kefuss? You seem to have similar thinking in the sense of concentrating cell raising in a nucleus sized box above a queen right colony. You're method of course allows for concurrent supering while his H-C-B reduces the lifting to get to the cell builder box/frames of brood in the queen-right section and probably also concentrates a higher percentage of bees too. Two approaches with great similarities but also quite different working methods.

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## Rosie

I'm not familiar with John Kefuss's method but I know about the Morris board technique that uses a special board and a split brood box on the bottom.  The Morris board seems complicated to me and involves a fancy board with fiddly slides and doors.

Rosie

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## prakel

Just to elaborate a little on John Kefuss's 'Hybrid Cloake Board', he's basically taken the standard Cloake Board with it's usual method of use but made the one adjustment of blanking off a part of it so as to allow the use of a single nucleus box for the cell raising rather than a second standard brood chamber. Concentrating the bees in a smaller cell raiser and reducing the weight of lifting when accessing the bottom brood chamber for harvesting further combs of brood.

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## nemphlar

I've used the Harding method for a few years, and only ever get 4/6 cells taken up, but then when they swarm there are never more than this number of cells. The one time this year I had more (12 out  20)was a hive with a prolific early build up and I used this to rear some early cells from a more reliable steady queen. When this queen did catch up I find grafting from the frame of brood which will then take its place in the bh box along with the pollen frame very quick and easy with minimum of disturbance. Getting them mated and laying more difficult this year sitting around 35%.
As an aside managed to find someone selling apideas more reasonable priced thanT, what a clever little design, filled them last Sunday.

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## Jon

Buzzy Bee shop is miles cheaper than Thorne for everything.

Re the Ben harden method, some colonies just don't take to it I think but most of mine are fine.
I have been grafting 80 at a time into 4 colonies and if i get 40 or 50 cells that's more than enough for our group.
I grafted 20 into one colony at weekly intervals and it never started more than 2 or 3 at a time so I set up another exactly the same way and it started 20/22.
My set up is graft frame in the middle, frame of larvae either side, frame of pollen outer side of the frame of larvae then pack out the rest with the sealed brood. If weather is bad you need a feeder on to give them a pint of syrup per day for the 4-5 days the cell is open.

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## Adam

Steve,
So with your method you're only grafting in one of the 1/2 width brood boxes at once so the 'path from queen to grafts' is up the non-grafted side, across the super and down? This makes the distance quite large - more than just a super in between - hence the grafts appear with little queen pheromone so a good take-up. Is this a correct interpretation of your method?


Adam

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## Rosie

That's exactly right Adam.  However, one of the 2 hives I am using for this has no supers on and the results are about the same.  In this case the bees get into the grafting half by climbing over the dividing wall from next door, travelling along the bee space under the crown board.  In both hives the half with the grafts end up with many more bees than the side without.  I suspect though, that in the supered one some of the bees in the grafting half had come out of the super and had been intending to go to the bottom box but had been held in the grafting half box by the plastic sheet.

The grafting box is not only a long way from the queen but convection currents from the bottom box are diverted straight past it which must reduce the queen pheromone even more.

Steve (I'll give up on Rosie as my cover was blown long ago :Smile: )

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## Adam

The beauty of the system is that it's so simple, so for that reason alone it's to commended!  :Smile: 
It's worth making a couple of 1/2 boxes to try it next year.

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## Rosie

I have tried it now on 3 different hives.  One had supers, one had no supers and the other was 2-queen system.  It seemed to work equally well on all of them and on top of that none of them swarmed during the whole season (so far - (how do you do a fingers crossed smiley))

Steve

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## Jon

Does sound like a neat option.
I presume the colony needs to be fairly strong to ensure larvae are getting a good amount of jelly in the cells.
It is certainly a better option than that contraption with a double stack connected by tubes which appeared in the bibba magazine a while back.
Beekeeping should be kept as simple as possible.

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## Rosie

I butchered some kit to try "that contraption" a couple of years ago and concluded that it wasn't worth the hassle.

As for the colony strength for my method, the 2 colonies I used this year were pretty average to small.  I suppose strong colonies produce more royal jelly but I think the real advantage of large colonies is that, in most systems, they generally draw more cells.  Perhaps my small colonies have produced poor queens but I have not tried them yet apart from noticing that they are filling their nucs pretty quickly.  I remember reading somewhere though that you only need 200 nurses to raise a queen in any case.  That means I would only need 3000 to care for the 15 or so queen cells that I have been producing.

