Lesson Ten

Intermediate Beekeeping -- Lesson Ten Out-yards and Queens

Objectives:

The beekeeper may need to find someplace besides home to keep bees. You should be able to go about finding the yards and what you need to do to show appreciation for the opportunity to keep bees in this new out yard.

You will learn several techniques for installing new queens into your hives.

You will learn the basics of raising a few queens for your own use.

Establishing Out-yards

When does a beekeeper need out yards?

It depends upon the beekeeper's needs. I needed out yards as soon as my back yard was full of bee hives. In fact, I had 50. Of course, I lived in a rural area and my back yard is quite large. 50 hives are too many to keep in one location. I try to maintain no more than 20 at any one location and sometimes that is too many. One may need an out yard just to get the neighbors off your back - neighbors (some of them) are difficult to deal with and the best way around a problem is to move the bees. In this type of case, you might not care for your neighbor and decide to "H" with them. As long as you have just a few hives, you can manage them on your own property in an urban sitting.

How does a beekeeper get out yards?

I used friends as a starting point. Some of them were willing to let me put bees on their property. As I became known, some individuals came to me wanting bees put on their property to pollinate fruit trees. However, I wanted to locate my bees where they would have a good chance to get a honey crop. This meant that I would have to contact people who lived in those areas. The first thing to do is identify an area where you might want to put bees. The second thing is visit the local feed store or grain elevator. I printed up signs and placed them in the local feed stores and places where farmers would likely visit. It proved very successful. My sign was very simple. I asked for permission to place bees on farm property with the following requirement:

I did not want the bees close to livestock

There needed to be a near-by water source such as pond or stream.

I did not want bees close to inhabited buildings

I would not be interested in paying rent. I would give honey however for the landowners personal use.

I did not want to locate bees close to areas that would flood.

I would have to be able to get to my bees during all times of the year.

I would not want to drive across lawns, etc. to get to the yard.

I would prefer that the yards have a drive that would pose little chance to get stuck.

It is important to develop a good working relationship with landowners. Do not keep a trashy bee yard. Offer or ask what it is that you can do to meet the farmers needs. In most cases, a jar or two of honey goes a long way. Once in awhile you may be asked to help round up a stray cow. I always discuss the problem of having bees on a property with the owner. Bees sting. I want them to understand that. They can become pests under certain conditions. I want them to understand that. Pest you say? How? What happens if the wife hangs her clothes out on a clothesline to dry and the flight path of your bees is right over that clothesline? Those little brown spots that appear on her dry clothes will be noticed and if she discovers where they are coming from, then they will have a problem with your bees. Or maybe as I indicated earlier in the course, what if your bees are visiting the livestock feeding troughs and are stinging livestock trying to eat-especially if the farmer is feeding molasses in the feed.

You need to be able to work with people. Most farmers understand the value of honey bees so one does not need to do much convincing. Should the farmer show some hesitation, back off and wait for him to make up his mind. Once the sign goes up, you will have a number of possible locations to put bees so choose with care. It is not necessary to jump at the first bee yard that is available. Take time to set up an appointment to look at the site and discuss problems that you would like to avoid. Discuss how often you plan to visit the bee yard and what kind of vehicle you drive. Give the landowner a way to contact you. If the landowner must call you long distance, offer to reimburse for the phone charges. Finally, place a sign in the bee yard warning of the danger of bee stings. This sign should also contain your name and address.

Requeening

I am frequently asked how often one should requeen. I can in reply ask a question: Why do you think you need to requeen? A hobby beekeeper must realize that the value of a young queen in a hive is a distinct advantage to having a queen several years old. Young queens are much more productive egg layers than older queens and more bees results in more honey. But, is a person requeening because somewhere they read or were told that a beekeepers needs to requeen every two years or something like that? Your hives are most likely requeening themselves without your knowledge. Every time they swarm they requeen themselves. On occasion they will supersede the queen which means the bees for some reason begin building a few select queen cells. These queen cells will produce a queen and often the two queens may exist in the hive at the same time. Eventually however, the old queen will disappear and the young daughter takes over. It is not common for a new introduced queen to be superseded within the first year. Almost all beekeeper who get marked queens can describe a new queen that was replaced by the bees with a new supersedure queen.

Valid reasons for requeening:

The queen regardless of age is not laying a uniform brood pattern.
The queen is not laying many eggs in relation to the size of the bee population. Remember, she normally reduces egg laying during periods of (scarcity of food; and in the fall/winter season).
The queen is producing aggressive bees. You can change the behavior of bees in a very short period of time by requeening a nasty hive with a queen of known gentleness.
You would like to replace a queen of one race with a queen of another race: Carnolian for Italian as an example.
You want to increase honey production.

