# Moving from ok queens . . . to great queens.



## Specialkayme

This is a very simple question, that I already know has no simple answer.

I've tried my hand at raising queens this season. My success rate isn't as high as I would like them to be, and my queens arn't as big and productive as I would like, but they are queens none the less.

But in raising queens, what do you do differently to make those monsters? Those large, fertile, productive queens?

In a sense, what do I need to work on, what do I need to improve on to make better queens next year?

I'm obviously in a direction forward, but I'm afraid I'm a little lost on what I should be doing to improve. Any thoughts? Books, articles, techniques, strategies?

Like I said, I know there is no easy and simple answer, just looking for thoughts.


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## deejaycee

Specialkayme said:


> But in raising queens, what do you do differently to make those monsters? Those large, fertile, productive queens?


The very best possible nutrition and copious feeding by a very strong hive from the earliest possible age. 

 Simple enough answer?

.... followed of course by very good matings with a genetically strong and diverse range of drones.

Seriously though, are you grafting (assuming you are) as young as possible? Is your hive as strong as possible and wealthy with young nurse bees? Is there a good variety of pollen in the hive and plenty of honey? Plenty of foragers?

Tell us what system you're currently using and we'll be better able to suggest upgrades.


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## johns bees

I bleive to make big queens you should start with a large queen to graft from . Then your cell starter should be packed with bees and they should be well fed.Then place them in a strong queen right hive above the excluder so the bees can finish the cells .
This is just my two cents Johns Bees


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## Specialkayme

Sorry my first post was very basic. I've found that if I start a thread with a monster post, most people don't read it, lol.

I have been grafting (not priming), using the youngest larvae that I could find. I've used a swarm box, packed with as many nurse bees as I could fit in there, to draw the cells out. The swarm box would consist of 1 or 2 frames of honey, with the cells cut open (about a dozen hive tool gashes) and one frame of pollen (no brood). I let the swarm box sit for about two hours (or so) before I introduce the grafts. I left the grafts (using JZBZ wide base cells) in the swarm box/cell starter for approximately 24 hours. After that I transfer the grafts to a cell finisher (I use the largest hive I have going, placing the grafts on top of an excluder with the queen in the bottom box, of course). 

I've been using this calendar to co-ordinate my days: http://www.thebeeyard.org/queen-rearing-calendar/

On day 13 I move each cell that has been drawn out into a two frame, medium mating nuc. I've been using a 10 frame box divided into four sections as mating nucs.

Up until this point, I've been letting the queens open mate with whatever drones are available. I've only been doing this while I learn the basics. For next year I plan on flooding the area with drones, using drone frames, of the specific genetics I would like to use.

So that's what I've been doing. As far as moving forward, I guess I can explain a little bit more about what I know, and why I'm having a hard time moving forward. The way I see it, a monster queen is brought about through a grafting system with four main puzzle pieces: 1) a young larvae [as young as possible] that is grafted into the cup, 2) an over abundance of nurse bees, 3) healthy bees [the nurse bees that is], and 4) plenty of drones to mate with. Obviously genetics would play an even larger role than any of the above pieces, but for the sake of "technique" I can't really include genetics. We work with the best that we have.

So moving forward, obviously I should get the youngest larvae. They should be attended by the most nurse bees I can get, that are overly healthy. The area should also be flooded with plenty of drones. All of that I realize. But what I don't know is what I need to improve, or how. Do I need more nurse bees? How to I put more in a box than I had before? (sounds like a dumb question, I know) Do I need "healthier" bees? How do I make them healthier, and better fed? Both on a flow, and off? How do I know if I need healthier bees, or more nurse bees? 

Hopefully that gives this thread a little bit more direction.


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## Joseph Clemens

I'm sure there are as many different ways to accomplish this as there are beekeepers. But, this is how I grow about 80%+ nice, big, fecund, queens.

I'm lazy, so I have eliminated any steps in the process that I consider unnecessary. Basically I use one queenless nuc box to start and finish my cultured queen cells.

I use a deep, 5-frame nuc as my queen cell starter/finisher. I stock it with two frames of honey/nectar/pollen and two frames of sealed/emerging brood, leaving space for one two-level cell-bar frame, or two single cell bars (one between each honey/brood frame pair). If there's a honey flow on I don't feed syrup, otherwise I feed syrup. Even if there is plenty of pollen coming in, I still like to feed pollen substitute patties of my own recipe. I raise each patty, on a rack of *1/2"* square hardware cloth, so the bees can access the patties on all sides (two patties without a quart syrup jar and one with a syrup jar). I place an empty medium nuc super on top of the lower nuc and to cover the feed. I also shake in a few extra pounds of nurse bees I've harvested from several large colonies. Once I've finished putting everything together, including a bar or two of grafts, where I prime and graft, picking larvae I can barely see, even using a bright LED headlight and magnifying glasses.

I keep them stocked with frames of emerging brood, feed, check regularly for rogue queen cells and remove them.


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## johns bees

specialkayme ; I think more bees in the starter. Here is how I do it. First i shake about four pounds of bees into a net box then I pour all the bees into a three frame deep nuc box. I like to use medium frames for this as it creates a cluster area for the bees in the bottom of the box. When all the bees are in the box it looks like the cell bar frame won't fit but it does. the two frames in the nuc are honey and pollen and I also put a wet sponge in the bottom of the nuc box they need moisture to make RJ. Also two days prior to shaking the bees I feed Honey-B-Healthy with 1:1 sugar water
when there is no flow going on I feed 1;1 sw with HBH AND POLLEN sub about four days befor I put together my starter


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## Oldtimer

That's a good calendar, I'll be recommending it to people that ask me about how to time queen raising, thanks for sharing.

As to the rest of your post, sounds like you are pretty much doing most things right. One thing that makes a difference, if the cell finisher is on a flow, and has been for a while, and has that really "pumping" kind of activity and morale level when you open it, they will raise bigger cells and queens than the exact same hive if it is not on a flow. So when there is no flow the finisher should be drip fed constantly, without a break. Some kind of feeder can be used that only let's them take the syrup slowly, so it will last for a while.

In the starter, it's best to use combs of freshly gathered, unsealed honey, as this has a higher moisture level than capped honey, capped honey is too concentrated if they do not have access to water. Some pollen is important also.

Another thing, you might think your queens are not monsters. But they will not become monsters in a 2 frame nuc. Run them in a good healthy full sized hive during the spring build up, and then have a look at them, you might be surprised how much bigger they are than when you introduced them.


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## RAK

Just stick in like Six feeders... Put in all the good stuff. Raise some fat drones first...Poor drones will have a bad effect on queen pheromones....


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## jrbbees

Consider setting up your drone hives 2 miles from your queen breeder hives at the 4 compass points from your breeders. There are some studies that indicate that qrones only stay near their own hive. But Queens fly beyond their owns hives area so that that they don't in-breed.


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## NY_BLUES

Call, me a dissenter, but just because a queen is big and fat doesn't make her a great queen. I have had queens that were absolute monsters, with shotty brood patterns, bad tenperment, and wouldn't produce surplus. I have had small queens head hives for multiple seasons and produce good brood patterns, docile bees, and honey at the end of the season. Not saying that's the norm, but it does happen. I really don't look for great size in my grafting mothers, but it doesn't hurt. A bigger cell that is better fed produces bigger queens,so I like to throw feeders on my starter and finisher hives, regardless of flow, and put in hbh to help them along.


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## NY_BLUES

I noticed that you said you don't prime your cells,
. Consider trying it for a few batches, as the larve is immediately in food from graft on. That may help, but I don't think it could hurt.


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## lakebilly

Hey Joe is there a link to your recipe(pollen Patties)?


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## olddrown

How many queens do you want to raise?That will help to give good info.


