# Grafting %



## Daznz (Oct 18, 2014)

Interested to know what was the take % of your very first graft, what grafting tool did you use did you try other grafting tools and what one did you stay with? What tips do you have for someone who has never grafted before I'm sure it will be practice practice.
Any other tip would be appreciated. Taking the time to setup a nice cell builder and getting a poor take must be a bit disappointing.


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## wvbeeguy (Feb 20, 2011)

mine was 40% with chinese grafting tool- not tools fault, i cant see well enough so eventually moved to cell puching- right at 100% acceptance. Sure it punches holes in one sheet of comb, bees fix it, they dont seem to mind. Good luck with whichever method you use.


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## tpope (Mar 1, 2015)

Zero...


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

Daznz said:


> Interested to know what was the take % of your very first graft, what grafting tool did you use did you try other grafting tools and what one did you stay with? What tips do you have for someone who has never grafted before I'm sure it will be practice practice.
> Any other tip would be appreciated. Taking the time to setup a nice cell builder and getting a poor take must be a bit disappointing.


1st try 2 out of 12 chinese grafting tool
2nd try 4 or 5 out of 12 chinese grafting tool
took a break and practiced all kinds of methods and tools.
3rd try 100% grafting tool made from a plastic drinking straw

Those numbers are from memory several years back and probably all wrong but close enough to illustrate.

I have not use anything but home made tools from drinking straws since then. Taught my grand daughter (14 years old) and son last year how I do it. They got 100% the first try. My grand daughter was obnoxiously fast. I hate kids and their steady hands and good eyes.

Take a drinking straw the diameter of thin wood lead pencil. Black color is best for seeing larva on it. Cut the end at an angle with a single edged razor blade so the cut is an inch long. The tip is less than 1 mm wide. Knock the cell walls out of the way on the larva you want to pick up. Just push those cell walls to the sides. The bees rebuild them in a day. Pick up the larva with the drinking straw and put it centered in the JZBZ cup. Put a dental tool just behind the larva and pull the straw out leaving the larva in the center of the JZBZ cup. I graft at a rate of one per minute on a good day and a lot slower when my hands are shaky which is lots of days. If the cell builder wants to make queens I routinely get 90% takes on ten grafts at a time. If the cell builder does not want to make queens for any reason I get zero%.

Most important is to take a frame and graft 50 and throw them out. Do that for a few days until you are comfortable and get the skill. Do not even bother to try to give those attempts to a colony. They are simply practice. After each try think about what went wrong and how you can do better tomorrow. What works great for one person may not work at all for the next. Once you figure out what works for you it is dirt easy to graft. It is also easier to start trying with over sized larva and work on the skills before trying few hour old larva. Ones that are too big are easy. If I can graft anyone can graft. I have essential tremor which makes my hands very shaky. Pathetic fine motor skills. On a bad day drinking half a beer helps a lot. My eyes also are not very good. I have had trifocals for 25 years now. I need real good lighting in a fairly dark room.


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## Daznz (Oct 18, 2014)

Interesting post Richard do you have a photo of the straw and the dentist tool? Be great to have a visual of it.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

You get much better very quickly if you don't give up. Every tip I know for grafting.


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## BadBeeKeeper (Jan 24, 2015)

> If I can graft anyone can graft.


Not me, I get optical migraines and then I can't see diddly.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

First I did the Jenter method so I wouldn't have to graft. It took a few tries to get the hang of how to set up a good cell starter. When I was getting good results with the Jenter and I knew what the right age larvae looked like, then I tried to graft. I had a pretty good take. Odds are a low take has more to do with the cell starter than the grafting... If I knew then what I know now, I probably would have used the Hopkins method which would have been cheaper and after I got the hang of that then I would have started grafting. Another thing that helped was the Chinese grafting tool. I tried all kinds of tools but the Chinese tool picks up the royal jelly and hardly touches the larvae.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

I can't remember how many I tried, but I got frustrated and started taking bigger larva. My frustration was with the chinese grafting tool, the first set I bought had NO backbone at all. Super flimsy. So I bought another set and they are much more stiff and feel better to me (but I haven't grafted with them yet). I also grafted out of foundationless comb that was relatively new. I think plastic foundation would be beneficial, but I haven't tried it yet. I also bought a JZBZ tool and made some paper clip ones, so hopefully I'll have an assortment to try.