Once a decision is made to replace a queen, the beekeeper has several options available. First, is the option of where to buy the queen. The beekeeping magazines are full of ads for queens. The selection is mostly based on bias. Some people prefer Italian queens and others prefer Carnolian. This is what beekeeping is all about--learning to develop a bias. Beekeeper often seek advice on which type of queen to buy and that is okay but remember you are also dealing the the bias of the person who makes a recommendation. Expensive is not always best! Many queen breeders have been in business for a long time -- some for over two generations. I would advise the new beekeeper to go with the experience of the breeder. Check old bee magazines for queen ads and compare with current issues of magazines. Don't fall for the old line that ours are better! Words like resistant to mites are tempting but don't buy a queen because you think this queen will make all of your mite problems disappear. The mite problem is being worked on but as of yet, I know of no queen that can be guaranteed to produce bees resistant (means never have mites) to mites. Ask a breeder that makes claims like this if they will replace the cost of the bees in the hive and the queen, if the queen you buy eventually is discovered to have offspring in the hive with either of the mites.

The next option is the method to be used to introduce the queen. Several of these are listed:

Use the cage the queen was shipped in. Today two types of shipping cages are in use by queen producers. One is plastic and the other is wood of several designs.
Use specially designed introduction cage. This will require more work but when you have a valuable queen, it will provide the highest success level. See picture of the Miller introduction cage discussed below.
Combine a small hive unit with a larger hive unit. We have already discussed the newspaper method to combine two hives.
Queens are sometimes shipped in a battery box (so called because it holds a battery of queen cages). If you order 25, 50, 100 queens at a time, the shipper sends them overnight delivery in battery boxes. The cost is not much when you think about the expense involved with that many queens. You would need to check with the queen breeder to determine how they ship queens and in what kind of cages.

Another option is to mark the queen. Queen breeders often offer for an addition charge to mark a queen or clip her wing. Clipping a wing is also a traditional way to mark a queen. Some might use a system such as clipping the right wing in even numbered years and clipping the left wing in odd numbered years. I do not recommend clipping a queens wings. If the job is not done properly, damage is caused to the queen and the bees will most likely supersede her. A better way is to have the queen breeder mark the queen with a dot of paint for you. For 2001 the color used by breeders will be white. For 2002 the color will be yellow, and red will follow in 2003 and then green and blue. In 2006 the color will again be white. Breeders are following the International Queen Marking Color Code and you should do the same if marking your own queens. Note: Very valuable queens are usually marked with a numbered marker glued to the queens thorax. Since each queen is individually marked with a number it is possible to keep track of this queen by just writing down a number in the log book when using her to produce offspring.

Now for several advantages of each type of introduction described above:

The wooden or plastic cage

These cage protect the queen from aggressive bees that would kill her if she were just dropped into a hive to fend for herself. These cages have an opening for the queen to crawl out of the cage when the bees of the hive eat the candy that holds her in the cage. If using the three chamber Benton wooden cage, a beekeeper can use a nail to place a small hole through the candy so bees can eat the candy to the queen faster. One of the three chambers is filled with Candy. However, the plastic cages and wooden California cages have a tube that holds approximately one and a half inches of candy in a tube no greater and 3/8" in diameter. Bees can eat through this candy very quickly. Do not put a hole through it. These cages are adequate and come ready to install in the hive. All one needs to do: Remove a cap or a cork from the entrance containing candy. The bees will do the rest.

Special wire introduction cages: Two types: (Both can be made by the beekeeper)

Miller introduction cage This cage was designed by Dr. C.C. Miller and is as good as any you might try. Its construction is quite simple. You will need some hardware cloth (screen wire) and some small pieces of wood. The size of this cage is approximately: 1 inch tall, 3/8 inches wide, and 3 inches long. It is not a self release type of cage as the ones described above.

This is a picture of the Miller introduction cage copied directly from Fifty Years Among the Bees which Dr. Miller wrote. It is very simple in construction. The wire is bent around a block of wood 3/8"x1"x3". The cage constructed as shown is slightly different. But once the cage wire is formed, the beekeeper will need to cut plugs that fit into the ends of the formed wire. One end will be stapled permanently in place. The other end will have a removable plug or a plug can be constructed with an opening for the queen to crawl out. This opening would then be closed with either a cork plug or a piece of tin to prevent the queen from getting out.

In use the beekeeper would place the queen in the cage, plug the open end of it, and place the cage into the hive between frames. Because the cage is very narrow, it should fit between two top bars well. After several days, the beekeeper would return to the hive and release the queen by removing the plug on the cage. It is important that the end plug of this cage is firmly in place. You will introduce the queen when you feel the bees are ready to accept her.