Steve

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## Adam

I remember seeing the 'contraption' written about on the old BBKA site. I'm pleased that you tried it rather than me if it was too much of a faff!

With the Rose method, do you move started queencells to a finisher colony or leave them in until the 15th day and then distribute?

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## Rosie

Adam

On the day after grafting I simply remove the plastic sheet from under the half brood box to make them fully queenright again.  I then put them into the nucs 10 days after grafting.  I currently have 2 systems on the go so I graft into one or the other every Wednesday and distribute on Saturdays.  On one ocasion I tried grafting into the second box a week after grafting into the first (in the same hive) but none took but it was done during the early June gap when nobody else's grafts were being accepted in any case so I think it's worth another try.

Steve

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## Black Comb

Steve
Would a piece of ply splitting a standard brood box in half suffice or does it have to be 2 separate boxes?

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## Rosie

> Steve
> Would a piece of ply splitting a standard brood box in half suffice or does it have to be 2 separate boxes?


It has occured to me that a divided box should work just as well but I haven't tried it.  If you give it a go I would take care to make sure the dividing ply extends down to the queen excluder and also seals the bee space at the bottom of the top brood box.

The only disadvantage I can see is that you can't lift one half to place or remove the plastic sheet but an advantage would be that you will not have the problems of removing bees from between the two boxes when they are replaced.

The only reasons for me starting with 2 separate boxes were 

(a)  that I initially used them in my 2-queen system where a divided box would not work and 
(b)  separate half boxes can be used for making up nucs by simply lifting them off the hives after ensuring that brood, bees and stores are present.  I haven't tried this yet as I have not managed to make half sized floors and roofs but I might find time this winter for that.


Steve

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## Black Comb

Thanks Steve.
I use LS so as long as I ensure ply is flush with bottom and leave a top bee space should be OK.

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## prakel

Hi Black Comb,

There's a link I listed in the 'your favourite links' forum for a video of the first part of a talk called 'the sustainable apiary' by Mike Palmer. If you follow the link you will find that part two is also available to view. It's in part two* that Mike Palmer talks quite extensively about the use of split brood chambers and adding half size nuc boxes etc. While nothing to do with Rosie's queen rearing method you may still find the talk of great interest. 

For anyone who's interested at this time of year:

there's also a nice section towards the end about reading the combs with relation to stores/feeding for winter -a learned skill which isn't often given as much attention as it might deserve, possibly because it's marginally more complicated than hefting.

EDIT: 18/08/2012.

*I've just noticed that a large part of the nucleus establishment talk is actually at the end of the first video.

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## fatshark

There might yet be time to try this before the season finishes ... I have the necessary boxes  :Big Grin:   If I understand this correctly the nuc box not containing the grafts simply contains stores?  Presumably the nuc boxes have to sit flush on the QE?  If there's no flow on and you have to feed syrup do the bees store it in the adjacent (non-grafts) nuc box ... effectively lower down the hive?  

Why is this called the 'Rose' method and not the 'Rosie' method?

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## Rosie

> There might yet be time to try this before the season finishes ... I have the necessary boxes   If I understand this correctly the nuc box not containing the grafts simply contains stores?


Yes.




> Presumably the nuc boxes have to sit flush on the QE?  If there's no flow on and you have to feed syrup do the bees store it in the adjacent (non-grafts) nuc box ... effectively lower down the hive?


I'm not sure about that.  There has always been plenty of nectar in the box I have grafted into so I can't be sure that they have not added more while the process was taking place. Remember that the plastic sheet is only in place for a few days so I doubt if you would notice a difference in stores increase between the 2 boxes during such a short time.




> Why is this called the 'Rose' method and not the 'Rosie' method?


"Rosie" is just a joke name that I used when I first registered :Smile: 

Steve

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## gavin

I'm tempted to say that he's .... a Rose by any other name .....

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## Jon



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## gavin

Ooof!  Loud .....

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## gavin

Is this getting silly?  At least this Rosie isn't a cross-dresser ....

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## Rosie

I wish I'd called myself Stephanie now!

