The Making of Queen Bees

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The author moved his surviving queen an four frames into an empty hive and let the remaining workers groom a new group of prospective queen bees.   
The author moved his surviving queen an four frames into an empty hive and let the remaining workers groom a new group of prospective queen bees.   
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Within ten days, the bees had created eight queen bee cells.
Within ten days, the bees had created eight queen bee cells.
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One- to three-day-old larvae that could develop into a new queen look something like this. 
One- to three-day-old larvae that could develop into a new queen look something like this. 

I used to depend on two bee hives to provide me with about 100 pounds of fresh honey each year, but upon inspecting my tiny apiary I discovered that an unusually cold Ohio winter had entirely wiped out one of my colonies! I knew that once spring came I could restock my empty hive with a mail queen. But I decided, instead, to use the hive community I had left to establish a new colony.

My procedure wasn’t terribly complicated, either. It should be well within the abilities of any backyard beekeeper. And the “queen making” skill can be an important one for any apiarist to master.

Before I could use the “trick,” however, I wanted to make sure my remaining colony was at its peak strength. So I waited until May when the bee population had “blossomed” along with the spring flowers. I then opened the hive and located the queen. I let her crawl between my thumb and forefinger, gently grasped her thorax, or midsection—being careful not to clasp the tail section where she makes her eggs—and clipped off a piece of one wing using cuticle scissors. (I wasn’t worried about stings during this operation, because queen bees almost never “attack.”)

I then gently transferred the “grounded” insect to my empty hive, along with two frames containing ready-to-hatch brood cells plus one frame laden with honey and another containing pollen. The four racks provided food stores and, most importantly, a source of soon-to-emerge young workers (known as nurse bees) that would tend to all the queen’s needs.

Once the colony-starting elements were in place, I closed up my “reborn” hive and blocked off most of its entryway so the temporarily short-handed residents could defend their supplies from any invading “robber” bees. (I removed the entrance reducer two weeks later.)

  • Published on May 1, 1981
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