On Sunday 2nd July about 25 members of FBA and DWFBA arrived at Murray Macgregor’s queen rearing unit near Blairgowrie. There was lots of car-sharing and I was lucky enough to have a lift in Stewart Kerr’s open-topped sports car which made the trip even more enjoyable!


We parked our cars near the loch and ate the picnics we had brought while looking in astonishment at the many, many nucs, mini nucs and full hives, and Murray’s assistants Jolanta and Saskia, both from Poland, finishing off their morning’s work among them.


Then we got into our bee suits and gathered around Murray, who gave a general introduction to all they did there. Rearing their own (and for sale) queens had started about 2004, when Jolanta produced 170 new queens. They now produce about 2,000 each year. Always selecting the best queens to breed from, they have produced bees which are gentle, productive and even chalk-brood free. Any colony which produces even one cell of chalk brood is removed from the site and put to work in his other apiaries. We were divided into three groups, and each group had a session with Murray sitting on a nuc with no veil or gloves, demonstrating how gentle the bees were and how youthful even 4-year-old queens were, as his system prevented them from laying too many eggs. The breeder nucs were regularly emptied of some of the brood (used for grafting etc and building other nucs) and given fresh foundation to draw out.
Continue reading “Outing to Murray Macgregor’s Queen Rearing Unit by Janice Furness”