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## Daznz (Oct 18, 2014)

Thanks for the feed back guys I do have a jenter kit my concern with it is if she hasn't laid in it, it stuffs up all the timing for the cell builder you have setup.
I will try a few different tools its coming into our winter here so it will be next season for me. with the Chinese tool do you need to knock the cell walls down at all?
Cell builder type I will try will be as Mike Palmer does.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Thanks for the feed back guys I do have a jenter kit my concern with it is if she hasn't laid in it, it stuffs up all the timing for the cell builder you have setup.

If you go to release the queen 24 hours after confining her and she hasn't laid it up, then you dont' start you cell builder 
yet. When you have eggs you still have 3 more days to get your cell builder ready and you probably don't need that much. But yes, one of the nice things about grafting is you have better control over timeing.

>I will try a few different tools its coming into our winter here so it will be next season for me. with the Chinese tool do you need to knock the cell walls down at all?

I haven't, but if it's old tough comb and you have a very sharp knife you could.


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## Daznz (Oct 18, 2014)

Thanks Michael that makes it clearer


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## Dave1958 (Mar 25, 2013)

I'm consistently about 20%. My first problem is my cell builder is not strong enough. I have a small yard and not enough resources. If all 30 grafts I took couldn't use all the cells.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

My first graft efforts were done with teriyaki skewers made into chopsticks. The results were a doughnut hole. First try with a hook went about 2 / 48 successful. First try with a Chinese tool was about 7 / 48. If at first you don't succeed, get a parrot without a beak, or keep on trying.

Looking back, I wish I had started small with LaFerney / Clemens' method, or with Oldtimer's / Jay Smith's Cut Cell method. Small scale and try often would have helped out with few resources to draw from.

Then, after I had built up enough strong colonies, I wish I had stepped up to Michael Palmer / Brother Adam's method much earlier than I did. 

There is nothing wrong with using strong colony methods later in the year if you keep your drone colonies strong for mating the queens.


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## Robbin (May 26, 2013)

David LaFerney said:


> You get much better very quickly if you don't give up. Every tip I know for grafting.


that's a good read you posted David. Thanks


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## BeeCurious (Aug 7, 2007)

Daznz said:


> Interested to know what was the take % of your very first graft


Last season was my first at grafting queens and 26 of 29 grafts were accepted.

I used Chinese tools... Buy several of them as you might blame the initial difficulties on the tool and you'll want others at hand. 

http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?313269-First-grafting-attempt-Beginner-s-Luck!


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

Daznz said:


> Interested to know what was the take % of your very first graft, what grafting tool did you use did you try other grafting tools and what one did you stay with? What tips do you have for someone who has never grafted before I'm sure it will be practice practice.
> Any other tip would be appreciated. Taking the time to setup a nice cell builder and getting a poor take must be a bit disappointing.


My first attempt at grafting (2014) was not well planned. I had taken a cutdown split out of a hive and they didn't requeen successfully, so in mid June or so I had a queenless hive. I decided 'what the heck', it'll take just as long if I give them a frame of brood, or give them a frame with grafts, so I grabbed all my 'not used yet' stuff and tried grafting one bar to see if I could get any kind of result. I put larvae into the cups using a chinese grafting tool, it only took a few tries to figure that part out. This is what I got after the graft frame was in the hive for 24 hours.



I was thrilled, the exercise proved to me that grafting isn't that difficult, first time around I had 6 accepted cells. It looked good to me at the time, but what I didn't realize, it was actually not very good at all. There is some, but not a lot, of royal jelly in the cells they accepted, and I did get some queens out of the exercise. The one that stayed in the colony did well and wintered fine. The ones that went into the mating nucs, not so well, the other part of the learning experience, if you make mating nucs to weak the other hives call them 'feeders', and they all got robbed out.

In 2015 I took a planned approach. I used a cloak board so that one hive could be used to do a queenless start, with queenright finish. I did put some effort into getting that hive properly set up in the days before grafting. The other lesson I took from the year before, cells are the easy part, finding enough resources to make mating nucs is the bottleneck, so no need to do endless cells when you dont have a place to put them. I once again grafted just one bar, the logic is, if a jammed double deep can feed 3 bars well, then the jammed top half of a double deep split with the cloak board can feed one bar of cells equally well. This is what it looked like 24 hours later.