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## deknow

The nice thing about the wide base cell cups is that you can see how much food.is available for the developing queens. You know the queens are.well fed if there is jelly left in the cells after emergence.
Deknow


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## Specialkayme

Thanks to everyone who has given such insightful responses. It's good to know there are several individuals on here that are so interested in helping.




Joseph Clemens said:


> I use one queenless nuc box to start and finish my cultured queen cells. . . Even if there is plenty of pollen coming in, I still like to feed pollen substitute patties of my own recipe.


I have been reading about the advantages and disadvantages of using a queen-less cell builder with a queen-right cell finisher over using a queen-less starter and finisher. Generally, from what I have read, the queen-right finisher has the ability to provide better nutrition to the grafts. I may end up trying a queen-less finisher, but the jury is still out on that one.

Like others on here, I would be interested in knowing your patty recipe. If you are willing to share it, that is. I've tried feeding patty supplements in the past, but I've found the bees will only take them if it's too cold to fly (late fall and early spring [or winter]). Right now they can get pollen off of weeds, which still tastes better than any substitute I can give them. If I knew of a better mixture, however, that may be different.



johns bees said:


> specialkayme ; I think more bees in the starter. . . I also put a wet sponge in the bottom of the nuc box they need moisture to make RJ. Also two days prior to shaking the bees I feed Honey-B-Healthy with 1:1 sugar water
> when there is no flow going on I feed 1;1 sw with HBH AND POLLEN sub about four days befor I put together my starter


I have been putting as many nurse bees in the starter as could fit. I don't know if I would say it was FOUR POUNDS worth (as I was going with Dr. Connor's estimate of one pound of nurse bees for every 10 grafts, so if I was doing about 20 grafts I would put in about 2.5 lbs of bees, to be on the safe side). I guess I could always ramp that up a little more.

I havn't been putting a wet sponge in the bottom of the nuc box . . . and I don't know why I hadn't. I'll have to start doing that.

I'm assuming that with shaking 4 lbs of bees in the swarm box you are taking from multiple colonies, correct? So when you start feeding with HBH two days prior to the shake, do you feed all your colonies? Or just the ones you _know_ you will shake from? Obviously, same issue goes when there is no flow on, do you feed all your colonies pollen substitute and HBH, or just ones that you suspect you will shake from? Even with no flow on, do they still take the pollen substitute? Try as I might, they just won't touch the stuff if they can get ANY pollen from the outside.



Oldtimer said:


> So when there is no flow the finisher should be drip fed constantly, without a break.


I have noticed queen rearing in the spring (with the really only flow we have - tulip poplar) is much easier than the rest of the season. The challenge for me is since after May, we don't really have any flow. That's a long time to try to simulate a flow.

It sounds like several of you feed for multiple days BEFORE you graft. I hadn't heard of that before, and that may make the world of a difference.



Oldtimer said:


> In the starter, it's best to use combs of freshly gathered, unsealed honey, as this has a higher moisture level than capped honey


I don't know why, but for some reason I thought capped honey was better. Kinda like the difference between a cake and cake batter, lol. Very good to know from now on though, and when I can use uncapped honey, I will. Do you know of any suggestions to help the bees break down the capped honey though? For times when you don't have any uncapped available? Or would a wet sponge in the nuc box be sufficient?



Oldtimer said:


> But they will not become monsters in a 2 frame nuc.


My desire is not only to get large queens, but large cells as well. My cells thus far have been small to average. My swarm cells are larger, which does tell me I'm not doing something right. But I'm aware that the queen in a 2 frame box will not be as fully developed as a queen in a full colony. However, for evaluation purposes I'm not able to put EVERY queen that I raise into a full colony before I cull the small and undesirable ones.



jrbbees said:


> Consider setting up your drone hives 2 miles from your queen breeder hives


I wish I could JRB, lol. I don't really have access to that kind of land though. I'm working on keeping hives at surrounding farmer's lands, as a type of mutually beneficial agreement. But that takes time, and I don't know I'll be able to do it two miles in EVERY direction. It would be nice though.



NY_BLUES said:


> just because a queen is big and fat doesn't make her a great queen.


I'm not in disagreement that there are a number of outliners, in both directions, but studies particularly done by Dr. Tarpy at NC State University have shown that larger queens on average have more ovarioles, can produce more eggs per day, and can produce more pheromones. Again, while this isn't always true, the trend appears to be that the larger, the more potential.



NY_BLUES said:


> I noticed that you said you don't prime your cells. Consider trying it for a few batches.


I have considered it, but again the jury is out. I don't have an inexpensive and reliable source of RJ to prime with. I will start collecting it from my own swarm cells and culled grafts next season, but that still puts me one session behind, if you know what I mean. So, for the time being, since I don't have RJ available, I can't really prime with it. I've also heard of using a yogurt mixture, but I've heard just as many bad things about it's use as good things.

I've also heard that RJ doesn't keep it's nutritional content for very long, so once you capture it and freeze it or refrigerate it, it isn't as good any more. Probably better than nothing, but half nutritional content RJ isn't as good as full nutritional content RJ (which the nurse bees hopefully should be able to develop themselves).

I think if I knew of a not so expensive and reliable source of RJ, I would try it next season. Good thing I have all winter to find it, lol.



olddrown said:


> How many queens do you want to raise?


Right now I'm interested in learning. I want to make enough queens to supply my growth and get the foundation laid for making good queens. Once I can make great queens and I'm satisfied with the output, I intend to sell them. Eventually I would like to make about 10 queens every two weeks. Once demand catches up with supply, I'll probably double that, and see where it goes from there.

Not a simple answer, I know, and I'm sorry. But if I were to break it down, I think about 20 queens a season for this year, 20-30 queens for next season, and 10 a week for the following season. Do you think that is a good, yet slow and reasonable progression?


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## Joseph Clemens

I don't really have a firm recipe for pollen substitute, cause I make them a little different each time. Basically I make very small batches and start by adding about two-three pounds of dry sugar to a mixing bowl, then I stir in enough canola oil to wet the sugar (so to speak), next I mix in one pound of dry Bee Pro and one pound of dry brewers yeast, I sometimes also mix in a 1000mg crushed vitamin C tablet and about 1/4 lb of hemp protein powder. After all the dry ingredients are thoroughly blended, I then moisten the entire mass by pouring in a little 1:1 sugar syrup and mixing until the batch is like a thick cookie dough. I spoon it onto one end of a strip of waxed paper as I use it, then I fold the waxed paper over onto the lump of pollen substitute, push it into a flattened patty, between layers of waxed paper, then I cut several slits in the top of the formed patty and place the slit side down as I give it to the receiving colonies.

For patties I feed to my queen cell builder/finisher I substitute a pound of trehalose sugar for one of the three pounds used in the first stage, the mix with canola oil. I also make sure to use 1/2" mesh hardware cloth racks to place the patties on in the cell builder/finishers, the bees completely cover the patties on all sides, and they are usually consumed in a few days.

About every other batch of cells (I usually graft about fifteen cells per batch - one cell bar), I add another frame of nurse bees. If the cell builder looks too over-stuffed I sometimes remove a frame or two of bees and replace them with more fresh nurse bees from donor colonies, this is on top of the practice of keeping two frames of capped/emerging brood in the cell builder until about 2/3 of them have emerged, then replacing them with fresh frames of capped/emerging brood, but shaking the bees off (leaving them in the cell builder). I sometimes relocate cell builders, placing a weaker nuc in its place, in order to reduce the amount of older, field bees in the hive (to get a better idea how many nurse/house bees are actually there). If the population is greatly reduced by this, I simply shake in more nurse bees, again.


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## Specialkayme

I've never heard of anyone using trehalose sugar before. As a matter of fact, I didn't even know it existed, lol. A quick google search brought me up to date on it. Do you mind expanding a little on why you use it?

