Shipping and Installing Honeybee Queen Cells 🐝

So even though spring has finally arrived, we are still a few weeks away from grafting and raising queens from our own stock. So we get queen cells shipped in from a commercial queen rearer in Florida. Yesterday was our last planned shipment as we will soon start grafting. I thought it would be neat to share a few pictures as most people (and hobbyist beekeepers) are not aware of the process.

As I have discussed previously in the Beekeeping for Everyone series, the gestation timing of honeybees is well know. There are also critical periods during the development of bees that any jarring could cause damage or death to the unborn bee. So the whole process of shipping queen cells is very schedule driven. The cells are shipped overnight and timed for them to hatch within 12 hours of arrival. This may seem trivial, but when you take into account shipping companies only working weekdays and not weekends or holidays, a lot of backwards planning is needed to determine when the eggs should be grafted.

This first picture shows the shipping box which has screened sides that are protected by wooden baffle plates. This allows the bees to still get air even if the box is tightly packed against boxes next to it.

Opening the box reveals the cells being help upright in yellow protectors and plenty of nurse bees to maintain the appropriate temperature during the journey.

Closer inspection shows a blue plastic bag with slits that contains wet paper towels to provide water for the nurse bees. Not seen in the photo, but under the queen cells is also fondant for the nurse bees to eat. The bees are well nourished as indicated by the wax they have built on the tops of the cells.

Next step is divide up the cells into battery boxes containing 20 cells to be taken out to the bee yards.

Each battery box is given a wet towel and some fondant.

Here you can get a better look at a queen cell and the yellow plastic protector that keeps them safe.

A few days before the queens cells arrived I made 3 frame queenless nucs in preparation. A good sign of the strength of these nucs is how many emergency queen cells they build from larvae intended to be worker bees. As you can see the bees are busy creating emergency cells and caring for them. These were all destroyed before providing the new queen cell.

The queen cell in the protector is hung down between two frames and the bees, desperate for a queen, immediately accept this cell to sustain their future.

I only had one queen hatch out while installing and the others have probably hatch out by now. I will give them a couple days and go pull out the cell cup and protector with as little disturbance as possible. This will let me identify any that did not hatch and allow me to reconcile the issue before the nuc dwindles.

They will then be left undisturbed for another 2 weeks while the queen goes about her mating duties. Weather permitting, I will hopefully find a laying queen on that next inspection. If not, they will be given another week.

Sorry no macro photos this time :-( Had a lot of things to get done on a tight schedule (not to mention rain as well) and just did not have time. With any luck, I can take some macro photos of some of these queens after they are mated and start to lay.