Queen Rearing & Genetics

The queen is the genetic foundation of every colony, and the decision about which queens to breed from is the single most powerful lever a beekeeper has for improving their bees over time. This category covers queen rearing in practical terms — cell builders, grafting, mating nucs, introduction methods — alongside the broader questions of bee genetics, selection, and what “improvement” actually means in the context of UK beekeeping conditions.
Posts here range from step-by-step accounts of what works at apiary scale to more analytical pieces on the genetics of traits like swarming tendency, temperament, and varroa resistance. The debate about local versus imported queens also features here — examined properly, with reference to what the science actually shows about local adaptation, rather than the version that circulates on forums. If you want to take control of your queen supply and understand the biology behind it, this is where to start.

The Bees Already Know How: Simple Queen Rearing

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Alex_Donohoe_with_queen_cells

Spring is the perfect time to make queens — the bees are already primed to do it. From simple queenless splits to a double-nuc cell builder that produces 20 quality cells per batch, here’s how to work with the bees rather than against them.
Whether you want to raise a handful of queens without grafting, turn a swarm-prone double-brood colony into two thriving units, or run a continuous cell-building system through the summer, there’s an approach here that suits your scale and ambition. The bees already know how to do this; your job is simply to set up the right conditions.
No specialist equipment required — just a nucleus box, good timing, and a willingness to let the bees do what they do best. Queen rearing is one of the most rewarding skills in beekeeping, and it is far more accessible than most beekeepers realise.

The Cult Of Local Bees

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Map showing red line between UK and France

“Keep local bees.” Or, increasingly, “Keep locally adapted bees.” It’s among the most repeated lines in UK beekeeping, usually delivered with the confidence of a law of physics. And to be fair, it often works as advice. Local queens can perform well, and local colonies can overwinter reliably. But the phrase “local bees” is doing … Read more

Open Mating Queens

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A dark Carniolan queen on comb

It should be fairly straightforward, shouldn’t it? A colony makes several virgin queens, eventually whittles them down to one, and she flies off on several mating flights. She returns to the welcoming embrace of her workers, and begins the long process of laying hundreds or thousands of eggs every day during the summer, autumn, and … Read more

The Best Queen Cells

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Queen cells

A year ago, the very idea of starting to raise queens at this time was madness, such was the hideous weather. This year, spring has been kinder, and I have already done my first batch of grafts. Now, I know that the easiest part of raising queens is making cells, and getting virgins well-mated is … Read more

Beekeeping Essentials: Introducing Queens

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Manley style queen introduction cages

If ‘bee improvement’ is something that you are striving for, and I hope it is, then the thorny issue of introducing queens will inevitably arise. By this, I mean the situation where I have removed a colony’s queen, and have replaced it with a cell, virgin, or mated queen of my choosing. This goes against … Read more