I've also had better success with Mega-bee than I have with Bee-Pro, but that's just personally. Then again, I havn't found an overall formula that works 100% of the time. 

How do you guys deal with feeding pollen substitute during the summer and spring months, when they are already foraging, especially when you are just adding SHB lures. Do you just provide a little bit, at all times that you raise queens? Or only for a few days beforehand?


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## Oldtimer

Can't comment on pollen substitutres. In the areas I've worked in there is always pollen coming in, I have never used a pollen substitute so have no experience. But as to feeding syrup, yes, if there is no flow, the finisher should be fed before the cells go in, probably at least 2 weeks before, to get them in the mood. It is not as complicated, or expensive, as it sounds. When I was doing large scale queen raising, we had a cell raising yard with a row of cell raisers, just a few sacks of sugar was all that was needed to be able to keep slow feeding them a pretty weak sugar mix over quite a long time period, just to make them think a flow was happening.
If you are using capped honey in the starters, a wet sponge is all that's needed to give them some water. Even without the wet sponge, the bees will dilute the mix using their own bodily reserves. But that is when they may start feeling the need to hold something back, and can be one of the things that starts tipping things towards smaller cells.


Specialkayme said:


> My desire is not only to get large queens, but large cells as well. My cells thus far have been small to average. My swarm cells are larger, which does tell me I'm not doing something right.


 It is VERY hard to consistantly raise cells that are as good as swarm cells. Swarm cells are raised in ideal conditions by bees who plan to do the best that can be done.


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## Specialkayme

But occasionally, from time to time, a few of your grafted cells are as large and robust as swarm cells, correct?

With all the feeding you did, was robbing ever a problem?


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## Michael Bush

The most important thing for getting great queens is that they are fed well. Raising queens where there is abundant food and in a hive with a high density of bees is the best way to insure this.

The second is that they are mated well. Again raising bees when there is abundant food usually insures there are abundant drones.

Next is letting them lay for three weeks before you cage or bank them. Preferable DON'T cage or bank them, introduce them as cells to the hive they will live in or combine your mating nuc with the hive they will live in.

Last is genetics. Breed from your best stock. Don't over complicate it. You know the bees you like. The ones that are thriving and making honey. Breed from those.


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## Oldtimer

Specialkayme said:


> But occasionally, from time to time, a few of your grafted cells are as large and robust as swarm cells, correct?


That was our aim, and was achieved quite often, but sometimes it's just not going to happen, but you'll still get a good queen. But cells that aren't up to a certain standard, and that is a matter of judgement, they should be culled.



Specialkayme said:


> With all the feeding you did, was robbing ever a problem?


No because they are strong hives. However we didn't take stupid risks that might cause robbing like leaving anything sweet in the open, or whatever.


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## Specialkayme

Michael Bush said:


> The most important thing for getting great queens is that they are fed well. Raising queens where there is abundant food and in a hive with a high density of bees is the best way to insure this.


I'd have to say that this is the largest challenge for me. I don't have much of a problem raising queens when pollen and nectar are coming in. Where it becomes difficult is when there isn't an abundant amount of food. 

I guess the easiest way to get around this is to ALWAYS have a sugar water feeder going, as well as some type of pollen substitute. Not only while the cells are being drawn out, but a few days or even a week before hand, to ensure really healthy nurse bees.



Michael Bush said:


> Next is letting them lay for three weeks before you cage or bank them.


So letting them lay within the mating nuc for three weeks AFTER they have mated, correct?



Oldtimer said:


> No because they are strong hives.


My question was centered more around the mating nucs than the starter/finishers. Did you have any robbing issues with smaller, mating nuc hives?


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## David LaFerney

I've had almost the exact same experience this year. I've mostly been using a queenless nuc starter/finisher like Joseph does. Although I haven't "I also shake in a few extra pounds of nurse bees I've harvested from several large colonies." didn't know about that step until now. 

I've also tried using a queenright finisher a couple of times, double grafted, primed with royal jelly that I harvested from 3 day old grafts (very high acceptance), primed with yogurt (rather poor acceptance), primed with 2-1 sugar syrup (works pretty good - probably the best return for the effort) but alas, no monster cells. Some nice queens though, even a few really big ones - once they've been laying a while.

So far I favor the queenless nuc starter/finisher - results for me have been at least as good as anything else, and it is so much easier that I graft more often.

I'm thinking a good accessory might be another queenless nuc just like it, but instead of using it to start cells, just swap out the brood frames every week, keep it over fed, and shake bees out of it into the actual starter finisher when it's time to graft.


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## RAK

If you need RJ go to Russell's website. As far as I know, he sells RJ for grafting...


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## Michael Bush

>So letting them lay within the mating nuc for three weeks AFTER they have mated, correct?

Let them lay uninterrupted. It doesn't matter if it's the nuc or the hive they will end up in, but they are best if they aren't caged or banked before at least three weeks of laying. They are better at 2 than at 1. A typical commercial queen gets caged as soon as they see eggs. A few places go longer, like Russel.


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## rrussell6870

Nutrition is the key... Spring is a completely different world than Summer is... Keep in mind that the northern flows and southern flows are completely different as well, so while we get our flows much earlier and they drag on until mid-late summer, the north has their flows all sort of kick in at once... Most breeders raise queens during the strong flows, then stop... so there is not a lot of teaching about how the different climates and seasons change the way you produce queens... You may have seen where I have advised people to "Keep yourself and your operation *flexible" this simply means that what works for one place and time, may (will) not work the same for another... So we adapt to fit the situation... Mike was exactly right about giving them plenty of time to lay, not just let them start, then cage them... but one thing that he said that may have slipped past most and is truly important is the Undisturbed part... one of our greatest struggles while dealing with so many public sells this season was that we could not do the "predictive caging" that the common commercial breeders do because we never open the nucs until they are supposed to be ready... a queen can shut down from being disturbed, causing them to stop laying for a period and the first period of time is the most important in her development... So when a breeder "peaks" in the nucs to see how they are doing, they are risking the queens most important development period... True enough, any nucs that do not get their queen back after a mating flight will be hurting by the time you come through to cage the others, and that can cause a lot of heart ache for a commercial operation... but "peaking" is just another word for "pushing" in the sense that the breeder wouldnt need to "peak" if they were not being "pushed" by the demand... this is where the thin line between quality queens and quality service is drawn, so keep in mind that "peaking" can leave you with an unhappy ending...

The following is a few cuts from the Summer Queen Rearing thread on my website, some of you may have seen it already, but I will post them here for those that have not... The intention of this thread was to show the change in the methods of queen rearing as the season changes... In the spring, you have a nice flow, so you have lots of open honey, and fresh pollen, moisture, and most importantly.. instinct... in those conditions you can raise cell easily, and I prefer the swarm box method with a strong finisher for that time... however, summer brings high heat, dryer honey, less incoming pollen, and the bees are much more spaced out throughout the hive... So I prefer the following method to address those changes and continue to produce awesome cells and queens straight through the summer months as well...

"""""""""""""Ok lets start discussing the pains of summer queen rearing... First hurdle to leap is the heat... The heat can effect your grafts by drying them out, your mating nucs by causing the bees to quickly abscond as well as causing them to become beetle food... 



So first lets address the grafting issue... Most use a warm damp cloth or paper towel over the cell bars as they graft to keep the larvae moist enough to prevent them from drying out... The time of day that you graft will have a lot a effect as well... In the 100+ degree days and 85+ degree nights of MS summers, I prefer to graft in the twilight hour so that the sun is not beating down on my grafts or my starters when I place them in... this also gives the bees enough daylight to accept the graft before dark and the starters (open flying for summer) are packed extra full at this time of day because the foragers have been returning home... So there is fresh pollen and nectar in many bellys in the starter... To graft, I prefer using one of our grafting trailers or the small shops that we have at some locations... and I prefer to prime my cells with pure royal jelly, fresh from the syringe right before I start to transfer... when transfering is complete, the grafts go straight into the starters... 

