Grafting for Queens

In a nutshell, requeening goes a little like this: We take a frame of freshly hatched larvae. Using a dental implement looking tool or quill of a goose feather, we gently scoop the larvae out of the cell and transplants it into a queen cup. This is called grafting.

This new cell is placed on a row with 20 other grafted queen cups and given to a hive of bees to tend. These bees feed the larvae the royal jelly that will turn a regular ole bee into The Queen. All of this process is very regimented and on a specific day, at a specific time, We will take remove the queen cups from the hive and place them into a incubator.