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## Jon

I know a Dilys on another forum!

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## drumgerry

I think I'm still at the tinkering stage in my queen rearing career and your system looks a good one Steve.  I do like the Harden system but I wonder if I could get more grafts started with yours.  No harm in trying.

So.....I'm thinking a partitioned brood box would work just as well or is there more merit in having two separate half units? I guess for the moving of the plastic sheet in and out the two units might be better?

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## Rosie

Drumgerrrry, I often get asked that but I have never tried a partitioned box.  However, I can't see it making much difference to the bees provided it's partitioned thoroughly, including the bottom rebate if you have a bottom bee space.  If find though that two half boxes each comfortably hold 5 frames.  I would guess that a partitioned box would be too big for 2 x 5 frames and too small for 2 x 6 frames.  A couple of thickish dummy boards would probably fix that problem though.  In addition there will be times when you will not need to disturb one half while working on the other but I doubt if that would matter much.  One drawback with having 2 boxes is replacing them after working inside the bottom box.  It's easy to get bees on the side of first box, making it fiddly to fit the second without hearing that familiar and ghastly crunch.

In addition, at the end of the season or when you have finished queen rearing you can remove the half boxes, complete with bees and brood, and you have 2 ready-made nucs if you have floors and roofs handy.

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## drumgerry

Ok so I've been going through my kit this afternoon with this in mind.  I have two 6 frame wooden nucs both top bee space (don't use them as I just use poly nucs now).  The two together are too wide but I can cut one down to a 4 frame nuc and then they'll fit side by side.  I'm guessing top bee space nucs over bottom bee space brood box would be ok - in terms of there being no route over the top of the brood box frames to the nuc with grafts making the bees go the long way round over the top (if that makes sense!).

Thanks for the help Steve - much appreciated.

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## drumgerry

Oh and another thing that occurred to me as I've been studying your picture Steve - is it my imagination or is there no queen excluder on that hive?!  It's maybe just one of those thin plastic ones perhaps?

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## Rosie

I use 2 half width zinc excluders and the bees treat the half boxes like supers until I put brood in one of them.  It's important, of course, to continue with the use of excluders for the whole process to avoid the queen tearing down the queen cells when the sheet is removed.

As for using top bee space on the top with bottom on the bottom I see a couple of problems.  One is that your frames might stick to the queen excluder and the other is that any brace comb on the bottom of the brood frame might stop you from putting it into the top box.  I suspect it would be best to use a queen excluder with a frame on both sides and a central cross piece under the division board.

I use a couple of drone cell frames in all my brood boxes, by the way, and that reduces brace comb on the underside of the frames.

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## drumgerry

I could always add a 6mm baton to the bottom of the boxes and then have a central piece of timber to split my queen excluder into two sections.  Not ideal but it'd do the job.

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## Rosie

Sounds good to me.  Good luck.

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## drumgerry

Some pics of my set up to try out Steve's method this summer.  Fingers crossed I'll have a better uptake than with a standard Harden set up.  If I don't I'm sure it'll be down to me rather than the method Steve!

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## drumgerry

Meant to add I found a top bee space brood box in my kit - result!!

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## Rosie

Looks just about right to me drumgerry.  Good luck.  Let's hope it works well for you.  Remember, if you need to add a super while it's it progress I always fit it turned 90 degrees to help bees travel from one half box to the other.

I am hoping to start my first lot off this week which is a lot earlier than I have managed to achieve in recent years.

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## drumgerry

Thanks Steve.  I'm excited to try it and I'm sure it will work - it has logic on its side like most of the best things in beekeeping!  

Looks like we're warming up at the end of this week so I'm hoping that's going to help. It's early for me as well this far north!

Not that it'll matter but I'm thinking if I use the 4 frame (rather than the 6 frame) nuc for the grafts they'll be packed in a bit tighter which again might help.  Jon was only saying to me this afternoon on Facebook how high bee density is a good thing for having your grafts accepted.  I'll report back with how things go and maybe post some more pics of the process.  They might be of use to someone who wants to give it a try.

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## Rosie

It would be interesting to experiment with number of frames.  I have only used 5 so can't tell which number is ideal.  I would say that 4 is the minimum though because you should need one for the grafts, one for the pollen, one for brood and one for nectar.  Perhaps next time you might try the 6 framer to see if it makes any difference.

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## drumgerry

Here's the cell raiser in situ now.  The pollen trap isn't operational but will be for a day out of the next 4 as part of the COLOSS pollen study.  Grafting frame goes in for the bees to clean up tomorrow and first round of grafts goes in on Friday!

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## Rosie

I am looking forward to hearing your results Drumgerry.  Fingers crossed.

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## drumgerry

Hope you don't mind me posting these pics here Steve.  I'll try not to hog your thread too much!

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## Rosie

Hog it all you like.  I'm anxious to see how you get on with it.

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## Rosie

*Steve Rose Queen Rearing Summary

*
       Put queen excluder(s) and 2 half-width brood boxes over a standard colony when the first supers would normally be fitted.
      Wait for bees to start putting nectar in the half boxes and mature drones are available.
      Day 1 - Move one  frame of open brood and one of pollen up into one of the top half boxes.  Slip a queen cell frame between the brood and pollen frame in the half  box and leave existing nectar bearing ones in the other two. 
      Day 2 - Put a  plastic film over the queen excluder and under the half box with the  brood etc. Graft young larvae into the queen cell frame and return it  between the brood and pollen.  Leave the other half box on its own queen  excluder and hence accessible to the bees below.  
      Day 3 - Remove the  plastic film (leaving the queen excluder in place) so that the queen  pheromones have normal access to the box again.

Replacinghalfbox.jpg

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## Little_John

Having just re-read this thread (nice one, Steve) one bit of info which is missing from the summary is to ensure that there is a route over the top of the two upper boxes (or split box) for the bees to migrate into the cell-raising chamber.

As I've already got a Morris Board, think I'll give this a go in 'Rose mode' next year with a split brood box - that is, to leave one Q/X permanently open, and simply close the other using the slide as if it were the plastic sheet. And no fiddling around with various door permutations ! The only difference I can then see is in the different size Q/X's - the Morris Board's only being 4" square. Whether this reduced size is siginificant or not, we'll soon see ...

The method is far simpler (less steps/ manipulations) than that of the Morris Board, and the underlying principle certainly sounds right. I'm looking forward to trying this ...  :Smile: 

LJ

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## Rosie

> Having just re-read this thread (nice one, Steve) one bit of info which is missing from the summary is to ensure that there is a route over the top of the two upper boxes (or split box) for the bees to migrate into the cell-raising chamber.LJ


Good point.




> As I've already got a Morris Board, think I'll give this a go in 'Rose mode' next year with a split brood box - that is, to leave one Q/X permanently open, and simply close the other using the slide as if it were the plastic sheet. And no fiddling around with various door permutations ! The only difference I can then see is in the different size Q/X's - the Morris Board's only being 4" square. Whether this reduced size is significant or not, we'll soon see ...
> 
> The method is far simpler (less steps/ manipulations) than that of the Morris Board, and the underlying principle certainly sounds right. I'm looking forward to trying this ... LJ


Sounds like it could be an improvement if you already have the board.  The board will mean slightly less disturbance to the colony.  You must let us know if it works well.

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## Little_John

Hello Steve - me again ...

I've spotted a difference between your first post and the latest summary - which I assume is due to your having 'fine-tuned' the method ?

In the first post you describe a 4-day sequence, with grafting on Day 3 - and transferring the q/cells to nucs 9 days after restoring the hive to 'Queen-right'.

In the summary you've recently posted, you describe a 3-day sequence, with grafting on Day 2, and in an earlier post you mentioned transferring the q/cells to nucs 10 days later. (so - same 13 days)

The difference between these of course being that of grafting on the same day as the half-box is made 'queen-less', or the day after.

So - just checking - which is the preferred method ? I'm assuming 'same-day' grafting - less disturbance/ less chance of emergency cells being started etc ? 

'best
LJ

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## Rosie

Hi LJ

You are correct, of course, in that I have reduced the number of visits by one day.

The reason for putting the summery up in the first place was that it was taken from a slide I presented at the recent BIBBA conference, people were unable to make a note of the sequence at the time and Grizzly asked me to show it here.  In the talk I explained how the system had developed and had ended up with 3 visits and one queen as opposed to the original 4 visits and 2 queens.  I had spent a couple of seasons playing with 4 visits and 1 queen before finally arriving at the current system this year.