Cell bars primed with royal jelly...









Summer Cell Starters... usually 8 frame or 10 frame hives that are split down from double deeps to create singles that are overly packed with bees, but no queen... Simply take a double deep hive (doesnt have to be deeps, any brood configuration will work, just adjust the number of mediums to equal the same space as the deeps) that has one or two drawn and filled supers on it... set the supers aside and go through the deeps to locate the queen... place as much of the capped brood as you can into the bottom deep leaving one honey/pollen frame on the outer edges and one blank space in the center of that chamber... the queen and all other frames go into the top deep and that deep is set on a new stand facing the opposite direction... a full honey super is placed back on top of the original deep (which we will call the "starter" from now on) and another super will be set on the new hive that was started by the top deep (if you dont have a full super, you can feed to help them handle the large amounts of open brood)... You can not let the starter sit overnight without getting a graft into it... they will make e-cells if you do, and chances are, they will make e-cells no matter what... so be sure to thoroghly inspect for them on the 4th day and completely destroy each one that you find (if your take looks terrible, e-cells are the number one reason, so dig through and clear out the competition)... Now your starter will catch all of the foragers, and has tons of new bees constantly emerging, plenty of honey to feed the queen cells only, since you have removed the majority of open brood, and they will be a bit angry while they pile up everywhere and festoon everywhere... There is no need to reduce the entrance of a summer starter... that would just be cruel.. lol. Set this up in mid day, then graft and place your graft in the blank space that you made in the center sometime close to dark... I call it the twilight hour, the time period when the sun is not actually shining on you, but there is still plenty of light. Here is a few pics of Summer Cell Starters...









Here is an 8 frame that was just set up the way I described above, only there are no supers in this configuration and the "split" side of the hive is facing the same direction as the original... the left side is the original, the right side is where the queen, open brood, and a feeder are... in the left there is one blank space in the center, two frames of honey and pollen on the edges, and five frames of capped brood... and of course a TON of bees...









Continued in the next post...*


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## rrussell6870

Next are Cell Finishers... These are the same in spring and summer... They are simply very strong hives (if you have to, gather frames of capped brood from a few other hives to make the cell finishers as strong as you can... we use Sunkist for this, so they have plenty )... The best configuration for this is a double deep with a super of honey on top (or the equivalent in mediums)... You will need to locate the queen and once again move the capped brood to the bottom deep, However, this time you will want the queen to go down there as well... Put an excluder on top of that deep, and all of the open brood and honey should be in the top deep... pull two of the honey frames out and create two blank spaces in the center separated by one open brood frame... these two holes will allow you to finish your first grafts and your second graft... that is important... you always make your grafts at least two days in a row... 
Here are two cell finishers...









Now lets go over just how many cells can be started at once with this method... I would say that you can start anywhere from 1-88 cells in this starter... but since this is such an easy setup and you are going to be getting a few more colonies out of it anyway... I would recommend that you set up 2 starters and one finisher (unless you need a TON of queens)... let me break down a simple schedule that will allow you to produce extremely high quality queens in a very timely manner... You will need 4, 3 bar deep frames (mediums will be a bit different due to the frames only holding two bars at once)... graft 2 bars on the first day and place one on the top run of each of the two frames that you will place into your starters... the next day, ease those frames out and carefully transfer those to frames over to your finisher (one frame in each hole)... make the second graft that same day one two more bars and place those two bars in the other two frames that you have and slide them into your starters... the next day, ease those frames out of your starters and carefully pull the bars out and place them into the second grooves on the graft frames that were in the finisher... repeat this process one more day and place the last bars on the third groove of the graft frames in the finisher... this will have given you up to 126 excellent cells in 3 days... then you can take entire bars off when its time to plant the cells or hatch the virgins into California mini cages if you would like to visually inspect them before you plant them... 

To better describe the frames and the term "cell bars", here is a picture of two deep cell bar frames... each has three cell bars on it... I strongly recommend color coordinating your grafts, so in the case that this picture shows, the first graft would be in amber (yellow) cups, second day would be Red cups, and third day would be smoke cups... again, this method would be using two bars each day and the two bars would be started in different starter, and then finished on different frames in the finisher...









I do not recommend returning the starters to a queen-right condition until after you are certain that you have all of the queens that you want... remember that there are many variables that will come into play here... you may get a perfect take on your graft and every cell may hatch perfectly, but then the queens get eaten by birds while trying to mate... This is the chaos factor of queen rearing... if it can go wrong, it will... So tomorrow's posts will be geared more towards being prepared for the unforeseen, as well as setting up mating nucs in a way that keeps you from having to get new equipment and keeps you from having to use up your bee resources...""""""""""""

Returning to your original question, did you move the open brood up and the capped brood down in your finisher? 

Hope this helps!


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## Oldtimer

Nice posts Robert. I especially like that summer starter idea, how long do you keep using that starter?


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## Specialkayme

rrussell6870 said:


> Returning to your original question, did you move the open brood up and the capped brood down in your finisher?


Yes I did. And I even used the sunkist hive as the finisher, lol.

On a side note, what's the last date that you would recommend someone in central NC graft? I was thinking about doing one last batch (I ordered some Royal Jelly off your site today, as well as some pollen substitute from Brushy Mountain) but I'm afraid I wouldn't have enough time to provide proper nutrition, graft, start, finish, and mate all the queens as well as giving them enough time to get a few cycles of brood out in order to overwinter. I wouldn't be concerned about starting now if I was going to re-queen with them, but i was hoping to let them start their own 5 frame nuc.

I'm going to spend the rest of the day sitting down and thoroughly reading this thread again, and then hopefully I'll compile a day-by-day analysis of what I should be doing.


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## Specialkayme

So I made a "Calendar" so to speak. It's basically a rip off the website one, only I added a little bit of information that I gathered from this thread (and Russell's, on his site). Tell me what you guys think:


Day 0 - Start feeding hives that the nurse bees for the starter come from with 1:1 sugar water with HBH and Pollen Substitute
Day 1 – The egg is laid by the queen mother
Day 2 – 
Day 3 – 
Day 4 – Graft 12-24 hour-old larvae into cell cups (primed with a drop of royal jelly). Spring: make up a five frame queen-less nuc, with two frames of un-capped honey and two frames of pollen. Add pollen substitute (if needed) and a wet sponge. Pack in four pounds of nurse bees. Add grafts and let sit overnight. Summer: Add grafts to a queen-less full hive, which contains no open brood. Add a feeder and pollen substitute if needed.
Day 5 – Check your grafts: the bees should have started to draw out the cells and feed the larvae with royal jelly. If not, re-graft. Move grafts into a cell finisher (full hive with capped brood and queen on bottom under a queen excluder). Add 1:1 sw and ps if needed.
Day 6 – 
Day 7
Day 8 – Cull all cells that are capped (too early), those that are not 100% filled with RJ, or are mis-shapen or small.
Day 9 – Queen cells are capped
Day 10 – Sensitive developmental phase – do not move cells and be very gentle when opening the hive
Day 11 – Sensitive developmental phase – do not move cells and be very gentle when opening the hive
Day 12 – Sensitive developmental phase – do not move cells and be very gentle when opening the hive
Day 13 – Move the capped queen cells into mating nucs
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16 – Queens hatch
Day 17
Day 18 – Discard any un-hatched cells
Day 19
Day 20
Day 21 – Potential Mating Flights
Day 22 – Potential Mating Flights
Day 23 – Potential Mating Flights
Day 24 – Potential Mating Flights
Day 25 – Potential Mating Flights
Day 26 – Potential Mating Flights
Day 27
Day 28
Day 29
Day 30
Day 31
Day 32
Day 33
Day 34 
Day 35
Day 36
Day 37 – Check Nuc for eggs/larvae


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## Oldtimer

It's pretty good. Only I'd add a few more days for the mating flights. How do I know that? There can be solid rain on those two days, and they'll still mate.


