Split a hive, so that you have one ruchette, or small box of frames, with no queen.
If the remaining worker bees in this hive produce some queen cells on their own, break the wax cover to each cell, collect the royal jelly from inside with a tiny spoon, the larvae wil die.
From another healthy hive, collect newly laid eggs/larvae that are less than 3 days old (tiny and unsealed in cell), trying to handle them as gently as possible - Jan used a paintbrush.
Put the new eggs/larvae into a special mini dish or artifical cell, several of these artificial cells are held in an adapted frame - looks a bit like a test-tube rack, for very tiny test-tubes. Add a little bit of royal Jelly. The upper section of this frame is like a mini feeder, and you should add some sirop to feed the workers who will look after these eggs.
Place the adapted frame into the orphaned hive.
The remaining workers in the orphaned hive should look after the eggs, as they have no queen present, and the artificial cells are also positioned vertically, they will build long wax cells below the artificial ones, and feed the eggs royal jelly so they will develop into fledgling queens.
Check on the development regularly. When the cells have ben sealed, carefully slip a plastic cage-like tube, called a curler as they look just like hair curlers, over the cell - being careful not to break the wax seal, so that when the queen emerges she is contained. Otherwise the rival queens would fight until only one survived.
You then need to transfer each "curler" containing the Virgin queen to a small box accommodation, having sealed the end of the curler with candy.
From another hive, collect a yogurt pot full of bees (!) from above a queen grill, so that you are sure that the pot doesn't contain the queen. Add the contents of the yogurt pot to the new queen's box accommodation.
These workers will slowly get used to the new queen's smell, as they eat their way through the candy sealing her curler compartement. So by the time she is free, they will accept her. The queen should fly away from the box to mate, but will then return to her mini box, to start laying eggs.
If you check on the box and see that she has laid eggs, then you know she has been fertilised, and you can now introduce her to a hive, taking care again to give the bees time to adapt to her scent & pheromones !
After the presentation, we kitted up, and Jan showed us the ruchette with the special adapted frame containing some developing queen cells.
Then Raymond showed us some hives that the school had inherited that had failed, and although there were still some bees present, there was no new brood, and no queen. Apparently because they contained no young bees it would be impossible to introduce a new queen here and have enough workers to care for any eggs being laid; So, we took the hive about 50 metres away from where it had been, and emptied all the bees out, brushing them off the frames. Hopefully they would fly back to the compound, and not finding their own hive, be accepted into one of the other ones as extra workforce. We took the frames back to the hive compound, broke the wax seals on the honey stores, and left them propped up, so all the bees from the various hives can come and collect the honey. Jan says they will make short work of cleaning out the frames, and then she will collect the remaining wax, disinfect the frame and prepare it again for future use.
We then had a further talk from Raymond, about some general do's and don'ts for beekeeping in general. Like don't be tempted not to wear protective gear, and do get used to coping on your own, with the smoker, lifting frames, etc. Apparently if only one person is next to the hive, you position yourself better than a crowd. Must admit, am now begining to realise that the bees in the hives at the beeschool are probably traumatised by being opened too often, when its a bit too cold, and by being surrounded by enthusiastic apprentices like me !
This will be the last class for a while, as there are several bank holiday weekends coming up in France, and therefore beeschool is on hold until we go on an outing on the 24/5. The bees can have some peace and quiet for a few weeks !
I have to take my gloves off to take the photos - so hope you can excuse the quality - its a bit nerve wracking exposing skin, so all done in a bit of a rush !
Although Raymond was not practising what he preached by working wothout gloves...