I still distribute the queen cells 10 days after grafting as that is what most people do regardless of the system they use.

There is still plenty of scope for further experimentation though.

Good luck

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## Wmfd

> As I've already got a Morris Board, think I'll give this a go in 'Rose mode' next year with a split brood box - that is, to leave one Q/X permanently open, and simply close the other using the slide as if it were the plastic sheet. And no fiddling around with various door permutations ! The only difference I can then see is in the different size Q/X's - the Morris Board's only being 4" square. Whether this reduced size is siginificant or not, we'll soon see ...
> 
> The method is far simpler (less steps/ manipulations) than that of the Morris Board, and the underlying principle certainly sounds right. I'm looking forward to trying this ... 
> 
> LJ


I'd just whipped a Morris Board up myself last week (should have used thicker ply but serviceable), and now read this thread - looks like a good approach as you say, it certainly requires less "hokey-cokeying" with the doors.

morris board.jpg
(I know I can't jigsaw straight!)

Now I just need to find a nice flat piece of metal or plastic to close the opening through the Qx (oh yes and then make up some half size commercial nuc boxes).

David

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## Little_John

Looks all right ...

I made 2 slides from ally sheet - one plain, and one incorporating a mesh to fit over the q/x - thought I might experiment with combining using the board ... but never did get to play with that.

I have to say that although I got my head around the Morris Board sequence - the girls themselves never did. 

So there they were, happily coming and going through the normal hive entrance, when Yours Truly blocked that off, and opened the Morris Board lower front gate. It took them a while to adjust to that - but we got there eventually. And then, just as they'd got used to that entrance, it was closed, and the one at the back was opened ...

Ok - so we know that the idea is that the bees are supposed to return from foraging and enter the half box which now has it's own front door opened, and those exitting from the back entrance are supposed to return via the front ... only it ddn't quite work like that. Many of the girls decided to both come and go via the back door, and even started hanging out on that closure bar. I reckon that they'd been messed about that much that they were now going to use whatever entrance was available to them.

I did get some queen cells though, although not from the half-box - turned out I got a bunch of swarm cells *under* the Morris Board, so I used those instead. I had planned on trying again next year, but Steve's method just seems so straightforward - the hive entrance position never changes - all that's required is for the girls to find an alternative route to the brood comb (and cell cups) for just one day - and they seem to manage that ok.

So next year I'm going to ignore the lower doors completely, and only use the upper doors to access the slide - and that's all.
There's potential there of course to swap over to the other half-box once the first batch is started - but to be honest, I'll be happy to just get a small batch of q/cells first time out.

LJ

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## Wmfd

> Looks all right ...
> 
> I made 2 slides from ally sheet - one plain, and one incorporating a mesh to fit over the q/x - thought I might experiment with combining using the board ... but never did get to play with that.


Thanks LJ, I'll dig out some aluminium sheet I scrounged from a dung heap a while ago.  Hopefully be able to make up something serviceable reasonably quickly.  

So the mesh was to let the odours of the colonies mix before you let them have access to each other?




> Ok - so we know that the idea is that the bees are supposed to return from foraging and enter the half box which now has it's own front door opened, and those exitting from the back entrance are supposed to return via the front ... only it ddn't quite work like that. Many of the girls decided to both come and go via the back door, and even started hanging out on that closure bar. I reckon that they'd been messed about that much that they were now going to use whatever entrance was available to them.
> 
> I did get some queen cells though, although not from the half-box - turned out I got a bunch of swarm cells *under* the Morris Board, so I used those instead. I had planned on trying again next year, but Steve's method just seems so straightforward - the hive entrance position never changes - all that's required is for the girls to find an alternative route to the brood comb (and cell cups) for just one day - and they seem to manage that ok.


 :Big Grin: 

That's great, it all sounded so credible as an approach, if a bit of a faff, but good to hear about actual practice!  

Last year I harvested some queen cells from some swarming hives, and got them mated and introduced to colonies, but this year didn't get myself organised enough to do anything.  So, fingers crossed for next year and giving this a go.

