Queen Rearing Workshop

Our Queen Rearing Project at the Apiary has gone from strength to strength in recent years.  Many new and indeed experienced bee keepers have benefited from being able to buy nucleus colonies with a known provenance from experienced bee keepers who have selected and deliberately bred Queens from gentle but industrious stocks.

"How do they do it?", we all wanted to know...
"We'll create a workshop to show you", they said....and promptly  joined forces with our wood working guru to not only tell us about the Morris board method of Queen rearing, but also show us how to make one for ourselves...

It was too good an opportunity to miss.....we even sold some tickets to other bee keepers from across Surrey and London...

The secret is all in the modified brood box and Morris board....

 

 The picture below shows the bees 'crowding' the two chambers after access to the queen below was 'shut off'.  Its all about convincing the bees the queen has gone and in their over crowded modified chamber they start to create a new queen...

Its not something you can see much of from a distance...

What a good job there was plenty of space for everyone to get in close and see the inner workings of the modified box...

And we can go in close for a frame by frame explanation....

 

Look ...Happy bees....

Everyone agreed it was an absolutely fascinating day and many bee keepers returned home determined to raise their own pedigree queens next year.

July: Open day

 The displays were made....

The exhibits laid out...

The beeswax and the wild flower meadow seeds were ready...

 

Some rather tetchy bees were persuaded into the observation hive...

The honey tasting table was loaded...

 

The bee friendly plant stall did brisk business...

 

We had all sorts of people come to see us...

 

Including the Mayor of Epsom...

And if we say so ourselves a rather good day (if sweltering hot!) was had by all.

Same time, same place next year?

June: Dodging downpours....

It all started off looking promising enough....

There was even a glimpse of sunshine between the clouds...

We got on with the tidying up ...ready for our open day on 12th July....

 

But then the down pour came...

So we retreated inside to the workshop and in that ever -optimistic manner of bee keepers the world over made up some more frames for supers.  Five men and four hammers...it was an object lesson in coordinated team work!!

We got there in the end....

Now we can relax in the doorway, dream of sunny days and nectar flows ahead an watch the raindrops splash!!

May: Peace before the practical

Summer has definitely arrived in the apiary....

There are a few moments of peace ....

...before a burst of activity...

We did teach our beginners to light smokers properly and not simply set fire to them!

 

Smokers lit!  Let the inspections commence....

This week seems to have been a week of interesting wax building...

This on the inside of a crown board ...

Isn't it gorgeous....

This on the brood chamber side of a dummy board...

A little bit of teamwork and our inspections were very nearly done....

 

and peace can return to the apiary...

April: Tidying up and breathing in the blossom....

What a lovely spring morning!

But there is no time for lollygagging around admiring the blossom....

That mound won't trim itself you know...

and the shed roof definitely needs a thorough inspection....

And look, when you set your mind to it you can clear a complete path!

..and dig out a tonne of weeds....

And you can hoover so fast that the photo blurs....

And if you've worked hard enough, you never know the sun might just pop out from behind a cloud and reward your efforts with a glorious view of blossom trees in the apiary...