The important detail I realized that is glaringly different between the two photos, look at how much royal jelly is in the cups. In the first shot, it's just a little at the bottom of the cup, in the second shot, some of those cups are full to nearly overflowing, and all but the first two took. In hindsight, this was the first time I got the tools out for the year, and the two cups on the left end of the bar were the first two I put in, and I was fussing to 'remember' how to get it done right, so not surprised that those were the ones that didn't take.

Overall, I found the process of grafting to be rather easy compared to properly setting up a cell builder, then getting mating nucs ready for all of the cells. My colonies are on the back half of our lot, I just take the frame I'm grafting from into my office and set things on my desk to do the graft. I prepare by setting a fresh new empty drawn frame into the center of the brood nest of the hive I want to graft from, then pull it out on grafting day. I typically see some eggs, and some freshly hatched larvae. I try pick up the ones as close to the eggs as I can, where I can see the jelly in the bottom of the cell. In some cases, even with the magnifying glass, it's really hard to see a larvae in that puddle of jelly. I've got a couple of chinese grafting tools at the desk, and if one seems to be sticky or giving me problems, I just switch and try the other one. I damp them both on a wet sponge before I start.

If you have never done it before, I think it's likely a fair guess that you aren't set up to mate 30 or 40 queens at once, so, dont get hung up on thinking you need to fill all the bars in a graft frame. Just do enough to meet what you can handle. As long as you get the right age larvae, and dont flip them over in the cup, a high percentage will take. When I do my first round this year, I'll be set up with 2 mating boxes each can handle 4 cells in a 4 way. I will graft only one bar which has 15 cups and I will put cells into 8 mating nucs when they are ready. If I have any surplus, I have a few friends that may want to use them. Grafting is far from being the most important part of the process, it's actually the easiest of all the steps required to get good queens.


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## Daznz (Oct 18, 2014)

Thanks for the feed back guys, Cheers Grozzie some great info right there... What do you feel you were doing wrong with the grafts that didn't take? Do you not see that you have rolled the larvae when you put it
in the cell cup?


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

Daznz said:


> Thanks for the feed back guys, Cheers Grozzie some great info right there... What do you feel you were doing wrong with the grafts that didn't take? Do you not see that you have rolled the larvae when you put it
> in the cell cup?


I think the reason the first couple didn't take is because it was the first time out that year, and I was struggling to remember my method for picking up the larvae with the tool. Maybe I flipped them, maybe they just got crushed, dont know. I'm not really to concerned about it at this point. With this method I end up with more cells than I have nucs to put them in, so for now the system works well enough.


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## zhiv9 (Aug 3, 2012)

27 of 45. My issue was cell builder strength. If the cell builder isn't strong enough, they will only start so many cells. I took a one day course where I was able to try a variety of tools and lighting. The Chinese too was the easiest by far. I also use an LED magnifying visor. I graft on the steering wheel of my pickup. The Chinese took works better with brood comb that is a little older so the cell bottoms are rounded.


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## Moon (May 7, 2011)

Daznz said:


> Interested to know what was the take % of your very first graft, what grafting tool did you use did you try other grafting tools and what one did you stay with? What tips do you have for someone who has never grafted before I'm sure it will be practice practice.
> Any other tip would be appreciated. Taking the time to setup a nice cell builder and getting a poor take must be a bit disappointing.


My first was 0%, accidentally transferred a queen into my cell builder or something I can't remember. That was out of 45 cells ( I always do 45 cells at a time, 3 bars with 15 cups). My second attempt the acceptance rate was like 90%. Whatever 40 out of 45 cells was. I usually average between 30 and 40 cells accepted. Keep hoping one day to hit that 100% acceptance but in three years of trying it seems to get more and more evasive.

As far as grafting tools and tips/tricks. This is probably area specific but I live in a desert (technically it's considered a desert based off of annual rainfall) it's extremely arid so if I don't cover the grafted cell bars after I finish grafting with a damp cloth the larva dry out before I can get them back in the cell builder. I also keep the frames I'm going to be grafting from in a modified nucleus box with a cup of hot water (fill a thermos with boiling water at the start of the morning and just use the thermos lid as a cup) in it to keep up the humidity and temperature up. I'll put a droplet of distilled water in each cell cup more to facilitate sliding the larva off the end of the grafting tool than anything else. I've tried every grafting tool I can get my hands on and the professional grafting tool from mannlake has worked the best _for me_. The spring loaded action that lets the tongue slide back inside the tool is perfect for getting the larva off the end. For the life of me I don't know how people use the Chinese grafting tool with that flimsy piece of plastic on the end. I could never scoop larva out of the cell with that.