David

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## Jon

Steve et al. I am sure this method works but it really is far more complicated than it needs to be to rear queens.
All you need to do to start queen cells is remove a queen from a colony or a strong nuc and drop in a frame of grafts an hour later.
Next day lift out the frame of grafts, including the adhering bees, and set it into the middle of the brood nest in a queenright colony for finishing where the brood is above the excluder in the top box and the queen below the excluder. 
I kept a queenless starter colony going from mid may to mid august without problems. I topped it up with the odd frame of sealed brood as well as the frames of larvae I took grafts from. It made the odd queen cell on these frames which I removed.
The main work is rearranging the queenright finisher every couple of weeks to put all the brood up top.
In the summer I am checking colonies every couple of weeks anyway as part of swarm control.
People keep telling me that the Cloake board method is even simpler as you don't have to lift the graft frame from from a starter to a finisher.

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## mbc

I have a concern about this system regarding the conditions the cells are started in.  My preference is to maximise the number of bees in the cell starter to overcrowding, but with this system I can only see the starting box retaining the bees already in there looking after the brood and losing many to the more queenright side. If it works, it works, and the proof is in the pudding as they say, but personally I would worry the larvae's first 24 hrs might be a bit undernourished resulting in less than optimal queens.

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## mbc

> People keep telling me that the Cloake board method is even simpler as you don't have to lift the graft frame from from a starter to a finisher.


Spooky cross posting Jon, poor Rosie having a dual rain on his parade in two minutes.
The added advantage of the cloak board is that it crams all the flying bees with their returning pollen and nectar into the top cell raising box.

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## Jon

My compadres in NIHBS mostly use the Cloake board system.
My main interest having stepped up queen production a bit is working out an efficient system in terms of time invested and queens produced.
Getting the queen cells started and finished is a relatively straightforward part of the process if the nutrition is right.
I started using an incubator this year as well which allows more batches of cells to be produced as you can remove them to the incubator once they are capped and get a fresh batch into the cell finisher.
Managing a large number of Apideas and removing the queens to cages in a timely manner involves far more work.

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## Little_John

> Thanks LJ, I'll dig out some aluminium sheet I scrounged from a dung heap a while ago.  Hopefully be able to make up something serviceable reasonably quickly.  
> 
> So the mesh was to let the odours of the colonies mix before you let them have access to each other?


Hello David - yes - here are the plates I made - different colours according to whatever paint was being used elsewhere at the time ...



The experimental black plate is reversible - one way closed, the other a permeable mesh. But never got around to using it, due to a serious case of failure.

But - it was while reading what I had written about my Morris Board 'epic fail' that I suddenly realised what the problem had been, and for anyone intending to use a Morris Board in the future, the following explanation might prove useful.

The Rose Method has two clear advantages over the Morris Board method: it does not require complex apparatus - AND - the system can be deployed at a moment's notice. But not so the Morris Board, and in order to understand why this is, it is first necessary to go back to basics.

Bees enter beehives in two distinctly different ways. Having played outside a hive entrance for a while, bees somehow 'fix' their navigation system upon that entrance. From then on, they accurately home-in on that entrance and enter the hive, usually without a moment's hesitation. I'm stuck for a word to describe this - so let's call this 'being on autopilot'.

Now - if that entrance is moved as little as 3 inches to one side, the autopilot of those bees returning to the hive will take them to wherever the entrance used to be - an observation more easily made with hives having holes for entrances, rather than wide slots. And, having now discovered that the entrance isn't where it used to be, the bee will revert to the use of it's sensory apparatus - the many thousands of smell sensors located on it's antennae - to follow the scent plume wafting from the hive entrance, wherever that now happens to be. (which of course is how some bees get trapped under an OMF after a hive has been moved)

When the Morris Board is first installed, the Bee Craft author (Michael Badger) writes:
"The normal bottom entrance to the hive should be closed [...].  The front entrances in the board are opened and the bees quickly adjust to entering the hive in the middle instead of the bottom."

Now that is optimistic thinking, and only partly true. The bees may well 'adjust', but they will remain in 'sensory mode' for some considerable time - such that when the slide is inserted and the front entrance to the main hive body closed, the only remaining opening to the main hive body is now at the rear. This opening is on the lower side of the Morris Board and, when coupled with an OMF at the bottom of the hive body, a substantial plume of warm air containing hive odour will then pour out of the rear entrance. Any eddy currents from even the slightest breeze will then waft that plume all around the hive's exterior, such that any returning bees operating in 'sensory mode' will then follow that scent plume to the rear entrance, and away from the front entrance to the graft box !

