The Use of a Cloake Board in Rearing Queen Bees

 Queen rearing is one of the most rewarding — and delicate — parts of beekeeping. It requires balancing colony strength, brood timing, and the bees’ natural instincts to rear a new queen. One of the most efficient tools for this purpose is the Cloake Board, a simple but ingenious device that helps transform a strong hive into a powerful queen-rearing unit.

What is a Cloake Board?

A Cloake Board is a piece of queen-rearing equipment named after its inventor, New Zealand beekeeper Harry Cloake. It’s essentially a dividing board placed between two hive boxes. The board has a removable metal or plastic slide and a queen excluder built into the frame.

In appearance, it looks like a standard queen excluder surrounded by a rim that allows for a slot where a solid divider can slide in or out. This simple mechanism allows the beekeeper to convert a strong double-story colony into a queenless cell-starter and then back into a queenright finisher — all within the same hive.

This design makes the Cloake Board system highly efficient: one strong colony can perform both the initial emergency queen-cell building (starter) and the subsequent feeding and finishing stages (finisher) without disrupting the colony’s overall stability. Additionally, the developing larvae aren’t disturbed by the move from a starter to a finisher box.

How the Cloake Board Works

The Cloake Board method operates in two main stages — first creating a temporary queenless state to start queen cells, then restoring queenrightness to finish them.

  1. Setup and Preparation
     Begin with a strong double deep hive, rich in young nurse bees and open brood. It should be as free of pests and diseases as possible. Turn the entrance to the back and block it completely. Place the Cloake Board without the slide between the two brood boxes facing forward with the queen confined below the excluder. Ensure there are frames with open cells below, and all or most frames of open brood and nurse bees above.

  2. Creating the Queenless Starter
    The next day, insert the slide into the Cloake Board. This blocks the queen’s pheromones and physically separates the upper box from the queen below, effectively creating a queenless colony above the board. Open the lower entrance. Many nurse bees should be on the open brood above. Remove all open brood from the upper box, donating it to another colony. Additional nurse bees can be shaken into the upper box from another colony. Be CERTAIN not to shake a queen into the upper box! Add a frame of pollen or pollen substitute and a frame of foundation near the center, leaving one frame space in the center open. Sugar syrup or open frames of honey/nectar should also be provided. 

  3. The next day, select a frame with very young (12-24 hour) larvae from a colony with desirable traits and graft up to 3 bars of cells. Gently open the hive using little or no smoke and place the graft frame in the center of the upper box.

  4. Finishing the Cells
     After 24–36 hours, once the bees have started drawing out the queen cells, remove the slide — restoring queen pheromones and making the colony queenright again. The queen remains below, but now her pheromones reach the upper box through the excluder. The bees above will continue feeding and finishing the queen cells under stable, queenright conditions. This yields well-fed queen cells of high quality, without the risk of the upper colony becoming unstable or depleted.

  5. Once the queen cells are capped, they only need warmth and humidity to complete pupation and emerge. They can be caged in the upper box right on the bars or caged and placed in an incubator. If they are left unprotected in the upper box, they are more at risk of being torn down by workers, found by a rogue queen or killed when one emerges before you realize it. Placing a drop of honey in a trough at the bottom of each cage will give the virgin queens something to eat right away. A drop of water can be placed in the other trough of each cage.

  6. Upon emergence, look over the virgins for size, conformation and overall vigor before placing in mating nucs. They can even be marked at this time. The cell cups can be replaced with Candy Caps and they can be introduced that way. Many breeders simply allow the virgin to walk in through the entrance of a ready mating nuc.

Advantages of the Cloake Board System

The Cloake Board combines the benefits of both a queenless starter and a queenright finisher in one efficient setup. Key advantages include:

  • High-quality queens: Nurse bees lavish attention on grafted larvae, producing well-fed, well-developed queens comparable to natural swarming queens.

  • Efficiency: No need for multiple colonies or constant transfers between starter and finisher units.

  • Stability: The colony remains strong and balanced throughout; no prolonged queenlessness.

  • Ease of timing: By controlling when the slide is inserted and removed, the beekeeper dictates exactly when the colony switches between queenless and queenright phases.

  • Reduced risk of swarming: The queen remains below with brood and space, minimizing swarm impulses.