The weather held out to give us a lovely warm evening for the first part of the Queen Raising Course yesterday. The course was very well attended and everyone found it an informative and enjoyable session. We discussed the theory of queen breeding, equipment, methods and selecting for desirable traits before getting stuck in ourselves: preparing a ‘swarm box’ and cell raising colony, picking frames of young larvae and grafting them into the prepared cups. It will be exciting to see our success rate from this first go, not that it is a competition at all but everyone did initial their grafts…!