How best to overcome this limitation ? Easy - install the Morris Board, open it's front entrance, close the normal hive entrance ... and then *leave it* like that for a week or more, until you begin to see the bees homing in on that new entrance without any hesitation at all, indicating that their 'autopilots' have finally re-adjusted to the new entrance.  Only then will the board work as intended. It might also pay to blank-off the OMF while the slide is in place, to reduce the scent plume at the rear.

This failure to wait long enough also explains several criticisms made of the board which I have read, which are of the form, "the first run is always rubbish, but it gets better as the season progresses".  Well, it would ...

LJ

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## Little_John

Provided that the bees actually *start* the queen cells - which I believe is the rationale behind cramming as many bees into a box as possible - I can't see why under-nourishment presents an issue. After all, during the first 24hrs (the only time artificial 'cramming' takes place) the queen cell larva only consumes as much as that of a worker - and an extra 20-odd 'worker' cells to feed can't be stressing resources that much. It's a very different scenario a few days later of course, but by then the hive has been returned to normal.

LJ

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## Jon

They will start more cells when a colony is queenless.
I have used both queenless and queenright systems for starting and I consistently get more cells started when the colony is queenless.

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## mbc

No, the rationale is striving for perfection, and only settling for excellence, or some such my old woodwork teacher used to tell me anyway, wish I'd taken more notice at the time now, a very wise man who has since passed away.

Page 18, contemporary queen rearing by Harry H. Laidlaw Jr.
Feeding of larvae
"Since food is the critical element in the determination of the queen caste and in the development of this caste to its full potential, we must design our cell building operation so that all larvae that are to become queens are fed abundantly with proper food from the time they hatch from the egg until they finish eating in the sealed cell."

Page 31, breeding super bees by Steve Taber
"Whatever method or technique is used, the first few hours starting the newly grafted queen cells are probably the most critical for developing large, well fed adult queen bees".

Page 12, queen bee: biology, rearing and breeding by David Woodward
1.4 caste determination
"By contrast, larvae developing in queen cells are fed royal jelly in copious amounts.  During the first three days the royal jelly fed to these larvae is produced from nurse bee secretions of the mandibular glands only."

Page 75, bee sex essentials by Lawrence John Connor
"Absolutely anything that interferes with the development of the queen and her eventual size will interfere with the size of the queen, the number of her ovarioles, and even the size of her spermatheca."

I'll leave it there as I'm just boasting about my library.

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## Little_John

I don't disagree with any of those quotes, but I would still assert that providing the larva is fed an adequate amount of royal jelly during the first 24 hrs, such that there is some jelly remaining in the cup after that time, then the larva will clearly have eaten all that it is able to, and that no advantage would have been gained by feeding it any more. Indeed, there might even be some risk of drowning the larva (let's not forget it needs to breathe) if excess were to be artificially applied over such a tiny creature.

In your quest for perfection by ensuring abundant jelly during the first 24hrs, you may wish to contact Wilkinson and Brown who clearly do not share your concerns, for they do not appear to have any problem at all with dry grafting:
"The Chinese grafting tool has the advantage of transferring a bed of royal jelly along with the larvae, but good acceptance rates have been obtained from dry grafting with a metal tool or a fine wetted paintbrush."

I would have thought that denying the larva access to royal jelly for 15-30 minutes, or however long it takes to return the grafts to the nurse bees is a serious mistake, which is one of the reasons I intend to try the CupKit system next year, rather than dry grafting, as a visible amount of royal jelly in the brown cups is one indication of larva suitability, such jelly being transferred along with the larva, thus ensuring it's continuous availability.

LJ

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## mbc

Some jelly is always transfered even with dry grafting and 15 - 30 minutes is excessive, I reckon to get out and back in in not much more than five minutes, grafting in the truck at the apiary.  
The jenter and cupkit systems are appealing for that reason- larvae not being manipulated out of the cells- but in practice most queen rearers switch to grafting quite early on in their evolution, with no apparent loss in queen quality. I see that's contra to the above quotes but I suppose practical experience leads to knowing where accommodations can be made for convenience without compromising the main goal of top quality queens.

