Research in Action

We didn’t need to move any cells out of the cell raiser because at this point we’re done grafting! The developed cells from graft nine yielded 25 mated queens. Of the 26 cells we put in, only ONE didn’t make it! We left those queens in their mating nucs so they will make more brood that we can use to help out troubled hives in the Boston region. And that was our queen rearing season!

In total, we reared 95 healthy queens who successfully mated, and we moved 35 of those locally reared queens to other regions. We are so excited to continue on this journey; the growth potential of this program is exponential. Hopefully soon, we won’t have to source any queens that we didn’t rear ourselves and be more sustainable and have healthier colonies overall! 

Caitlin went and moved the developed cells from graft nine to the apiary – she had 26 fully developed cells to put into the mating nucs, and caught 12 mated queens. 

 I conduct graft nine, which is our last graft for the year, and again only did 30 cups in the cell raisers. From the eighth graft, there were 42 developed cells, so we had to split our mating nucs to make more room! They were super packed! I caught 13 mated queens from graft seven when putting all those 42 developed cells into the mating nucs. 

I’m back in Boston! I conduct our eighth graft on my own. This graft we decided to go back down to only doing 30 cups, because we were having those issues earlier with other, non-Best Bees queens infiltrating our cell raisers.  In the cell raisers from the seventh graft, there were 17 developed cells. When we went to the apiary to visit the mating nucs and put those developed queen cells in, we caught 15 mated queens from graft six.  

Emily and I make a map of all hives within a 5 mile radius to get an idea of the drones the queens would be mating with. 

Caitlin and Maggie conducted our seventh graft while I was in Denver. From our sixth graft that I did with Libby, Caitlin and Maggie caught five mated queens when they checked in on the mating nucs. 

We shipped out more queens to our other regions; to Philadelphia, DC, Portland, Chicago, and Seattle. We shipped 20 queens total, and only lost two in transit. It’s very exciting to see the potential of our queen rearing program! A month later we heard back from our Seattle team, and they said their Boston reared queens were doing fantastically. 

Libby and I conducted the sixth graft before I left to visit our Denver facility. We had  12 fully developed cells that we then dropped into our mating nucs. It was POURING rain that day, but queen rearing is like the mailman – rain, snow, or shine, we keep on going. 

I checked the cell raisers → the original cell raiser had 27/30 takes, and the new cell raiser had 18/30 takes. I reached out to our NYC facility to see if they wanted locally reared queens, and they said yes. We will be shipping out five Best Bees reared queens to our NYC facility tomorrow, June 13! We are very excited! 

I checked the cell raisers; there are no takes in either of them. A mating queen got into one, and in the other a virgin queen was there and had destroyed the other developing cups. After finishing up with the cell raisers, I did another double graft – 60 cups. I put those in the cell raisers and said a quick little prayer to the gods of queen rearing to bless our operation this time. 

After getting home from the apiary, we did our fifth graft. We made another cell raiser to try to combat the problem of mated queens getting in and destroying our developing queen cells; so we doubled the amount of cups we were filling with larva – 60 cups.

We check in on the fourth graft; another mated queen got into our cell raiser! Outside forces were messing with the space the cell raiser was in and a mated queen got in. We went to visit the apiary; we checked in on all our mating nucs and caught 20 mated queens out of the 25 mating nucs! We take those mated queens back to Best Bees headquarters and put numbers on each of the queens to track them. We are using them as breeding queens; when they get installed into hives, we will note which hives they are going into and pull data on those queens’ performances.

Our May 28th (third) graft failed. There was a mated queen inside the cell raiser and she destroyed the developing queen cells. There was only one cell that survived, so we put that one into a mating nuc. At this point, all of the mating nucs have virgin queens from the first and second grafts, and one nuc has the surviving capped cell from the third graft. When we get home from the apiary, we conducted our fourth graft. 

We went and checked on the queens and added 12 more cells from the second graft to the cell raiser. The queens from the first graft weren’t mated yet due to bad weather, so we left them there to check in on them later. We also made more mating nucs; we went from having 21 mating nucs to 25 mating nucs.

Emily and I also both conducted another graft today, and we each had 80% take!

Today, we took the cups that are developing and put them into the incubator. Then we drove to our research apiary and checked on our mating nucs, to make sure they are queenless and can support the developing queen cells. We then put each cell into its own mating nuc; we had 12 cells so 12 nucs. 

After 48 hours, we had 28 takes → 73%, great outcome for our first real graft. We left them in the cell raiser until 8 days later.  

Since our first practice graft on April 3rd, we’ve been conducting practice grafts every Monday and Friday. Today was our first real grafting with putting the queens that developed into queenless nucs in our research apiary so they can go and conduct a mating flights! 

We do their first practice graft! Practice grafts don’t go to mate – actually, here let’s take a second and explain the process of grafting. First, I go to a hive, take out a frame, and scoop out three-day old larvae. Then, I put them into special cups (30 cups, each with one larva), which then go into a cell raiser (a queenless colony). 48 hours later, I go back in to check on the cups and see if they are developing into queen cells!

Emily and I sit down with Nate Reid, our Head Beekeeper at the time, and Caitlin Duennebiar, our Boston Regional Operations Manager, and officially propose the schedule and formalize the plan. The schedule is edited and we end up deciding to start practicing in April, getting started for real at the end of April, and then conduct our last graft July 27, with the last queens to be caught on August 26th. 

Emily and I come up with a queen rearing plan for Boston; I proposed a queen rearing schedule that started in April and ended in August. 

Emily and I start talking about queen rearing in Boston because I took the They Keep Bees queen rearing course over the summer.

We are continuing to locally source our queen bees until we can rear queens at scale. We plan to start queen rearing in our extended season regions, like San Francisco, in January/February of 2023. We want to flip the supply chain and be able to supply Best Bees regions across the country with our own queen bees, in addition to continuing to educate our beekeepers on queen rearing and expand the initiative so that we may help others to contribute to rearing queens.

Today, we launched Bzzz Mobile 1-3, wherein we modified our form required fields to streamline the beekeeper data recording experience.

We implemented Bzzz Mobile 1-2 today; we added new data fields to provide our company operations team information to learn from to better improve our beekeeping practices.

Today, we implemented Bzzz Mobile 1-1: the engineering team updated the Bzzz software to include more informative follow-up note inputs for beekeepers.

Reflecting on new ways to help native bees. One idea is through pollinator habitat and forage! Looking for ways for us to implement this into our practices.

Loved attending TEDxProvincetown today as a grateful guest. It was my first time simply being in the audience and taking in all the wonder and perspective. No speaking nor coaching this time!

Phase 1 of Smart Hive Project is complete! We have tested out four different smart hives and their abilities and have found one that meets all our needs and requirements!

We launched Bzzz Mobile 1-0 with the new client sites functionality and all the aforementioned improvements.

We are experimenting with installing bee hotels in 5 cities nationwide! We have installed mason bees, Osima lingustica, the blue orchard bee, native to North America.

I meet every two weeks with a group called Enterprise Neurosystems to discuss data sensors in beehives. Many on the team are based in Silicon Valley, and some of us met up for a working lunch a few weeks ago to discuss sensor innovations.

Dary Gray announced that the HIVE-OS tool, the project created by our partnership with the Goddard Space Flight Center, was released and available to the public.

Thinking through how to weave SmartHive technology into our offerings for innovation-forward clients in 2023. Excited to roll-out this technology with some preliminary clients in 2023.

Still looking into the amount of carbon each plant species directly sequesters. Finding that annuals are a good option and readily pollinated by bees!