St. Louis Beekeepers Sustainable Stock Apiary: Local Survivor Honey Bee Queen Rearing Project

Several beekeepers attended a beekeeping conference sponsored by the Heartland Apicultural Society at Washington University in July, 2018. They learned several methods of queen rearing that we might consider utilizing at the apiary.

The group faced several challenges in raising queens. The spring 2018 season was unusually cold and wet, causing the bees to remain inactive until late April. The overwintered hives suffered loss of bees so we had to rebuild resources to continue with the queen rearing. This caused us to start queen rearing behind schedule and with fewer resources. Hive beetles were also a challenge. We also destroyed a hive that showed pathogens on test results.

We plan to address these challenges in the second year of the queen rearing project by starting as early as the weather will allow. Though the weather is out of our control, we will be ready. Also, we will purchase package bees to increase our supply of bees in order to be more successful at raising local queens. Additionally, we will supplement the colonies with pollen and sugar syrup to help them survive the weather until enough natural pollen is accessible to the colonies. We plan to aggressively address the hive beetles with traps in each nuc and hive to help limit the hive beetle population. These actions along with the additional knowledge gained through the HAS Queen Rearing class will help the teams to be more successful at queen rearing this season.

We have learned valuable lessons during our first year of queen rearing. We learned that we need more resource hives to supply the quantity of nurse bees necessary for successful queen rearing. We will increase the number of bees shaken into nucs when placing queen cells into the nuc. We learned that several elements affect the success of queen rearing, some of which are out of our control, such as the weather. We learned that creating queens by splitting hives is the most successful method we have tried. While grafting, cloak board and nicot methods were attempted, they didn’t produce the quantity of queens that they potentially could have. We will continue to explore these queen rearing methods to determine which method best suits our situation.

While we had several challenges and learned valuable lessons, the team did experience some success. The queen rearing team works very well together. They are flexible and willing to jump in and help each other whenever they can. The team members are willing to share information and experience with each other. We did learn that we need to better utilize the record-keeping software used to track hives and queens. This will help us to have better continuity and communication with regard to the status of each hive and the next task needed. This camaraderie will help with future queen rearing success. Our team is very dedicated and disciplined and are taking the extra time to tend the hives, working around job schedules which often includes traveling out of town. When asked if they would continue, the team almost unanimously stated that they would return and keep learning and practicing queen rearing. They are dedicated to addressing the issue of a lack of local queen stock for local beekeepers.

2018: 11 Farmers participating in research.

2019 additions:

The harsh winter of 2018 with Polar Vortex left us with only 4 hives. A pathology report shows that 2 of the hives that died in January had viruses known to be transmitted by varroa mites.

We purchased 8 packages of bees to use as resources but not as stock to raise queens. This decision was based on 2018’s lesson we needed more nurse bees, honey frames and pollen for queen rearing.

Nicot method again without desired results.

Starter Finisher Colony Method gave us the best results.

• Starter Colony (5 frame nuc box) 2 frames of honey, 2 frames of pollen, water, sugar water feeder, 6 frames of nurse bees shaken into nuc box. The Starter Colony is set up the day before you graft.
• Graft appropriate aged larva that has a good amount of royal jelly. Transfer larva into jzbz cups with the royal jelly without flipping the larva over but with same orientation as it was in comb. When working with the frame of larva and the cups with transferred larva, care needs to be taken to keep them from drying by placing a damp towel over them. Work calmly but quickly to minimize time out of hive and get grafted cups into Starter Colony.
• Choose a strong hive to use as Finisher Colony. Find the queen and place her below the queen excluder. Move uncapped larva frames above the queen excluder. The nurse bees will move above the queen excluder to care for the larva. Prepare the Finisher Colony the same day you graft.
• 1 day after grafting bar was placed in Starter Colony the nurse bees should have started adding royal jelly to the cups and started to form the Queen Cells. 24hrs after grafting move these to Finisher Colony.
• Move queen cells from Finisher Colony to Mating Nuc 12 days after grafting.
• Do not check for new queen until 10-14 days. It has been determined that the new queen is more readily accepted after this waiting period.

Queen grafting data

2019 Queen disposition:

• 35 queens were raised by grafting.
• 1 queen was raised from Nicot Method
• 3 queens were raised by OTS Method
• 2 of these queens were used to requeen the purchased bee packages.
• 1 queen was used to requeen 1 of our survival colonies with bad temperament.
• 6 queens went to SSA members
• 1 queen and nuc was raffled off at Annual Field Day.

2019: 10 Farmers participating in research.

2020 Queen Raising Data

2020 Queen Disposition

36 queens were raised from this SSA Apiary stock, 28 by OTS and 8 by grafting, see chart above. 