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## Jon

No matter what system you use or the steps you take, there is always some variation in feeding. The larvae towards the centre of the frame tend to get fed better than the larvae at the edge for example.
If I get a really small queen cell, or a very small queen from a decent sized queen cell, I discard them.
You have to use your own judgement re. what makes an acceptable queen and given the background population we have ensuring that she mates with the right sort of drone is probably the biggest issue.

I dry graft with a 000 sable brush and that works well for me.

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## mbc

I force myself to choose some for culling, even if they all look good taking out the less good is bound to push the bell curve of quality in the right direction.
I also use a brush for grafting.

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## Jon

> I force myself to choose some for culling, even if they all look good taking out the less good is bound to push the bell curve of quality in the right direction.
> I also use a brush for grafting.


Yep. Try and produce more than you need and then select the best. The very small queens usually don't mate properly and turn into drone layers so you might as well cull them early.

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## gavin

> The very small queens usually don't mate properly and turn into drone layers so you might as well cull them early.


Do you think bigger queens are somehow better at the mating process, maybe better able to fly better in sub-optimal weather, or is it something else?  Just very small queens that don't mate well or is it a continuous improvement with increasig size?

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## Rosie

I am quite happy to hear "rain on my parade".  I find that with my system the the half box with the larvae is invariably bursting with bees, probably because they find it easier to get in there than out of it again.  In addition I used the queenless system for about 5 years before finding a queenright system that works even better for me. I am pretty sure that I am producing better queens than I ever managed before as my colonies have improved in recent years although I can't tell if it's due to my selection getting better or my queen rearing improving.

I don't agree that it is more complicated than using a queenless system - I don't even have to find the queen and am happy to do everything gloveless and in a garden setting.  In contrast I once came drastically unstuck when I removed the queen from a hybrid colony that was in reach of my chickens.

In have tried various methods before plumping for my current one and would not be tempted back to any of them again.

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## Jon

> Do you think bigger queens are somehow better at the mating process, maybe better able to fly better in sub-optimal weather, or is it something else?  Just very small queens that don't mate well or is it a continuous improvement with increasig size?


Its just the very small ones which seem to have difficulties. Some smallish queens can be very good. The proof of the pudding is in the brood pattern and the size of the brood nest.

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## Jon

> I once came drastically unstuck when I removed the queen from a hybrid colony that was in reach of my chickens.


I remember that saga. RIP the unfortunate Cockerel.

I think the key word there is hybrid. A queenless colony from decent stock should not give you any bother at all. The main risk is developing laying workers so you have to keep feeding it with open brood from time to time.
A single queenless colony linked to two finishers can easily produce you 30+ good cells weekly.
I had two queenless colonies running at my allotment most of the summer and two others at the association apiary.

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## Rosie

> Its just the very small ones which seem to have difficulties. Some smallish queens can be very good. The proof of the pudding is in the brood pattern and the size of the brood nest.


I am more interested in the size of the colony than the size of the nest. I, like Jon, like to see a good brood pattern though.

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## Rosie

> I think the key word there is hybrid. A queenless colony from decent stock should not give you any bother at all.


I agree with that Jon.  In fact I often think that part of the selection criteria for choosing a donor colony should be to test their reaction to the queen being removed.

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## Poly Hive

I will confess at the outset that many of these "techniques" leave me cold.

However what ever works for you is best.

What works for me is this: I put queen excluders between double brood boxes to "find the queen" then shake several frames of bees from the queenless bb, into a five frame brood box. Thus I am sure the bees are queen free. 

I want the box stuffed with bees. I give a stores frame, (NO BROOD) a pollen frame (NO BROOD) a frame feeder of light syrup, pound a pint, and a gap and a dummy frame. Grafts into the middle gap. Worst result 0 being honest.

Best result, after 10 days of very poor takes,,,, and of course fresh bees... 32 from 36. The weather changed for the better.....

Do what works for you.

PH

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## Jon

What are you stats? How many mated queens are you rearing per year over the past few years using this method?

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## Poly Hive

About 30 last year jon.  Been doing it that way since I took over Craibstone which was 1989 I think it was and Bernard taught me it. If when I lift the CB there is not a "beard" of bees hanging in the gap they are not strong enough so out with the sprayer and shake in some more. 

PH

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