2026 Queen Cell Starter Configuration - Setting Up for Grafting

It’s February 13th, and tomorrow is Valentine’s Day — but more importantly, it’s my first graft day of the year! Today, I’m getting the queen cell starter configured and making the colony queenless in preparation for tomorrow’s grafting.

Why the Cell Starter Matters

The cell starter is critical for queen rearing. Here’s the basic setup:

• Make the colony queenless (they need to think they’ve lost their queen)
• Let them be queenless for less than 24 hours before grafting
• They need lots of nurse bees and royal jelly ready to feed larvae

Harbo Testing Results

I completed harbo testing on all my queens this week, and here’s what I found:

• 3 Harbo Level 4 (H4) queens: Single-digit mite counts (5, 6, 7 mites)
• A few H3s and H2s
• The rest were H1s and H0s: Showing 25+ mites

The H4 queens came through winter with no treatments — impressive! Those will be my breeder candidates this year.

A Word on Mite Counts

A few thoughts on harbo testing:

“The whole zero-mite thing is a fallacy. There is no zero mites with a harbo level queen.”

A mite check is a data point — an indicator of what’s happening in your hive. If you’re going for VSH (Varroa Sensitive Hygiene), you’re trying to get bees that don’t allow mites to reproduce. That’s the goal, not zero mites.

I’m choosing to stop treating and let nature do the selection. The bees in the trees already figured this out — Cuba has no varroa problems because they never treated.

Setting Up the Starter

I’m using the Triple hive as my cell starter. Even though she’s an H0 queen (high mites), she’s keeping the colony strong with lots of bees — exactly what we need for a starter.

Tomorrow: Grafting day!

Stay tuned for the full grafting process video coming soon. 🐝

What’s your approach to varroa management? Drop a comment below — I’d love to hear your thoughts on treatment-free breeding.