I have started preparations for our first round of queen rearing, although I do not know who wants to be involved this year. For this round, I decided to try a different method, as it seemed that in the end, everyone last year was reluctant to sacrifice hives. This year, with the focus on honey, that will probably not be different, so the ‘Cloakboard’ method (http://www.virginiahoneybee.com/content/queen-rearing-cloake-board-method). Supposedly good to keep the hive going, get well fed queens if you need a modest number.

Today it was sunny (as opposed to the prediction for Thursday and Friday) so I started step 1: find the queen and confine her in the lower box. The queen in the hive is Cleopathra, from Mel’s lineage. She wintered fine, with fall feeding, has not been treated and has a 2 deep hive going strongly with brood. There are drones present and queen cups. No queen cells. Last year, she had a yellow mark. When I found her today, that mark was barely visible, so I gave her a bright green dot over top. She is now in the lower of the two deeps, with the queen excluder/cloakboard above her. She has a mix of open brood, capped brood and 2 completely empty combs in her box. This hive is being fed syrup and megabee patty, already for 2 weeks. The Cloakboard slider is out at this point, the hive is still one unit. In the upper box are young open brood, capped brood, 2 frames almost full of pollen, some capped honey from last year and an empty comb.
On top of that, the patty, and the feeder. The young brood in this box will be more than 3 days old by the time I will add grafted cells, this Sunday.
This is the plan (and I will need some helpers with this if you are interested):
Today is day -4: set up
Saturday: -1: insert the cloak slider and rotate the hive, open the cloak board entrance and close the original entrance (bring entrance reducer)
(AM)
Sunday (midday) Day 0: graft cell and bring to the hive. Insert bar with cells
Tuesday or Wednes day: Day 2 or 3: pull out cloak board slider to reunite the boxes
Add extra syrup and protein patty.
Monday (day 8): harvest cells into nucs?

What I have not decided is where to get the young larva from for grafting. What you you think. We do not have a lot of lineages left at this point. Mel’s line is very good I think, so we could graft from the lower box, from Cleopatra. Or the hive in my yard, also originally from Mel, but much bigger.

And I did not mention yet: the Q4 hive is at the Garst Farm, on Staufer road.