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## Specialkayme

Lol, I thought I'd get called out on that. 

I know the flights occur on more than those days. It's more like an approximation. It's what was on that on-line calendar and I didn't feel like typing "Potential Mating Flights" about 6 more times. But hey, in the interests of completeness, I'll go back and change it.

The important point is that you discard un-hatched cells on day 18, then don't touch them until the 37th. It's good to keep in mind that they are flying more than just two days though.

So the preparation of the hives, the nutrition, and the feeding all look good?


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## rrussell6870

Looks pretty good... the only thing that I would say is that you may find the bees moving a bit ahead of your schedule during the summer, so again, stay flexible... also, set up you mating nucs strong enough to keep them going if a cell doesn't hatch... like I said, I try not to disturb them for the full cycle, so my nucs have to be strong enough to miss a turn every once in a while... due to high heat, I usually hatch virgins in a hatchery frame, then plant virgins that I have physically inspected.... they are planted in the same California mini cages that they were hatched in... leave them caged for a day, then pull the cell and let them walk out... after that, I don't touch them until its time to cage... the mini cages that are used to hatch them are impregnated with the pheromones from the hatchery... so acceptance is really good... I have sent you a few gifts, so you can try this out for yourself to see if it works for you.

Ps, what is the reason for feeding hbh?


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## Specialkayme

rrussell6870 said:


> you may find the bees moving a bit ahead of your schedule during the summer, so again, stay flexible...


It's important to remember that beekeeping is more of an art than a science. My professors always told me, we write all these books about bees, but they never read them. They don't always follow the books.

Keeping that in mind, I'm planning on staying VERY flexible, and responding more to the needs of the situation than necessarily my "schedule." But what parts do you see varying, for example?



rrussell6870 said:


> set up you mating nucs strong enough to keep them going if a cell doesn't hatch...


The mating nucs are by far the hardest part for me at the moment (other than great nutrition to create amazing cells). Too small and they ignore the cell, too large and they may swarm. It's something that I need alot more work on, but I'm sure I'll get it down after a few cycles. Next summer, I plan on keeping the mating nucs going throughout the spring, and every three weeks (or so) putting in a new cell. This time around, though, I only think I'll be able to get one more batch of queens out before I need to give them time to produce populations necessary to overwinter. I plan on using this batch of queens to make overwinter nucs from, not to re-queen with.



rrussell6870 said:


> due to high heat, I usually hatch virgins in a hatchery frame, then plant virgins that I have physically inspected ... the mini cages that are used to hatch them are impregnated with the pheromones from the hatchery... so acceptance is really good...


I don't think I'm familiar with a hatchery. I'm familiar with an incubator, and a queen banking frame, but not a hatchery. Can you explain it a little?

Once again, thank you so much for all of the help and guidance. By the way, how's that book of yours coming along? Mr. Bush ended up publishing his . . . no pressure or anything, lol.


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## ginn68

Great posts everyone. I have been off the forum for a few days, so trying to catch up. I am in the same boat as Specialkayme. I completed two grafts off of a Russell SKC breeder. I should have tought ahead and ordered some royal jelly with the breeder from Robert. I am kicking around the idea of grafting one more time, but I am also concerned with the up coming fall in the mountains of north Georgia. I wanted to use the daughters off of the breeder to head up my drone hives next spring. Keep the info coming. I'm all ears.

Oh yeah, I want to nail down the process of "great" queens by the time I introduce my Moon Beam stock next year. I hope it will be the icing on the cake to my genetic structure.


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## rrussell6870

A hatchery frame is simlpy a queen bank that has openings large enough for ripe cells to fit into them. The cells are placed into the cages and the frame is placed into a queenless hive that has been pumped full of open honey and fresh pollen... the queens can be taken when they are needed, but do not leave them more than a few days... the sooner they get into nucs, the better.

Here is a pic of one that uses california mini cages... it will hold up to 42 cells/queens... very simple to make using a standard frame, piece of 1/4" plywood, and a few divided bottom bars... sure, it could be made much more sturdy, but I honestly prefer them to be as flimsy as possible because it FORCES my staff members to be extra gentle... which is a great skill for any bee keeper to master. lol.


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## Specialkayme

Lol, that's actually what I thought a hatchery was.

I can see how important they would be to a larger producer, or if you were attempting to select queens for a visual characteristic like size or color, but how useful are they for the small producer? Or is their use more beneficial in getting mating nucs to accept a virgin queen, rather than a cell?


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## rrussell6870

High heat in the summer sun, sweat in your eyes while handling cells to plant in the nucs... are just a few reasons to hatch the cells as virgins first... sure cells are easier to get accepted, but when the summer time crunch kicks in, using virgins can save you a few days in each cycle... for the small producer, using virgins instead of cells means that you will not have to check in the nucs to see if cells hatched, or risk the resources that you used to stock the nuc if you do not check the cells... it also means that you can pick the queens that you want to mate using visual inspections before planting (such as size, color, marking, vigor, and even how the bees some as opposed to others)... and you will also have the "reserve" virgins from the consecutive grafts to use in case of an emergency, or to stock a few more nucs with as you go along... when the virgins are too old for your liking, you can use them to create swarm lures, or to keep queenless hives/nucs from starting cells until you can supply another queen, etc... hope this helps...


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## Specialkayme

Yes, actually. It helps alot. I'll read up about hatcheries a bit more, and plan on using them next year. Thanks yet again!


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## David LaFerney

Specialkayme said:


> Next summer, I plan on keeping the mating nucs going throughout the spring, and every three weeks (or so) putting in a new cell.


That's exactly what I've done this year, but I've come to the conclusion that the ones that fail to make a queen need all new frames of brood before the next try - at least after the hive beetles get cranking. Just a few too many days of queenlessness, and they can go from being alright to melting down.

The hatchery frame would also prevent what happened to my last batch of cells - an early bloomer killed the lot of them, and left me with the quandry of finding a virgin in a crowded hive or letting her have it. I chose B.


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## RayMarler

Some very great informative postings here, thanks everyone. I would like to add one thing that I do here, that I did not notice in all the previous postings here...

I make up my cell builder 4 days ahead of the grafting, and it contains one frame with a good portion of eggs. In 4 days, I go in and remove that frame and destroy all the queen cells and give it to another hive. Then I insert my grafted cell bars in it's place. This gives me a hopelessly queenless cell builder with a full force of nurse bees actively producing royal jelly! I get much larger well built cells this way and I think it's because the nurse bees are actively producing royal jelly in the starter when I insert the cell bar.


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## rrussell6870

Ray, that is one of the exact reasons that I recommend grafting each day for at least three days, and another good reason to use a hatchery to examine the queens from each batch before selecting the ones that you wish to mate... this method is described in the paragraph just below the picture of the two cell finishers... thanks for pointing that out. It's the same principle of the nurses being in "cell building mode" for the second and third grafts, and thus sometimes those cells are better than the ones before...


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## Specialkayme

rrussell6870 said:


> I have sent you a few gifts, so you can try this out for yourself to see if it works for you.





Specialkayme said:


> I'll read up about hatcheries a bit more, and plan on using them next year.


Or perhaps I'll try them this season, lol. Thanks so much Robert.



rrussell6870 said:


> I recommend grafting each day for at least three days, and another good reason to use a hatchery to examine the queens from each batch before selecting the ones that you wish to mate...


