Mid Size Queen Production: This is HOW to raise queens, NOT an article on breeding queens

摘要

With the price of queens going up, the quality of most queens going down, and the economy getting worse for all of us, one can see the wisdom in learning how to produce your own queens for sales and personal use. Most beekeepers are finding it harderand harder to stay in business because the weakest link in their operation is the queen. Excluding genetic traits, what is a quality queen? I have found that a superior queen is one that is well mated, disease free, and was reared, conditioned, and handled properly from grafting larva to beehive. Keep in mind that you can have the most desirable genetic specimen but if it was reared and handled poorly, it is basically worthless. For this reason, a potential queen producer can make major improvements over what is currently offered by "how" it's produced, instead of "what" is produced.