Elements and Performance Criteria
- Establish conditions and obtain requirements for queen bee rearing
- Select breeding stock from productive healthy stock or purchase breeder queen bee
- Obtain all tools and equipment needed to rear queen bees
- Select and use personal protective equipment
- Identify work health and safety hazards and take action to minimise them
- Observe site quarantine or other biosecurity protocols in force
- Confirm all hives and colonies used for queen bee and drone production are in a clean and healthy condition
- Select day-old larvae from the breeder queen bee for grafting and transfer from worker cells into queen cell cups
- Confirm an adequate number of nurse bees are present in cell raising colonies
- Use a suitable method for cell production
- Establish and monitor the queen mating process
- Transfer ripe queen cells into the nucleus 10 to 11 days after grafting
- Provide an adequate number of mature, well-nourished and genetically suitable drones during mating period
- Record details of grafting and subsequent placement of cells into nucleus colonies
- Record the age of the queen removed from mating colony