Cycle 2:  From June 22 to July 14

Each cycle will include the following:

• Recommendations on solid queenrearing literature
• Learn the Miller method: small-scale queen-rearing for the backyard beekeeper
• Grafting tool to take home for practice for the Doolittle method of rearing queens
• Practice grafting larvae (Doolittle method), to anchoring this skill in your toolkit.
• How to set up a colony to accept your cells for starting/finishing
• Weekly visits to the queenyard: 
• • Day 1: on grafting day, to re-organize the colony to accept the grafted larvae, and graft the larvae into cells on cell bars
  • Day 8: 1 week later to review the take rate of grafted larvae, and to put cell protectors on for queen cells; review mating nucleus colonies for indications of being queenright         
  • Day 12:  pull mated queens from the mating nucleus colonies and to place the queen cells you grafted