June 2005 503 Apicultural Research by TIAGO MAURÍCIO FRANCOY 1 , LIONEL SEGUI GONÇALVES 2 , JOÃO JOSÉ DOS SANTOS 1 and DAVID DE JONG 1 Manuscript received for publication April 27, 2005 Abstract Queen rearing is an important activity that is accessible to all beekeepers. In Brazil it is very common to use queenright queen- rearing colonies, as they do not require special management. However, these starter-finisher hives are heavy, can be strong and defensive, and they need a large bee population to attain good results. We developed a new model of queen-rearing colony that was baptized “Ribeirão Preto mini queen-rearing colony”. This new model consists of a Langstroth mating nucleus hive (holds four or five standard Langstroth frames), placed over a normal 10- frame Langstroth brood chamber. The bottom of the nucleus is adapted with a piece of zinc-sheet queen excluder material and the nucleus is placed over a queen- right standard Langstroth hive. The sides of the nucleus have hinged boards that cover the side frames in the lower brood cham- ber. Tests were made comparing grafted larva acceptance and by weighing newly-emerged queens in six trials made with three types of hives: (1) a four frame or a (2) five-frame upper queen rearing nucleus and a normal (3) two-hive- body queen-rearing colony. The five-frame mini queen-rearing colony gave as good results (in terms of percentage grafted cells that reached the adult stage) as the traditional model, even though it houses a smaller bee population and is easier to manage. The mean weight of the virgin queens reared in the five-frame queen rearing devices was significantly greater (208 mg, n = 120) than those reared in the larger, two-hive- body colonies (193 mg, n = 115) or in the four-frame queen rearing box (182 mg, n = 104). Introduction I nduced queen rearing of Apis mellifera is a very common tech- nique in beekeeping. It has been known since ancient times that a queenless colony produces new queens. Based on this knowledge, the ancient Greeks reared queens by isolating combs containing young larvae and eggs, and covered with adult work- ers, which reared new queens from the larvae (Laidlaw Jr & Eckert, 1962). Based on this knowledge, Doolittle (1881) devel- oped the basic technique that is still used today, with only small modifications (Morse, 1979). Since the 19 th century, queen- rearing techniques have been nearly universally based on the manual grafting of young worker larvae into cell cups made of wax or plastic and transferring these cups to colonies previously pre- pared so that the bees sense that they do not have a queen and are induced to rear new queens. The workers feed the larvae with royal jelly and rear new queens (Laidlaw Jr & Eckert, 1962). The original methodology has several variations, but the princi- ples remain the same. These vari- ations generally involve grafting techniques, which consist of sim- ple or double grafting of larvae, eggs, and even cells with larvae (Laidlaw Jr & Eckert, 1962). There are also variations in the types of hives used to rear queens, including starter and finishing colonies (Vuillaume, 1957), queen rearing colonies (Johanson & Johanson, 1973), and mini queen-rearing colonies (Santos et. al, 1979). In Brazil, the most common way to rear queens is in queenright queen-rearing colonies, usually constituted of two standard 10- frame Langstroth hive boxes, separated by a queen excluder. The queen is placed in the lower hive chamber, and young larvae are grafted into cell cups and then placed in the upper part of the queen rearing colony, where the workers feed the larvae with royal jelly and rear new queens. The main advantage of a starter-finish- er colony is that it does not require extensive manipulations and can be maintained in the apiary as a normal colony. Brood frames with unsealed brood are periodically moved up from the bottom 1 Genetics Department, Faculty of Medicine of Ribeirão Preto, University of São Paulo, 14.049-900 Ribeirão Preto, SP, BRAZIL 2 Biology Department, Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters, University of São Paulo, 14.040-901 Ribeirão Preto, SP, BRAZIL Telephone number: +55 (16) 602 3806 Fax number: +55 (16) 633 6482 Corresponding author e-mail: lsgoncal@usp.br Fig. 1: Five-frame mini queen rearing colony in the campus apiary. Old-fashioned clay drain pipes are used as hive stands.