Queen rearing and its impact in our modern beekeeping in Kenya.

Raising your own gives you more control of your beekeeping venture by ensuring that you always maintain healthy and productive colonies.
Colonising hives is one of the biggest challenge that face Kenyan beekeepers.
Lack of colonised hives means that you as the beekeeper you are not maximising the use of the capital that you have put into beekeeping.

HOW TO USE BEE BEHAVIOR TO HELP YOU RAISE YOUR OWN QUEEN.
What can you as the beekeeper do to get bees making you queens? You can use the natural instincts and habits
of the bees. Although you cannot change their instincts you can to a great extent
control those conditions which bring their instincts to functioning in certain behaviour.

Queen Biology
Regardless of the method used to raise queens, the process is controlled by facts and principals of honey bee biological development.
A queen or worker bee’s development depends upon the kind of food fed to the larvae by the worker nurse bees.
This food is called royal jelly which is secreted by the glands in the head of the worker
bees and royal jelly is continuously fed to larvae destined to be queens.

 Virgin queens will mate with up to 20 drones – usually 12 to 18.

 Mated queens begin egg laying two or three days after the last mating flight.
 The queen retains the navigational ability of worker bees and she mates with drones while
flying in the open and never in the hive as many people are made to believe.
 Nature has ensured the survival of the fittest in the honey bee. A virgin queen will
leave her hive and mate with a number of drones in the open air and may fly a considerable distance from her hive to avoid inbreeding.

Raising Queens in Nature.

Bees will naturally raise their own queens as method of reproduction and ensures the survival of their species.
There are three scenarios that bees raise the queens and you as the beekeeper willing to raise more queens from your bees should understand them well for you to be successful.

Queens are raised by the bees under one of the following conditions….
1) Swarming impulse (Crowded conditions )
Swarming is a natural phenomenon and is the bee colony’s method of reproduction and ensures the survival of their species.
When a colony preparing to swarm, bees build large number of queen cells about 6 to12, but some strains build 20 or more.
 They are built on the sides or along the bottom of the comb in successive batches and are found in various stages of development.
As a beekeepers you can use swarm cells to re-queen colonies or introduce to new colonies when making splits.

2) Emergency (Replacement of the queen).

When a queen dies suddenly or killed accidentally through colony inspection, the bees discover her absence and
begin quickly to raise a new queen from a few worker cells contain eggs or larvae by enlarging and
extending the worker cells and feeding royal jelly to the selected larvae.
Sometimes emergency queen cells are mistaken for swarming cells and
if destroyed by the beekeeper, the bees will be queenless and laying workers will develop in the hive.
Caution need to be taken when you get emergency cells. Make sure you see a queen or leave at least two ripe cells as you make your splits.

3) Supersedure replacement of a failing queen.

When the queen becomes too old or infertile or has a physical mishap or diseased the bees decide to raise a
new queen to replace her with a young one more efficient. They build only one to three queen cells in
the centre of the comb in which the original queen lays eggs; these are usually raised on the face of the
comb and built as one hatch, all in a period of a few days. If a few cells are found on the face of a comb, and
there are eggs present, these are supersedure cells and indicate a failing queen.
When the new queen emerges, the two queens exist together and do not fight with each other.
The old queen will disappear from the hive within a few weeks.

Queen rearing objectives.

 Queen rearing to increase colonies.

 Raise a calm breed of bees that are easy to work with.
 Help decrease the high rate of un-colonised beehives.
 Have a genetics of bees that are less prone to swarming and absconding.

How to Evaluate Donor Hives

What are Some of the “Traits”We Want to Take Into Account When Selecting a “Donor Hive”? Which traits of colonies
do we want ? This is the guide that will help you select colonies to raise more queens from. Just like any livestock farming queen selection should be
based on;-

Production. Colonies that are best in honey production are good to choose from.
Temperament
The reaction of a colony when it is approached, opened or otherwise disturbed can be a genetic trait.
Our Africanized bees are particularly known for their extremely defensive behaviour. Gentle strains are
especially important when keeping bees.
Other traits that you may consider when raising your queen:-

Hygienic Characteristics
Propolizing Characteristics
Ability to Forage in Varying Climatic Conditions
Swarming Traits
Queen’s Egg Laying Ability

Next we will look at methods used to raise queens, equipments used, caring for the queens, mating and maturity of the queen, what to do with extra queens.
All the above should are important aspects that follow strict time tables for the process to be effective.