Final thought on this, I do all of my grafting in the front seat of my truck. I don't have a fancy grafting shed and I don't bring the cells home and graft in a more comfortable environment. I usually have my colonies for grafting pre marked so I show up at an apiary, pull frames from the hives I want, graft in the truck, return everything and go to the next yard. I can do 45 cells in about 20-25 minutes and have everything buttoned back up and on my way.


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## Bdfarmer555 (Oct 7, 2015)

First time, 6 days ago. Chinese tool, a big fat 0-fer from 10 attempts. Second try, exact same queen less hive, same tool, same setup (tailgate of truck at 5:00 evening, 75 degrees) gave me 9 out of 10. Only change I made was I expected trouble the first time, so I wet a paper towel and warmed it on the hood of truck. Then as I grafted, I used it to cover larvae. Took less than 10 minutes total. Since it went so smooth and quick the first time, the second time I skipped the wet towel. Think with the breeze that it cooled and then chilled the larvae.


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## Outdoor N8 (Aug 7, 2015)

first time was on the 10th of April this year. Initially they built out all 13 cups. When I went to distribute them on the 19th (day 14) they had torn down cell#3 and even cleaned out all the royal jelly. In the end I was blessed to go 12/13.

I used both a chinese tool and JZBZ's . The jzbz was much easier to pick larvae up with but much more difficult to place them. Any placement I didn't think was correct, I redid; in a way, I pre-jellied the cups. Took me 45 minuites- instead of a monocular- I'll have 3x reading glasses for next time!


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

First two attempts this year have gone much better than last year's failure. 21/29 first go and looks like 24/29 on second graft.


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## Snapset (May 2, 2015)

David LaFerney said:


> You get much better very quickly if you don't give up. Every tip I know for grafting.


David,
I enjoyed very much the article you wrote here. I read it and I intend to use your method to make a cell builder this week. I saw a picture of a slatted rack, is this for ventilation of a crowded space?


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## bevy's honeybees (Apr 21, 2011)

zhiv9 said:


> I took a one day course where I was able to try a variety of tools and lighting. The Chinese too was the easiest by far. I also use an LED magnifying visor. I graft on the steering wheel of my pickup. The Chinese took works better with brood comb that is a little older so the cell bottoms are rounded.


I'm going to a class in mid May and they will have several to try out before I decide. 
Has anyone used one of these, and are they worth it? I have old eyes and any help I can get will be worth the money. Learning to graft (in a class setting) has been on my wish list for several years.

http://www.brushymountainbeefarm.com/LED-Magnifying-Glass/productinfo/239/


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

I'm not sure why I had so much trouble with the Chinese tool the first time I tried it, but I was frustrated. I got the hang of it right away the second time. The difference was the first time it was on foundationless comb, this time on plastic. Also I bought another batch of 10 Chinese grafting tools because the other ones I had were so flimsy on the scoop part that they likely contributed to my inept attempt the first time. 

I always have watched the videos and wonder how in the world they graft that fast, but I can certainly see that if you graft thousands of larva, you'll be quite adept at it in short order. I also have a couple of JZBZ tools, but never tried them because the Chinese ones worked out so well this time.


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## zhiv9 (Aug 3, 2012)

bevy's honeybees said:


> I'm going to a class in mid May and they will have several to try out before I decide.
> Has anyone used one of these, and are they worth it? I have old eyes and any help I can get will be worth the money. Learning to graft (in a class setting) has been on my wish list for several years.
> 
> http://www.brushymountainbeefarm.com/LED-Magnifying-Glass/productinfo/239/


I have a similar magnifier and yes they are worth it.


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## Russell Uesry (Aug 18, 2013)

I had about a 30% success rate. I used a Chinese grafting tool. I left cells in starter for 1 day, then moved to finishing hive.
The picture shows my first grafts and my mini nucs.


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