The breeders colonies
We rarely use the starter (maybe we are wrong?) .Until 2010, we were using orphan colonies. While today, we changed for a double system which is composed of:
- orphan breeders on super-frames,
- breeders on Dadant frames in Cloake Board system. This system allows us to detect the lineages with the best maternal instinct and to select this temper.
Our work with the breeders:
There is 1 or 2 grafting in each breeder:
- 3 times a week (Tuesday, Thursday & Saturday morning), we introduce 2 clips of 14 queens-cell cups containing very young larva grafted 1 hours earlier,
- meanwhile, we remove the cells’ batch introduced the past week and we place it in the incubator.
Each 8 days, between 2 grafts, we lift up the broods:
- we take 2 opened frames with their nurse bee (queen side) that we move into the breeding compartment,
- we move down the 2 frames, now with a capping, lifted up the previous week.
The feeding:
- At each graft, we put protein dough into the breeders,
- Depending of the nectar flow conditions, we also distribute ½ to 1 L of diluted syrup or water mixed with honey. Each month, every breeder (orphan or Cloake Board) is treated with oxalic acid to reduce the Varroa pressure.
The behaviour of the breeders:
The royal cells’ production in a Cloake system:
Closed starter:
Multilingual apiarian lexicon
The behaviour of our strain colonies 
The lineage “strains” are inseminated queens that are used in the testing plan and/or in the grafting pool for the commercialized queens’ (...)
Le greffage
We graft 3 times/week from the end of March until mid-September, which represents approximately 60 mornings/year.
Each season, we produce more (...)
The breeders colonies
We rarely use the starter (maybe we are wrong?) .Until 2010, we were using orphan colonies. While today, we changed for a double system which is (...)
The incubator
We use the incubator from the 8th day to the 11th (sometimes until the 12th).
Inspired by the advices of many people, I created a heating system (...)
Swarms’ production
Each year, we produce 1000 overwintered swarms.
Those swarms are almost all produced on 6 frame hives. The hives provide us the necessary of bees (...)
The virgin queens’ production
We commercialize annually between 500 to 1000 virgin queens.
We let some queens be born outside of brooders, because: the apiculturists’ demand, (...)
Mated queens’ production
We produce yearly 4000 mated queens, exclusively in Kieler nuclei.
The Kielers are filled with package bees collected in our 10 frame hives. We (...)
The queens’ dispatch
Each year, we post more than 5000 queens. The fertilized queen bees are amassed on Wednesday, Friday and Monday morning. They are posted on (...)
Inseminated queens’ production
Each year, we inseminate more and more queen bees: 150 queens until 2011, over 300 queens in 2013, … and our objective is to increase even more (...)
Testing of our strain queens
We accord a lot of importance to the breeding of males. We own 200 hives provided with males frames, all located on a circle of 5 km of diameter. (...)
