Queen rearing

This is not meant to be a treatise on Queen rearing, but a brief outline. We select from gentle, easy to handle and productive colonies, below is the one we used this year. It can be handled at any time in the season, in any weather, without gloves and never a sting. Living in London non aggressive bees are of prime importance to us. As is low swarming, we do our best to select for this in the Queens we produce. In case some wag asks "Why is the person handling the colony wearing gloves"? "Well it is to keep your hands free of propolis." When handling grafting tools or live Queens the last thing you need are sticky fingers. As a final note this colony after all the additional manipulation and interference needed for Queen rearing, still produced over 100 lbs of honey, not bad for a wet year like 2000.
This is just the type of colony we select to breed from very very gentle , productive at this point late may they have two full supers [honey boxes] and well on the way to fully drawing the combs in another two.
To make new Queens young larvae a day old or less are grafted into small removable plastic cell cups fixed to an empty frame. This frame is put into the brood nest of a well populated bee colony that has had its queen with all eggs and larvae removed. The worker bees desperate for a queen immediately start making new queen cells from the grafted larvae when they are given them. This is a very simplified explanation, but essentially true. The beekeeper by understanding his bees manipulates them to do what they would do naturally if the queen was lost or suddenly died.
A beautiful sealed Queen cell ready to emerge in 2/3 days

At this point the beekeeper can take the cells from the mother colony and give them to small queenless colonies as above, where the young queens can emerge and after a few days have the chance to fly and mate. If successful the queen can be taken and introduced to a colony needing one, or she can be left where she is and the colony becomes viable in its own right.

The Final Result A Fine Young Queen

She is newly mated, just in lay and as you can see the workers are very happy with her.

"Contented bees are productive bees"!