Queen grafting question for my curiosity

[LoriMNnice]

Just for fun I have been reading about queen rearing and grafting, here are the questions I have

1. When the larvae is placed in the cup and the cup is suspended upside down how come the larvae does not slide out?

2. When a person raises a lot of queens at once where do they put them? Because they all can't live together in a nuc right?

[hankdog1]

1.  You scoop up the royal jelly with the larve.  There is your grafting glue of sorts.

2.  Most will place them in 2 frame mating nucs or directly into splits.

[Michael Bush]

>When the larvae is placed in the cup and the cup is suspended upside down how come the larvae does not slide out?

Surface tension.

> When a person raises a lot of queens at once where do they put them? Because they all can't live together in a nuc right?

Each has it's own mating nuc and is put in it two days before it emerges.

[BjornBee]

And since it takes at least a nuc (mini or otherwise) to raise a queen, most breeders in the north are "micro-breeders". They perhaps raise 25-100 queens at a time. Mainly because it takes some real effort and resources to set up and get going large amounts of nucs every spring.

Down south, mini or what they call "baby" nucs are sometimes used, especially by the bigger operations. Some baby nucs use as little as three combs of about an area of 5x5 inches each. Not really conducive to allowing the breeder to evaluate the performance of a queen. But it takes little resources to keep them going all season.

For those beekeepers reading this, especially from the northern areas, some good information can be found here: http://www.nsqba.org/

We need more local queen producers all across this country.

[LoriMNnice]

Thanks everyone :)

[gregted]

Thinking of having a go at queen rearing myself for the curiosity factor and to save money next year. :-D

This would also be handy if you got a swarm or cleared out an infestation from a house etc and didn't get the queen. :'(

This might give some ideas. http://www.countryrubes.com/images/How_to_raise_a_queen_bee_by_the_Hopkins_method_8_17_10.pdf

Seems to destroy a lot of cells in the frame though just to get 20 to 30 queens but very little work or skill involved. Perfect for me... :?

So many things we can do with this hobby/business. Just gets more interesting all the time.

[Michael Bush]

http://www.bushfarms.com/beeshopkinsmethod.htm
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesafewgoodqueens.htm
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesqueenrearing.htm
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesmillermethod.htm
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesbetterqueens.htm
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesqueenrearingsimplified.htm
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesdoolittle.htm
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesalleymethod.htm