I know I've gone over this before, but for some reason I'm not really getting it. If you wish to make 30 queen cells, putting a bar of 10 cups in per day, for three days would work great. That would leave you with (at least for the non-professional breeder) with about 10-15 queens in the end (70-80% success rates in drawing out, hatching, and mating). But what if you only want to end up with a handful of queens in the end, say 3-5. If you used the same math in reverse, you only need to graft around 10-12 cups. With that few amount of grafts, are you better off using the method that Ray described (a frame of eggs, three or four days before you place your grafts), or would you be better off doing three rounds of say five grafts a round? Or would you be better off still grafting 30 cups, doing three rounds as you described, culling the ones you don't need early (and harvesting their RJ for the next round), and putting the rest in a hatchery for visual inspection before planting?

I also don't have much experience planting a virgin into a mating nuc. Is it done the same way you would introduce a queen, for example? Giving the hive three days to get used to the virgin before you release her from the california cage? The only reason I ask is that I know the sooner you get her into the mating nuc, the better. So I'm hesitant to hold her back by three days.

One last thing I was hoping to pick your brain about is the difference between priming cells in the summer, and double grafting. Priming the cells would obviously be more work up front, but less work overall (as priming isn't really that big of a deal). But double grafting would theoretically provide "fresher" royal jelly. If you had a fresh source of royal jelly (or perhaps you purchased some from a reputable apiary ), priming makes sense. But if you don't have any on hand, would double grafting not only "prime" the cups, but also accomplish the goal of getting the hives into "cell building mode" as you described above?


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## Specialkayme

One other side mention, apart from the topic of this thread. I'm waiting on some HBH and pollen substitute from Brushy Mountain to come in. Once it's in, I'll start feeding the "soon to be" starter colony, then doing my last batch of grafts for the season. Hopefully they will be able to emerge and mate with enough time to get them through the winter. I have a feeling I'll be making up quite a bit of fondant this late fall, lol.


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## rrussell6870

Not much time now, so I will have to get back to the other questions a bit later, but wanted to go ahead and answer at least the double grafting question... double grafting is ok for getting the girls in cell building mode, but not something that I would recommend for summer queen rearing as the jelly that the last larvae was floating on will be viewed as unnatural by the bees, and either be eaten (along with your new larvae) or they will start a new layer of jelly on top of it and the old jelly will only serve as a new cell floor... this is why we only use a tiny amount of jelly to prime the cells... less for the bees to have to clean up or work around, but serves its purpose of acting as a pillow to lay the larvae on, keep the larvae fed from the needle to the fresh jelly, and keep the larvae moist during that time as well... 

I am not a fan of the hbh idea, simply because it messes up the natural guttural health if the bees... if they are healthy and feeding on natural forage, I wouldn't want to throw in any essential oils that bees wouldn't naturally bring in to the hive, especially during queen rearing... that's not saying that it would hurt anything, but it seems to me that a natural diet (even considering cane syrup more natural in this case) would be better in the long run... I have had customers that have touched queen cages with a dab of hbh and watched their queens and attendants go belly up immediately... so it stands to reason that during the process of providing the very most optimal nutrition for the bees to feed the most important larvae at its most critical stage, you would want to stick with what bees have chosen to use for their nutritional sources for the last hundred million years... just give them more of it, more access to it, and more bees to administer it... does that make sense? I'm not knocking hbh, as I feel it has its uses, but I personally just wouldnt use it during queen rearing or on selection stock.


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## Michael Bush

Actually it's not pollen that makes well fed queens, it's bee bread. If you kill the microbes, and HBH will, then you won't get bee bread, you'll just have indigestible pollen.


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## Joseph Clemens

I agree with you Ray, I inadvertently discovered the same effect, about this time last year (see "Larger queen cells - do they produce larger queens?"). I admit that I haven't always used it, since it is logistically sometimes difficult and I haven't noticed a significant difference in queens produced in the larger cells -- though significant differences may exist. I just haven't kept any careful records or even done any make-shift homemade experiments. It's just from casual observations that I make that comment. I have seen smaller queens produced from what I consider undersized cells, so I've taken to culling any cells that I consider undersized, though occasionally smaller queens appear anyway. Casual observation does tell me that consistently large mature laying queens are produced from those larger, well-provisioned cells.

Here is a pic taken of a bar of the larger cells, that are dark brown. I'll make a controversial speculation that they're composed of beeswax tainted with propolis, that has been, for whatever reason, recycled by the bees.


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## Specialkayme

Some very nice looking cells Joe!

As far as HBH goes, I've never used it before. I've heard both good and bad about their uses. I wasn't sold on using it this season (or really next season) until I read all the responses on here about how well it works to build cells. Having not had anyone say anything bad about it, I figured it was good to go.

I'll skip the HBH this time around, and reconsider it for next year. Hopefully, I can do a side by side analysis of cell builders with and without HBH. I doubt I'll have the resources for that though, lol. I guess that all depends on how many queens I can pump out in the next couple of days.

Russell - I know generally you are against feeding . . . at all. I wish I had the option. I have too many prolonged periods of no nectar, or no pollen. Often this time of year while they bring in pollen, it's from weeds and of little nutritional value (or so I've read). While I will go with you on the HBH, as it makes perfect sense, what are your thoughts on the use of pollen supplements in queen rearing?


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## ginn68

Robert,

Thanks for the reminder on the poor Sunkists that lost their life due to the hbh exposure. I forgot about that. Good times. Live and learn.


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## David LaFerney

I was planning on grafting this morning, but instead I put a frame of eggs/larva in the cell builder I've been prepping. I love this stuff.


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## rrussell6870

Specialkayme said:


> Russell - I know generally you are against feeding . . . at all. I wish I had the option. I have too many prolonged periods of no nectar, or no pollen. Often this time of year while they bring in pollen, it's from weeds and of little nutritional value (or so I've read). While I will go with you on the HBH, as it makes perfect sense, what are your thoughts on the use of pollen supplements in queen rearing?


I'm not TOTALLY against feeding... it is of course a far better choice than starvation, and can be used to assist in comb building... Its just counter productive as far as good natural health goes, and people will find that simply promoting a truly natural diet will greatly lower their losses to pests, diseases, and even winter... that being said, if one takes too much honey away from a hive, it must be replaced with whatever is available if they want to prevent winter losses... so most of the time, its a give and take situation that creates the need to feed.

As for the use of pollen substitutes during queen rearing, if its needed, it has to be done, but one the only good things about summer queen rearing is that your hives should already be well provisioned with pollen, so locating a few frames filled with it should be easy enough... again, thats where using a fresh split as a starter and a heavy queen right finisher come into play... the crowded split starter has plenty of provisions and has a huge foraging force for the space that have and less brood to feed than usual... so they have ample supply and means to distribute it...


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## rrussell6870

MB, my point exactly... 

Ginn,  I had forgotten who that was last year. Lol. Sorry about that, but dont feel bad, its happened with three other people this season... I think the terms "healthy" and "natural" are used too loosely by the hbh marketing... its not anything that a bee would find in nature, so it seems a bit misleading to call it a "natural" "dietary supplement"... my greatest fear about hbh and any compounds of multiple essential oils is that while it seems to help at first, in time the pests are building immunities to the low concentrations of each oil used in the ingredients, and the bees are losing their immunities to bacterial, viral, and predation threats at the same time... bee keeping is one of those things that can get better with every season, or get worse and worse... what we do now, will ultimately effect what we get out of our bees in the future.


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## Specialkayme

ginn68 said:


> Thanks for the reminder on the poor Sunkists that lost their life due to the hbh exposure.


Ginn, can you expand upon that? I don't think I've heard this story.


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## Specialkayme

rrussell6870 said:


> I'm not TOTALLY against feeding... people will find that simply promoting a truly natural diet will greatly lower their losses to pests, diseases, and even winter...


