Creating the Queens

WInter Park Honey Apprentice Selma Amaral is learning the method of raising Queen Bees.
Sometimes, beekeepers will need to replace old queens or provide a queen to a hive that has, for one reason or another, lost their queen. A that a hive dies quickly without a queen.  Since Amaral will not be able to import bees to Haiti he will need to know how to create queens bees if and when he needs them for his hive. 

When conditions are favorable for swarming, the queen will start laying eggs in queen cups. A virgin queen will develop from a fertilized egg. The young queen larva develops differently because it is more heavily fed royal jelly, a protein-rich secretion from glands on the heads of young workers. If not fed royal jelly, the queen larva would have developed into a regular worker bee.  Honey bee larvae are fed some royal jelly for the first few days after hatching but only queen larvae are fed on it exclusively. As a result of the difference in diet, the queen will develop into a sexually mature female, unlike the worker bees.
Queens are raised in specially constructed queen cells. The fully constructed queen cells have a peanut-like shape. Queen cells start out as queen cups which are larger than the cells of normal brood comb. Worker bees will only further build up the queen cup once the queen has laid an egg in a queen cup. In general, the old queen starts laying eggs into queen cups when conditions are right. The workers eventually cap the queen cell with beeswax. When ready to emerge, the virgin queen will chew a circular cut around the cap of her cell. During swarming season, the old queen will likely leave with the prime swarm before the first virgin queen emerges from a queen cell.
A virgin queen is a queen bee that has not mated with a drone or male bee. Virgin Queens are intermediate in size between workers and laying queens. Virgin queens appear to have little queen pheromone and often do not appear to be recognized as queens by the workers.
When a young virgin queen emerges from a queen cell, she will generally seek out virgin queen rivals and attempt to kill them. Virgin queens will quickly find and kill (by stinging) any other emerged virgin queen, as well as any unemerged queens. Unlike the worker bees, the queen's stinger is not barbed and she is able to sting repeatedly without dying.
The surviving virgin queen will fly out of the hive for her nuptial flight to a "drone congregation area" where she will mate with 12-15 drones . She may return to the drone congregation area for several days until she is fully mated. Mating occurs in flight. The young queen stores up to 6 million sperm from multiple drones .  She will selectively release sperm for the remaining 2–7 years of her life.Though timing can vary, matings usually take place between the sixth and tenth day after the queen emerges. Egg laying usually begins 2 to 3 days after the queen returns to the hive.
The queen's sole function is to serve as the reproducer and she can lay about 2,000 eggs per day—more than her own bodyweight in eggs every day. She is continuously surrounded by worker bees who meet her every need, giving her food and disposing of her waste The queen bee is able to control the sex of the eggs she lays. The queen lays a fertilized (female) or unfertilized (male) egg according to the width of the cell. Drones are raised in cells that are significantly larger than the cells used for workers. The queen fertilizes the egg by selectively releasing sperm  as the egg passes through her oviduct.
A queen is made from a fertilized egg, exactly the same as a worker. It's the feeding that is different and that is only different from the fourth day on. So if you take a newly hatched worker egg, and put it in a queen cell (or in something that fools the bees into thinking it's a queen cell) in a hive that needs a queen (swarming or queenless), the worker eggs will be reared into queens.
One method of making new queens is by the Doolittle Method (named for G.M. Doolittle). It is to graft the appropriate aged larvae into some homemade wax cups. This requires a bit of dexterity and good eyesight, but is the most popular method used. Today plastic cups are often used in place of wax.  



Yes, Math is used in beekeeping, nothing fancy but it is very critical.It is called Beekeeping Math.

 Honey Chicken Stir Fry