Queen rearing calendar
A queen emerges 16 days after the egg is laid. Enter your grafting day, or the day you confine the queen on a cupkit comb: you get every date of the batch, from drone colonies to the first eggs, ready to add to your calendar.
The batch schedule
| Day | Date | Stage | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day -17graft -21 | Mon, Oct 5 | Drone comb into drone colonies | About three weeks before grafting, so mature drones are flying when the virgins mate. |
| Day 0graft -4 | Thu, Oct 22 | Eggs laid in the breeder colony | Empty drawn comb in the breeder colony, or the queen confined on it (on the cupkit comb with a cupkit). |
| Day 3graft -1 | Sun, Oct 25 | Set up the cell builder | Queenless starter or swarm box ready; prime the cups in the cell builder 8 to 24 hours before grafting. |
| Day 4graft +0 | Mon, Oct 26 | Grafting or cupkit transfer | Larvae 12 to 18 hours after hatching, a tiny C in a pool of brood food, into the starter. |
| Day 5graft +1 | Tue, Oct 27 | Starter to finisher | With a swarm box starter, move the accepted cells into the queenright finisher after about 24 hours. |
| Day 6graft +2 | Wed, Oct 28 | Acceptance check | Accepted larvae float on royal jelly; count the cells and regraft if needed. |
| Day 8 to 9graft +4 | Fri, Oct 30 to Sat, Oct 31 | Cells capped | The queen cells are sealed. |
| Day 9 to 13graft +5 | Sat, Oct 31 to Wed, Nov 4 | Pupa: do not touch | Do not jar, chill or turn the cells. |
| Day 13graft +9 | Wed, Nov 4 | Stock the mating nucs | Fill each mating nuc with young bees and food a few hours to a day before the cell goes in. |
| Day 14graft +10 | Thu, Nov 5 | Ripe cells into mating nucs | Day 10 after grafting is the target, day 11 the limit: tip down, kept warm, one cell per nuc. |
| Day 15 to 16graft +11 | Fri, Nov 6 to Sat, Nov 7 | Virgin queens emerge | About 12 days after grafting; the first virgin out tears down her sisters. |
| Day 21 to 28graft +17 | Thu, Nov 12 to Thu, Nov 19 | Mating flights | Leave the nucs closed in flying weather. |
| Day 27 to 33graft +23 | Wed, Nov 18 to Tue, Nov 24 | Check for eggs | First eggs; mark the queen. Cold, windy or rainy weather delays mating. |
| Day 34 to 41graft +30 | Wed, Nov 25 to Wed, Dec 2 | Judge the brood pattern | Capped brood from the new queen: keep, sell or introduce her. |
How it is calculated
Everything counts from the egg
A queen develops in 16 days: 3 days as an egg, about 5.5 days as a larva and 7.5 days as a pupa, with the cell capped around day 8 (USDA SARE). The calendar takes day 0 as the day the egg is laid. A larva grafted under 24 hours after hatching is on day 4, so the virgin queens emerge on days 15 to 16, about 12 days after grafting. The UMass guide rounds grafting to day 3 and emergence to day 15; the dates from grafting are the same.
Grafting: day 0 = grafting date − 4 days (− 5 for a larva 24 to 48 hours old)
Cupkit: day 0 = date the queen is confined
date of a step = day 0 + n days| Day from egg | Step |
|---|---|
| -17 | Drone comb into drone colonies |
| 0 | Eggs laid in the breeder colony |
| 3 | Larvae hatch |
| 3 | Set up the cell builder |
| 4 | Grafting or cupkit transfer |
| 5 | Starter to finisher |
| 6 | Acceptance check |
| 8 to 9 | Cells capped |
| 9 to 13 | Pupa: do not touch |
| 13 | Stock the mating nucs |
| 14 | Ripe cells into mating nucs |
| 15 to 16 | Virgin queens emerge |
| 21 to 28 | Mating flights |
| 27 to 33 | Check for eggs |
| 34 to 41 | Judge the brood pattern |
Grafting, the swarm box move and the acceptance check follow the grafting date; everything else follows the age of the larvae. Wilkinson and Brown move cells 11 days after grafting and the UMass guide on day 10: aim for day 10, never later than day 11. Mating and laying depend on weather and drones, so the last dates are windows, not appointments. Delaplane and Harbo found that primed cups were accepted more often than dry ones (92% against 77%) and that double grafting gave no heavier queens.
