Queen Rearing as a Business

Queen rearing as a specialism means producing queens from selected breeders in a planned, continuous way to meet the needs of your own apiary or of other beekeepers. It ranges from producing a few queens a year for your own use to commercial production of hundreds of queens. As the scale grows, success depends less on technique than on planning, quality control, health and record keeping.

At what scales is queen rearing carried out?

Grafting larvae, queen cell care, starter and finisher colonies and a day-by-day production calendar are described in detail on the "Queen Rearing" pages. This page looks at ways to plan production like a business and to maintain quality.

How is production capacity planned?

There are losses at every stage: some grafted larvae are not accepted, some cells do not develop, some young queens are lost on mating flights. To reach your target number, work backwards.

Example calculation: If you want 50 laying queens and your own records show an acceptance rate of 80% and a mating success of 70%, you need to graft 50 ÷ (0.80 × 0.70) ≈ 90 larvae. These rates vary from apiary to apiary and from season to season; derive your own rates from your records.

• Breeder colonies: Selected, tested and ready to supply larvae; at least one spare breeder.
• Drone colonies: Half of mating quality comes from here; they are prepared weeks before production.
• Starter and finisher colonies: Strong and rich in young bees for every batch; used in rotation and rested.
• Mating nucs: The number is calculated from the interval between batches; once a queen has been taken out, a nuc is prepared for a new cell.
• Calendar: The days of each batch, from grafting to delivery, are written down in advance.

What products are sold?

How is queen quality maintained?

As the scale grows, maintaining quality becomes harder. The most common causes of loss of quality are:

• Grafting larvae that are too old: Small queens with fewer ovarioles result.
• An inadequate starter: If young bees and pollen are short, the cells are poorly fed.
• Not feeding during a dearth: Both cell and drone quality fall.
• Too few drones: Queens are poorly mated and superseded early.
• Forcing mating in bad weather: Losses and incomplete mating increase.
• Selling too early: The quality of a queen sent out before her brood pattern has been seen is unknown.

A good rule: do not sell a queen until you have seen the area she laid turn into capped brood. Compact, regular capped brood is the most reliable field indicator of good mating. For suspect batches, a few queens can be examined in a laboratory to measure the amount of sperm in the spermatheca.

Health and hygiene in queen production

Queens and attendant bees can carry disease from one apiary to another. All the colonies you produce from should be checked regularly for brood diseases, and varroa levels kept low.

• Candy: The candy in the shipping cage should be made with icing sugar; do not use honey of unknown origin, as it may carry foulbrood spores.
• Attendant bees: They are chosen from healthy, young bees; they are not taken from colonies showing signs of disease.
• Notifiable disease: If American or European foulbrood is suspected, production and sales are stopped and the official veterinary service / local agriculture authority is notified.

How are queens shipped and delivered?

1. Cage: Put the queen in a shipping cage with a few young attendant bees and candy.
2. Label: Write the queen's number, batch and date on the cage.
3. Protect: Transport it in a ventilated box, away from direct sun, excessive heat and cold.
4. Keep it short: The shorter the delivery time, the higher the acceptance rate.
5. Give introduction instructions: Give the buyer written information on how long the colony should be queenless, introduction with the cage, and when to check.

A large share of queens that are not accepted fail not because of a production fault but because of incorrect introduction; good instructions reduce complaints.

Why are records and traceability essential?

For every queen, the breeder line, grafting date, mating place and type, sale date and buyer should be recorded. These records show the source when a problem arises, and when combined with feedback from buyers they become the most valuable breeding data: it becomes clear which breeder's daughters also do well in different apiaries.

Legal requirements for producing and selling queens

In many countries the production, sale and movement of queens are subject to official registration and health inspection. In Türkiye, queen and package bee production is regulated by the legislation of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry; registration and a permit are required for commercial production and sales. Find out the current requirements from your local agriculture authority. An official health certificate is required for sending queens between countries.