Grafting one day old larvae from a frame of brood. She is using a Chinese Grafting tool. It looks like a pen. It has a little tongue that can scoop up the larvae and some royal jelly. She then deposits the larvae into the queen cup. Each one of the cups will become a queen cell.
Right now the package bee supplier is raising queens. They start in early March. The Almond trees are blooming and there is lots of pollen available from the good rain they have had. The rain is great news being that they have been in a drought for the last four years. The temperatures have been around 65 degrees and that is adequate for proper mating of queens.
Everything seems to be on schedule.
My first load is almost sold out. My second load is still wide open for any bee orders.