I must say that it is shocking that such a large queen producer as yourself is so against feeding. I don't know many commercial operators personally, but from what I read about them they usually heavily feed in order to get the hives going earlier in the spring, and push them a little bit later in the fall. At least, as far as pollinator and queen rearing operators go.

These past couple years I've relied heavily on feeding. I can't really tell you why, other than the area I'm in isn't exactly a Utopia for bees, and I'm also probably pushing them a little bit harder than I should. Lessons to be learned there. But I wish I had a week (or a year) to follow you around your yards Russell, I think there's a lot to be learned.

High up on my list of things to get is a pollen catcher. This way I can actually just feed pollen straight back to the hive if need be. It's a shame those things are so expensive though, and an even bigger shame that you can't build them yourself (at least, I havn't found a decent plan around).

As far as your summer starter method goes, I do have a question for you. Essentially, you are leaving all sealed brood and the foragers of a hive in the old location, while removing the queen and the open brood and putting it in a new location, correct? Wouldn't most of the nurse bees be on the frames of open brood? So wouldn't you be transferring all the nurse bees that you want AWAY from the grafts, which is the opposite of what you want to do? If you shake a few frames of nurse bees into the cell starter, wouldn't that deprive the open brood frames of both food (from the foragers) and nurse bees? Or am I just thinking things are a little bit more complicated than they actually are. I realize that the sealed brood will emerge, giving the starter more nurse bees, but that would take a few days at least (and yes, I realize this is where the "multiple days of grafts" comes into play).

You also mention about using double deeps. I use mediums. You mentioned using the "equivalent of mediums." Most would consider this two mediums (which is actually one and a half deeps, but neither here nor their). Wouldn't it be better to use only ONE medium? With a swarm box, you try to crowd as many into a small area as you can, so wouldn't the theory go the same for the summer open hive starter?


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## rrussell6870

I think you will find that contrary to popular teachings, foragers can and will return to the jobs that the hive needs... so the mass numbers of foragers that will be now squished into half the space that they once had will provide plenty of added hands on deck... also, keep in mind that summer is different than spring in laying patterns as well... in spring the queen has whole frames that she can lay in one day and they will generally emerge that way as well, giving her the whole frame again, less what ever nectar or pollen the bees rush in to put away in the frame... but during the summer, the brood cycles have already taken ups and downs, thus creating odd ages of brood, for example, as brood is emerging and stores are used up on one frame, the queen may be laying in the freshly emptied cells, then moving to the next frame, only to return to that original frame the next day, etc... this means that brood on a single frame may emerge on different days, even if it is all capped when you look at it... so a hive body with one frame of open brood (as much large larvae as possible) and a ton of capped brood frames will have new nurses emerging by the hundreds to thousands every day in a continuous manner... once you set up this configuration, you may be surprised at just how fast this starter becomes a booming box of bees, rolling all over the place, confused, and driven by the most dominant instinct that this situation creates... make a queen. 

On the deep vs medium issue, it really doesn't matter, but if you have 4 mediums stacked up with brood in three and you take away two of the brood boxes, you will have so many bees stuck outside that it just seems like a waste... what I would do in that situation is leave two brood boxes and move some of the unnecessary brood into the center of the honey super, and move the honey frames into the outer edges of the top brood box of the starter... then the split gets some extra brood and the starter get some extra food...

As to the feeding, those guys not only produce queens, but also a honey crop... I on the other hand get others to extract honey from my hives for themselves just so I can get the empty comb back and to save my back from having to lift so many loaded supers from hives so that I can reach the chambers... I also open feed supers back to the yards in spring to make the hives smaller and accomplish the same goal as feeding, just without risking the health of my bees... there are several differences in my operation as opposed to some others, and the biggest one is that I do not Have to treat my bees to keep them alive... not that I am against it, or against feeding, again, what I'm truly against is dead bees... if they need to be treated or fed, do what must be done, but if you don't have to, why do it? I am required by state law to treat every colony that produces a package or nuc... so I test every single one and only treat at thresholds that are bit below the minimal accepted threshold or more, which are very very few... like MB and I say so often, you don't want to mess up the microbes that come from a creature feeding on what it is naturally meant to feed on... Messing up the microbes of a creature by substitution diets is like a human living off of cornogs and beer (yep, those were the days , sure they will be able to survive... at least until flu season comes along or until they need to physically protect themselves from a burglar... and how about their mental health and work ethics? How would they be effected by this type of diet... keeping them from starving, absolutely... building comb outside of a flow, sure... building up early to be prepared to catch a flow, ok... feeding straight through the season or taking off ALL of the honey for extracting and replacing it with syrup, waste of money on sugar and replacement bees down the road... feeding is also partially to blame for robbing losses... not just because feeding can start robbing, but also because robbing is mainly due to a hive(s) building up for a flow that isn't actually there, so when the feeding slows, the hives that are built up have to find feed some where... the other difference is simply good bees and great locations.


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## ginn68

I had a great idea at the time to wipe some 1:1 syrup w/HBH (Per HBH mixing guidlines)onto the wire of the cages. I thought this could help in the acctepance of the queens. I did this while I was gearing up to make the spilts. Once I was ready (15 min. later) to do the splits I reviewed the queens and they all were curled up dead. Dang... It was a real eye opener for me.

Just to give some back ground on my operation. I run around 30-50 hives a year. Off of these I sell honey and nucs. Do I feed yes, but less and less every year. I don't feel it is the best balance for the bee's. Do I treat...I haven't in three years. I do measure mite counts and general data from each hive. I use this data for selection on my stock year to year. I am currently starting queen rearing. I have a lot to learn. My focus is quality queens at a lower volume. From how my first couple graft went...it might be at a very low volume. LOL...


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## Specialkayme

Interesting thoughts Russell.

I stopped treating all together 6 years ago. I've lost some to varroa, but since I have so few hives to start with it doesn't really matter that much. I see DWV in a few of my hives from time to time (last check, there was one or two in three of my hives), but all in all it doesn't freak me out too much. 

I would like to stop feeding, at least as much as I am, at some point in the next few years. I think I need to learn how to better manage the bees before I do that though. That, and learn how to get what I want out of the bees (queens or honey, not both from the same hive) while letting them prosper.

It's so easy to get caught up in the mindset of "Better nutrition = better hives. So feed them better and they will make better bees." In actuality, they have been feeding themselves for millions of years. I just need to select for the ones that are the best at feeding themselves.


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## Joseph Clemens

Now that we've had some more rain, the creosote bush is starting to bloom heavily, again and I'm getting some more of those nice extra-large sized cells.

















I believe this is happening due to the combination of the small creosote bush flow, supplemental feeding, and just before these cells were grafted I added the nurse bees off of two frames of just hatched eggs of young larvae.

-------------------------------
The only treatments I've ever used are spraying idle combs with Certan, or the equivalent. And I sometimes add a little copper gluconate to sugar syrup fed to some nucs as they are being created, if there is no flow and they are low on carbohydrate stores.


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## ginn68

Joseph,

Awesome cells. I could snap a picture of one of my cells from last weekends graft. But my camera can't zoom in that close. Lol. No flow here. Getting some rj this week and I plan to do some more grafts next week. I plan to supplement feed and hope for some monsters like yours. Is that cell from your skc breeder?


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## Joseph Clemens

Yes this cell is from one of my SKC mother queens. I am using a borrowed Samsung SL620 camera with 12.2 megapixel resolution. I use a large capacity memory card, set the camera to its maximum resolution, use macro focus, then I copy the original images to my laptop, edit and crop the pics so they are suitable for forum posting, copy them to Google's Picasa web albums, then link the pics from there.


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## David LaFerney

Joseph - I have 2 questions.

How many grafts were in that batch?

