We essentially produce our mated queens in Kielers.

Starting up of the Kielers:

The Kielers are put into service from mid-April (blossoms of the colzas) to mid-May (blossoms of the acacias). We remove the package bees from our 10-frame hives. With one hive, we fill up around 10 nuc, approximately the size of a 500g honey jar full of bees.

Once it has been filled, we introduce a virgin queen directly in the nucleus. Afterwards, The Kielers are transferred in a dark and cool room. They remain closed for 3 days and 3 nights in order to reduce the desertion risk.

The collection of the queens:

In general, the queens are collected 3 weeks after the virgin queen is introduced (at the start of the season) or the royal cell is inserted (for the next rotations).
The day following the crop, a new royal cell of 11 day old is introduced.

The overwintering of the Kielers:

At the end of the season, we are always left with fertilised queens bee. The loss ratio is generally very important: > 50%. Nevertheless, in only 2 seasons, we have improved our success ratio (up to 25%) by feeding abundantly our colonies during winter. The feeders are filled every 4 weeks.

Queens’ breeding in nuclei Kieler Begattungskasten: