Grafting Queens
Arbeiten am Bienenstand
In grafting, a youngest female larva is transferred with a grafting tool from a worker cell into a queen cup.
In grafting, a youngest female larva is transferred with a grafting tool from a worker cell into a queen cup. Age determines the quality of the later queen: larvae of at most about a day and a half old are used. This is ensured by confining the breeder queen for 24 hours in a comb cage on an empty brood comb.
The nurse colony must be hopelessly queenless: no queen, no emergency queen cells, and no brood younger than six days. It needs plenty of bees, plenty of capped brood, and a constant supply of feed, in small portions during dearth periods. Alternatively, the started cells are hung into the honey super of a queenright colony between two brood combs.
After five days as larvae, the cells are capped. On the eleventh day after grafting, they are transferred into individual cages, so that the first queen to emerge cannot sting the others to death. They hatch on the twelfth day. The figures vary by a day; what matters is transferring them before the first hatching. A larva survives at most about six hours without care, so work is done quickly.