Grafting Queens
photos by Jennifer Magli
A frame of brood with day old larvae is selected from a breeder queen. Plastic cell cups are primed with royal jelly. Recently hatched larvae are carefully scooped up with a grafting tool and placed on the jelly in the cell cups. A frame holding three rows of cell cups is then placed into a “starter” hive (queenless). The same frame may be moved to a “cell builder” hive (queen-right) in a day or two. The fully drawn and capped queen cells will be placed into a mating nuc in ten days where the bee will hatch. In a few days the virgin queen will depart to mate with 10-30 drones and return to start her life as queen.