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Beehives
- Complete beehive
- Accessories
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Nuc hives
- Nucs by format
- With bees & mating
- Spare parts
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Bee equipment
- For the apiary
- For the beekeeper
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Clothing
- Clothing Accessories
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Beeswax
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Pure beeswax
- Beeswax and foundation
- Beeswax foundations
- Melting and rolling beewax
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Pure beeswax
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Bee feed
- Accessories and source materials
- Utensils
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Bee health
- Varroa Treatments
- Diseases control
- Nutraceuticals
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Extraction and bottling
- Before extraction
- Honey extraction
- After extraction
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Bee pollen
- Harvest
- Indicted
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Honey packaging
- Flasks per utility
- Flasks by size
- Other packaging
Apipasta with vitamins 15kg
Beecomplet® Spring 14Kg
Beekeeper suit with round veil
Oxalic acid 1kg
Beeswax Foundation 5kg
Fresh royal jelly 20g
Classic honey jar 1kg comb-lines TO77 - Pack of 16 units
Promotor L Apis 1 litre
Queen rearing
Ninety-two queen-rearing references: NICOT® and JZBZ® cups and bars, grafting tools, protection cages, Queenstart and incubators. From €0.05.
Queen rearing
Ninety-two references solving one single process, in order.
1. Getting the larva into the cup
The cup is the artificial cell in which the nurses will raise the queen — from €0.05 for the NICOT® and €0.15 for the wide-base JZBZ®. They mount on cup bars on a frame. The larva is transferred with a grafting tool, and it has to be under three days old: past that age the bees will not turn it into a queen.
If grafting proves impossible, the Queenstart system and directed-laying cages avoid handling the larva: the queen lays straight into the cups.
2. Protecting the cell
Protective tubes, natural cell holders and introduction cells, from €0.24. An unprotected queen cell is the first thing a rival queen destroys on emerging.
3. Emergence and mating
Incubators — including the portable Carricell® — hold the temperature if you do not want to depend on a nurse colony. Then come the mating nuclei, and the queen is marked according to the year colour code.
Producing queens changes the economics of an operation: you go from buying them to having them. If you prefer to buy them ready, they are in live material.
What is queen rearing?
Queen rearing is a planned process for producing new queens from very young larvae and selected colonies. It helps organise queen replacement, form nucs and maintain selection criteria, but the final quality depends on the donor colony, nurse bees, nutrition, health, weather and the availability of mature drones.
Equipment such as queen cups, cup holders, grafting tools, cell protectors, cages and incubators helps control the schedule and traceability. It does not guarantee acceptance, mating, docility or productivity. Before starting, learn queen biology and use a consistent method with accurate date records.
What equipment and conditions are required to rear queens?
In a grafting system, you need a selected donor colony, very young larvae, a starter colony to initiate the queen cells, a finisher with plenty of nurse bees, queen cups and holders, a grafting tool, and cell protectors or cages. Mating requires nucs, sufficient bees and mature drones.
The equipment only organises the process. Timing, temperature and humidity during grafting, an adequate supply of protein-rich feed, colony health and suitable mating-flight conditions are also critical. An incubator can control emergence, but it cannot correct larvae that are too old, a weak starter or a shortage of drones.
How is a queen mated and what happens afterwards?
A virgin queen undertakes mating flights when she reaches maturity and the weather is favourable. She mates in flight with several drones and stores sperm in her spermatheca for use throughout her reproductive life. Weather conditions, the presence of mature drones and the risks of flight all influence the outcome.
She then needs time before she begins laying eggs. Fertilised eggs produce females — workers or new queens, depending on the larval feed — whilst unfertilised eggs produce drones. An estimated date of mating or egg-laying is only a guide: it is advisable to record births, likely mating flights and initial brood patterns without promising an exact timeframe.