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by Grant F. C. Gillard (Author)
For a beekeeper, raising your own queen honey bees is a game-changer. The queen honey bee is the heart and soul of the bee hive, and without a young, productive queen, everything, including a colony's future is at stake.Local queen rearing holds tremendous potential for the beekeeper, on any scale, to take control of their genetics and reshape the destiny of their apiaries.It's never been easier, even for the backyard beekeeper, to raise their own, locally-adapted queens from their best hives. The biggest obstacle has always been learning how to graft larvae. With the NICOT non-grafting queen-rearing unit, that excuse has been eliminated."NICOT Queen Rearing" details another aspect of pastor and beekeeper, Grant F. C. Gillard, and his successful beekeeping operation in West Central Missouri, outside of Kansas City. This book takes the reader, step-by-step, through the process of raising queens without learning the necessity of grafting larvae.Grant raises queens originating from feral swarms caught in pheromone-baited traps, choosing the best strains of bees that excel under his management (for better, and for worse) and thrive in the early-season nectar flows of Western Missouri.Preferring to avoid chemical treatments, Grant selects his potential queens from survivor stock and open-mated queens. Grant's management includes practicing sustainable beekeeping methods which, in his opinion, begins with raising locally-adapted queens.