A method that I use often with breeder queens is to take a sheet of wire screen and cut it into a square about 5 inches by 5 inches. I place this over a square block 4 1/2 by 4 1/2 inches, center the screen wire and bend all four sides down. I tuck the corners firmly so they are strong. This cage is easy to use. It fits over the comb. The edge of the wire screen is pressed into the wax. I select a spot that contains some capped brood just ready to emerge. If I can include a few adult bees that have just emerged-- so much the better. I place the queen on the face of the comb where I want her and then quickly push the wire cage into the wax around her. I want enough room between the wax and the surface of the wire to allow the queen room to move about. The newly emerged workers come into contact with her without incident. Our newly introduced queen has an opportunity to begin laying eggs almost immediately. After three or four days have passed, I remove the cage from the wax and the bees accept the queen. Using this method has been 100% successful for me but I also wait three or four days before letting the queen out. No method is going to work if there is still the old queen in the hive. Therefore, you must find the old queen first before trying to introduce any new queen.

Very important: Find the old queen. Remove her. It has to be done or you are going to fail in the introduction of the new queen.

Other points:

It is best to let the hive be queenless for a day before you introduce your new queen. However, many other beekeepers like myself have introduced queens in the self release cages at the same time we killed and removed the old queen with good success. A beekeeper can expect about 90% success with self release cages.
It is important to wait about a week before going back to check to see if the new queen has been released. You will accomplish two things by waiting. First, the new queen will have time to be accepted by the bees -- any disturbance could cause the bees to ball the queen and kill her. Second, you would be able to find evidence that the queen had been accepted without actually seeing her --- if you check worker cells and find eggs, you can bet that your queen took.

Raising a few queens

Every beekeeper should raise a few queens. Do it for the experience. It is not hard.   It is even nice to have a queen available if you need to replace a queen.

Our suggested method: The Miller Method

Requires no grafting experience

Will produce fine queens

Before we explain our suggested method, you need to know that queens are produced by the worker bees and not you.   Your role is to create a situation for the worker bees to produce a queen.   The process will take planning.

First, you will need to make some preparations. What will be needed?   Answer: A separate box for each queen to be raised, a nuc box to build cells, and a good number of worker bees to build and feed the cells to be created.   You will also need an egg source. Hopefully, you have an outstanding queen producing good gentle bees with some mite tolerance.

Steps:

You will need a calendar.   On day 1 -- place a frame of new foundation into the hive that has your queen source.   This frame is just a regular frame nothing fancy. The comb is cut into "V's". The only thing I would suggest is to place the frame between two frames of brood.   See the pictures:

This is day one. The picture to the right is a frame -- not even complete at that. It has no bottom bar but your frame could. It really doesn't make any difference. It has new thin wax foundation --- the type used for comb honey production but again that is not important. It could be brood foundation. This frame is placed in the hive with your Mother Queen. The mother queen will lay eggs in the cells the worker bees build on the new wax foundation. Queens seem to prefer to lay in this new comb. Notice that the foundation has been cut into "V" shapes. Again at this point this is not really critical.

   Approximately One Week Later
  The frame will look like this
The bees will have drawn out the comb into worker cells. The queen will have started laying eggs into the cells. You can see the eggs by looking down into the cells but because they are white and the comb is very bright yellow, it may be difficult at first.   Eggs will look like little grains of white rice. You will not put this frame into your cell builder until Red letter day #3.

This is our red letter day.    Day # 1   Mark the calendar because this date is critical.    On this day you will need to prepare a box to receive this frame if you are going to raise any queens. This box will be called your cell builder.   It must be furnished with the following:

Several frames of brood, and frames of honey and pollen and a lot of young bees.   It could be placed in the same location as your mother hive (you would need to turn the mother hive around so that the entrance faces in another direction).

You will need to provide an ample amount of sugar syrup for the bees to fed on.

This cell builder hive must be queenless.

After three days, the bees will have started emergency queen cells. To prevent one of these queens from emerging and killing the queens you are trying to raise, it will be necessary to cut any started queen cells (these are called emergency cells) in the cell builder.

On day #3 take the frame you have prepared with the new eggs in it. This is Red letter day #3.

Cut the cells as shown in the picture to the right. Cut away the lower cells. The most important point I can make here is to emphasize the importance of having either eggs or very young larva near where the cuts are made.
   It is now necessary to decide how many queens you want to raise.   You will need a nuc box for each queen to be raised and enough bees and feed to help her survive.   If you want only one queen you really don't need to do anything more.   The bees will build a number of queen cells -- Often 10 to 20. One of these queens will survive the battle among the queens that emerge.

Beautiful queen cells ready to be put into nuc boxes and raised for future queen needs. Since queen cells raised in this fashion are built close together and often connected as shown in the picture, it is not possible to move all of the cells to a nuc. One could cut between these cells and save three of them. The three cells could then be placed in individual nuc boxes.

From the day the eggs are laid by the queen and the bees begin to provide special attention to raising queen cells, a period of 16 days will pass before the new queens emerge. It will take another 10 days for virgin queens to mate and start to lay eggs of their own. We wish you happy queen rearing.