Comparison of time consumption between traditional and innovative methods of producing Queen cell cups

The production of high-quality honey bee queens is one of the most important beekeeping operations, considering the key role of the Queen in the colony. On the other hand, Queen rearing is a highly challenging process, so the simplification of certain production segments would represent a significant advantage. In this paper, we examined and compared the traditional method of producing wax Queen cell cups using a wooden mold with an innovative method that involves the use of a silicone mold together with a specially designed cell bar. The comparison of efficiency between the tested methods was carried out through the measurement of time consumption for both methods. Our results indicate that the production of Queen cell cups using the innovative method is 2.66 times faster compared to the traditional method. In addition, we examined the differences in Queen cell cup height obtained by the traditional method, which showed high variability, ranging from 8.1 mm to 15.9 mm, unlike the innovative method in which Queen cell cups were uniform and measured 11 mm. On professional apiaries, where there is a high demand for the production of honey bee queens, Queen cells, and royal jelly, our innovative method can significantly facilitate production by accelerating the process of producing Queen cell cups, while at the same time ensuring the uniformity of the produced cell cups. Also, using a specially designed cell bar allows all Queen cells to be added or removed at once from the grafting frame and provides the possibility of simple individual separation of the Queen cells.