Your tour guide is German Perilla, our bee biologist, who is also our beekeeper (apiarist).  German is busy "making queens" both for new hive colonies and to replace old queens.  He'll show you some of the things that go into this activity.  This is the second round of queen rearing for this season.

First, put on your bee suit...just in case.  Then smoke the bees.  Smoke causes them to think the hive is going to burn and all the bees start gorging on honey in case they have to evacuate the hive. The smoke also makes it hard for bees to detect the defense pheromone they emit when a hive is threatened (opening a hive is very threatening).  So with smoking, the bees concentrate on salvaging their honey instead of defending the hive.  Okay, a little more smoke now. 

Then find a frame that has newly laid larvae.  Any larvae that are three days old or less can potentially develop into queens, if fed royal jelly.   If you don't have any royal jelly for the transfer, you can use coconut milk in a pinch.

Now you transfer the larvae into queen cell caps.  The caps provide a start for the bees to draw out a queen cell.  The caps have a dab of royal jelly in the bottom that will temporarily feed the larvae, stimulate the workers (hopefully) to construct a queen cell, as well as holding the larvae inside the cap, when it is inverted.  The cap is actually the top of the queen cell.

After filling several bars of queen cell caps, the bars are attached to a frame and put in the hive box.  After a week, the progress is checked.  For various reasons, not all the caps will have been made into queen cells. A quick shake to move the bees off of the frame and success!  The workers have made some queen cells!

Ouch!  A bothered bee stings German.  He eagerly shows you the pulsating venom sac at the end of the stinger still pumping in the venom.  You ask if it hurts.  German shrugs and scrapes the stinger out of his thumb.  Other insects hurt more. 

Another week and it's nearing time for the queens to hatch. German surrounds some cells with a little cage to trap the queen when she emerges.  The first queen that emerges will kill any other queens that emerge after her, so he will cage the cells to protect all the queens until they can be moved to their new hives.  He shows off the beauty of a queen cell. 

Other cells German removes and places in "nuc's" with a population of worker bees and drone cells (no queen), before the queen hatches.  She will then emerge into the nucleus of a hive waiting to tend to her.  Following her maiden flight where she will be bred multiple times, she will return to the hive to lay about 1200 eggs per day.  German has converted a hive super into a sort of bee condo containing four nucs. The sides are all painted different colors so the bees can easily identify their own entrance.  After the queen has been bred and started laying eggs, each nuc population will be moved into a regular hive setup.

German finishes up by inviting you to return later for a visit when you can help with beelining, a method of locating feral honeybee colonies.

Field Station Map

Explore the Woods

Explore The Meadows

Explore the Lakes

Visit the Apiary

Visit the Bird Banding Station

Also Visit the
Virtual Museum