The schedule follows our guide to raising queen bees, which covers breeder selection, the cell builder, mating nucs and state rules on selling queens. Development stages are on our page about the honey bee life cycle. The .ics file opens in Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook, with each step as an all-day event.
Frequently asked questions
How many days from grafting to a queen emerging?
About 12 days. A queen takes 16 days from egg to adult, and a larva grafted 12 to 18 hours after hatching is already about three and a half days into that. Move ripe cells into mating nucs 10 days after grafting, and no later than day 11, because the first virgin out destroys the other cells.
How old should larvae be for grafting?
As young as you can lift: 12 to 18 hours after hatching, a tiny C-shaped larva in a pool of brood food. Larvae much past two days old have started developing as workers and give smaller queens with fewer ovarioles. Put an empty drawn comb in the breeder colony four days before grafting to get larvae of known age.
When are queen cells capped?
Around day 8 after the egg was laid, which is four to five days after grafting. From capping until the cells are ripe the pupa is fragile: do not jar, chill or turn the cells. If mating nucs are not ready, an incubator at 93 to 95 °F (34 to 35 °C) can hold capped cells.
How long after emerging does a queen start laying?
About 11 days in the UMass schedule: virgins emerge around day 15 from the egg, take mating flights from about day 20 and are checked for eggs around day 26, which is 23 days after grafting. Judge the brood pattern about a week later. Cold, wind or rain delays mating flights and pushes every date back.
What is a cell builder?
A strong colony crowded with young nurse bees, pollen and nectar or syrup that raises the grafted larvae into queen cells. It is either queenless, or queenright with the queen kept below an excluder. A common US setup starts the grafts in a queenless swarm box for 24 hours, then finishes them in a queenright cell builder.
When should I start raising queens?
When colonies are strong, drones are flying and nectar is coming in, not on a fixed date. That can be March in California and the Deep South, and late May through July in the Northeast, upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest. Start drone colonies about three weeks before your first graft.
What is a cupkit or Jenter system?
A plastic comb where the queen is confined and lays directly into removable cell bases. Four days later you move the cups, larvae and all, into cell bar frames, so nothing is grafted by hand and the age of the larvae is known. The schedule after transfer is the same as for grafting.
Sources
- Raising Queens: A How-To Guide to Sustainable Queen Rearing (2021), USDA SARE, University of Massachusetts
- The life cycle of honey bees, USDA SARE
- The basics of queen management in beekeeping operations (ENY2128, 2025), University of Florida, IFAS Extension
- Rearing queen honeybees in a queenright colony (Wilkinson and Brown, American Bee Journal, April 2002), American Bee Journal, via the National Bee Unit
- A re-examination of double grafting (Delaplane and Harbo, American Bee Journal, 1988), University of Georgia Bee Program
- Factors affecting the reproductive health of honey bee drones: a review (Apidologie, 2019), Apidologie, Springer
Calculators
Sugar water for bees calculator
How much sugar and water for 1:1 or 2:1 syrup, by weight or by volume: pounds, gallons and cups for your colonies, with fall doses from extension guides.
Open the toolFondant and sugar brick calculator for bees
Fondant for bees or no-cook sugar bricks: pounds of sugar, cups of water and candy temperatures for the batch you need, from extension service recipes.
Open the toolHoney yield and price calculator
Pounds of honey per hive, 12 oz bears, 1 lb or 2 lb jars and quarts to fill, revenue at surveyed US prices or yours, and what is left after jars and sugar.
Open the toolHoney moisture content calculator
Is your honey dry enough? Check a refractometer reading against USDA Grade A (18.6%), Grade C and state standards, and work out the moisture of a blend.
Open the tool