Mating Nucs on a recent summer afternoon. These newly emerged queens will replace last year’s queens, then produce next year’s Spring Nucs and a round of daughter queens next July.
My 2025 Queens will be available in early August. This is a good time for requeening your hives to improve stock or to reinvigorate spring nucs and packages that didn’t work out as hoped for. I time “mating week” when odds for balmy weather are best and there are plenty of drones flying. This produces well mated, long-lived queens.
My queens originate from good local stock and I’ve been improving their performance continuously for 15 years. Each year, breeder queens are selected from colonies that produced lots of honey last year, survived the winter handily, then produced a strong 10-frame nuc in the spring and rapidly built up a powerful foraging force for the summer flows. All my hives are requeened annually and usually none need combining in the fall as they are all strong enough to over-winter. I’m pretty satisfied with these queens.
These are Carniolan-style bees, so slightly more “swarmy” than other mellifera subspecies. I don’t select against swarming as I’m able to prevent all swarms most years. Every beekeeper should strive to do this. Swarms generally go uncaptured and without Varroa control they become “mite-bombs,” jeopardizing the health of all colonies within flying range.
Queens are supplied in a JZBZ cage that’s secured in a doubled brown paper bag. I include a small strip of absorbent fabric soaked with syrup to keep the bees and queen nourished in transit. Queens are marked bright orange for high visibility on the frame. There will be a few dozen attendant bees in the bag, not in the cage. When you’re ready to install the queen, remove the queen cage and shake the attendant bees out of the bag a good distance from your hives. Install the queen cage using your preferred method, or use the cross-frame cage hanger I provide.
Queens: $70 each
Two or more: $60 each
Contact me or text (360) 483-9754.