• 14 of these queens were bred, mated and sold.
• 22 of these queens were raised to add to established colonies in the apiary to overwinter in the apiary.  A number of these will be sold in Spring, 2021 as starter 5-frame nucleus colonies, a number will be maintained in this apiary, and the balance distributed to SSA member farmers further for breeding at their personal apiaries.

Summary of 2020

The apiary began Year 3 with 11 over-wintered hives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K

Before queen rearing began for the third season, the apiary lost hives A (alive in the spring, but succumbed to disease or chilled brood).  F and J were winter dead outs.

Hive A frames were removed and destroyed and the remaining equipment was cleaned with a 5% bleach wash.  Using OTS (called the On-The-Spot queen rearing method), SSA repopulated hive A from hive C stock.  Hives F and J were removed.

SSA protocol is to test all queen-rearing candidate colonies for pathogens.  Due to a 100% increase in testing fees with our established lab, we chose to sample 4 of the 8 winter survivors.  The below report indicates varying amounts of pathogens present. This quantifiable data reporting is new, differing from previous years where we received confirmation only, not pathogen load data.  When we inquired for interpretation, the National Agricultural Genotyping Center (NAGC) lab was unable to qualify the results.  We will provide NAGC our working logs for their review as they are collecting data from many of their clients to help them measure the impacts of pathogen load.

2020 Spring SSA experienced a lot of swarming. To help control these swarming tendencies, the over-wintered queens were moved to 5-frame nuc boxes and allowed to get established in a new hive. The extra queen cells in the hives preparing to swarm were used to create OTS (On-The-Spot) replacement queens for these colonies, rendering those hives unavailable for grafting.

Many of the resource hives were not available for grafting due to similar swarm tendencies, so it was decided to increase the number of resource hives from 10 to 20 so that we’d have bees, honey and pollen - all critical resources for the purpose of queen rearing. We selected 10 colonies from the apiary stock that had the characteristics we wanted to propagate.

As in previous years, colonies were sampled/tested for varroa mite load at season's peak, in August.  The following is a chart of the 8 colonies we "spot" tested from the apiary, with mite infestation levels noted.  The standard threshold where treatment is indicated for mite infestation is 2-3%, at this time of the year.  As in previous years, our mite loads are below threshold, so we did not treat for varroa mite control. We have not had to treat any of these hives for varroa mites since inception.  We believe mite levels continue to be low, even as the density of bees in this apiary continues to increase, due to a number of positive factors, including survivor stock genetics from the original breeding stock brought to the yard prior to the start of this grant; early spring pathogen sampling and remediation; as well as colony manipulation which breaks the cycle of mite reproduction, keeping their numbers manageable by the colony's behaviors, including grooming and hygienic brood rearing.

C

2

350

.57%

L

0

297

0

E

1

430

.23%

B

0

198

0

D

1

236

.42%

H

0

366

0

N

0

320

0

V

5

440

1.1%

2020 established queens/colonies going into winter -

44 total colonies are established in the SSA apiary at the close of 2020. 

• 8 successfully over-wintered from 2019
• 17 additional colonies with queens raised in Summer 2020 to sell in Spring 2021
• 5 additional colonies with new queens, established to provide critical resources 
• 14 OTS queens raised in colonies when the original queens were harvested to sell

The Apiary Winter Configuration - 

(13) 8fr single deep:  A, D, I2, P, U, T, 17A, D2, E2, L2, K2, L, M

(9) 8fr double deep:  E, G, H, I, 6, V, Q, O, N

(1) 10fr single deep: B

(1) 10fr double deep: C

(8) 5fr double nuc: 5, 4, S, 22, 24, 30, T2, 1

(5) Apartments 2 5fr single nucs:  19/21, 27/28, 32/33, 38/U2, B2/C2

(1) Apartment 2 4fr single nucs: 10/17

Assessment of 2020:  Due to COVID concerns and restrictions, we began the season working as a socially distanced group in the apiary, with follow-up Zoom meetings to review progress and do planning.  When grafting for queen production, we formed a small group with experienced and inexperienced SSA volunteers. One benefit of this was that more beekeepers were given the opportunity to try their hand at grafting as we had 2 new members wanting to learn queen-rearing join our group.  It was a total group effort and a good opportunity to educate new members, share and pass along knowledge.

As we experienced last season, the number of productive resource hives directly impacts our ability to raise quality queens. While we had 8 resource hives to start with, reproductive swarming made hives unavailable for critical periods of the queen rearing season. A decision was made to double resource hives by selecting the best of the colonies with bred queens to add to the Apiary's resource stock.

Using the metric for queen sales as success we didn’t out-perform last year’s numbers. We could have exceeded our previous year's queen sales significantly, but we decided to take the long term approach to accomplish the following goals - increasing our resource hives to continue both queen-rearing and education at the Apiary; sell a number of over-wintered "survivor" queens in established colonies to local beekeepers in Spring 2021, and distribute mating queens to participating member farmers at the end of the project, also Spring 2021.