Do you give a water source directly to your starter finisher - like a sponge or something - or do you just let the foragers bring it in from outside the hive?

As usual I have cell envy from your pictures.


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## Broke-T

"I am required by state law to treat every colony that produces a package or nuc... so I test every single one and only treat at thresholds that are bit below the minimal accepted threshold or more, which are very very few"

Robert, where is that law? I have seen nothing that says you must treat every hive, only that you can't sell diseased hives.

Johnny


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## rrussell6870

Rules of MS Dept of Ag and Commerce.... Chapter 06- Bee Disease Regulations, 101, 101.05, 103 (b).


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## Joseph Clemens

That one was from a JZsBZs 15 cell bar, but there were three ripe ones (the oldest three - started from a different mother queen) with another ten a day away from being capped, and another bar of 15 was just started on the opposite side of the cell builder. So, cells of several different ages are in there all at the same time, and from different mother queens. I've marked each MQ colony with a particular color thumbtack, and I use the same colors to track the daughters throughout their production. I place a colored thumbtack on the cell bars, and then on each mating nuc where the cells are planted.

No, I don't use an internal water source. I don't ever confine the bees in my cell builders. I keep lots of water sources nearby -- koi pond, evaporative cooler, micro-sprinkler timed automatic irrigation system, and several plastic buckets of water with sticks floating in them. And, of course, when there isn't a moderate-strong flow on, I keep a quart of 1:1 sugar syrup in there, inverted, and with a few small holes in its lid.

Here is a photo of the remainder of those cells on that bar. I placed all that were ready yesterday and these were recently sealed, so will be ready to place in a few more days -->


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## RayMarler

Yes Joseph Clemens, I remember your posting. 
I've noticed in past years that the second round always seemed to come out better. I seem to remember reading somewhere about setting up the cell builders before hand with a frame of eggs/larva that were removed as the grafts put in, but can't remember where. Then I read your posting and so started doing it this way this year. I've liked the results so far. Thank you!


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## David LaFerney

Joseph Clemens- this is still 5 medium frames in a deep hive body, correct?


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## David LaFerney

rrussell6870 said:


> Rules of MS Dept of Ag and Commerce.... Chapter 06- Bee Disease Regulations, 101, 101.05, 103 (b).


Just curious - taking into account that all producers aren't in the same class of experise, do you agree with the spirit of those requirements?t:


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## Joseph Clemens

Yes, deep, 5-frame nuc box. Actually, three frames of honey/pollen/sealed-emerging brood, one foundationless frame. I need to leave the fifth frame out to make space for my narrow cell bars. Sometimes I'll use a two-level cell bar frame. But I usually only use them when I need a lot more cells than I do right now. There's room for thirty cells in the two-level cell bar frames.


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## Joseph Clemens

Rules of MS Dept of Ag and Commerce.... Chapter 06- Bee Disease Regulations, 101, 101.05, 103 (b)

According to that document, a commercial beekeeper is defined as having fifty or more managed colonies. Apparently non-commercial beekeepers are not required to register their apiaries, but may choose to do so. I wonder if these rules are intended to apply to both commercial and non-commercial beekeepers, alike? I don't see any specifics regarding that idea.


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## Specialkayme

Joe, yet again you have some very nice cells going on there. Kudos. 

I'm feeling a bit under the weather today, so I'm taking the day off. Tomorrow afternoon I'll be moving two of my parent hives back to my back yard. Having your grafts in a yard an hour away doesn't really work out when you want to add new grafts daily. Hopefully, on Tuesday I'll be able to do my last set of grafting for the season. Russell's royal jelly is sitting in the fridge just waiting


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## Kingfisher Apiaries

Broke-T said:


> "I am required by state law to treat every colony that produces a package or nuc... so I test every single one and only treat at thresholds that are bit below the minimal accepted threshold or more, which are very very few"
> 
> Robert, where is that law? I have seen nothing that says you must treat every hive, only that you can't sell diseased hives.
> 
> Johnny


I though Russell Apiaries was treatment free????
MIke


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## rrussell6870

Mike, there are several different operations within my one operation... ie.. queen production, package production, nuc production, and research... each have different locations (vastly spread out) and each have different management needs of course. Yes, our queens are treatment free... packages and nucs are from hives that have either been treated or were tested and found to be well below the legal required threshold.

Here is a thread from the treatment free forum that may help describe the differences a bit further... this link is to a later post, so read further back in the thread to get the full idea.

http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...ment-Free-Queens-Packages-Bees-and-Nucs/page4


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## rrussell6870

David, I think that the law and the science have not truly caught up with one another yet... the idea behind the law has good intentions in that it was imposed to keep pests and disease from being spread... however, the science for truly defeating the pests and diseases was not taken into account. In all it serves its purpose and is not really so much of a burden as one may think... I am not against the idea of addressing a problem, and readily act when one is present, so its more or less simply a formality and the wording of the law actually leaves the legal authority open to the interpretation of the particular circumstances of each case... the law doesn't actually make it clear that EVERY colony must be treated, although it does suggest that because it says that they must be treated unless they are "free from" pests, which as we all know is not very likely even after treatment... in the case of queens, we all know that its extremely unlikely that something could be passed along, but that fact is not covered by this law... what it all boils down to is the producer must have an understanding of what would be transmittable and in what methods they can be transferred... then a strict policy of testing and control must be implemented...


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## rrussell6870

Joseph Clemens said:


> According to that document, a commercial beekeeper is defined as having fifty or more managed colonies. Apparently non-commercial beekeepers are not required to register their apiaries, but may choose to do so. I wonder if these rules are intended to apply to both commercial and non-commercial beekeepers, alike? I don't see any specifics regarding that idea.




From the legal definitions...
4. “Commercial Beekeeper” – Person or persons owning and/or managing 50 or
more colonies of bees for the purpose of:
a. Producing honey
b. Producing package bees and/or queen bees for sale or use by other
beekeepers.
c. Providing pollination services for a fee
d. Resale within the year.
e. *Person(s) owning and/or managing less than 50 colonies of bees for any
purpose so described above, except for honey production alone shall
be deemed a commercial apiarist*.

This is the way that MS law determines the difference between a commercial operation and a non-commercial... By these standards, a guy with one hive who sells a queen or a nuc from that hive is considered a commercial bee keeper... again its just an issue of non-spicific regulations which are usually left up to the determination of the particular case, but leave the option of enforcement of any and every individual completely up to the state officials... can be dangerous, can be helpful... it just depends on the integrity of the parties involved, both state official and bee keeper alike.


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## Joseph Clemens

Thanks Dr. Russell, apparently I overlooked paragraph 4.e. looks like my reading skills are growing weak. I think it's interesting how Mississippi has gone to the trouble of putting together guidelines/rules such as those. I'm still looking to see if there are any like that, here in Arizona -- I think I'll call Carl Hayden Bee Lab in the morning and ask them if they can point me in the right direction. I did some web searches of Dept. of Ag., etc., but haven't found anything, yet.


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## Joseph Clemens

Cultured queen cells growing nicely:








I especially appreciate how they are becoming well-provisioned with royal jelly.


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## bluegrass

In nature, bees raise three types of queens, Emergency and Supercedure. As a general, rule many beekeeps avoid using Emergency queens to head up their colonies. But it strikes me that in order to raise queens, we simulate an emergency situation by making the starter colony queenless and there by force the bees to raise Emergency queens. A better option would be to simulate a supercedure situation and raise queens on a queen right hive, like Bro Adam did.

I also have to concur that bigger isn't necessarily better; I officially step forward as an advocate for tiny little bantam queens.


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## Specialkayme

Nice looking cells Joe. Two observations from that picture: 1) you are using a JZBZ cell bar holder. Do you like it? 2) you don't leave much room below the cells, or is that just for the photo?


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## Kingfisher Apiaries

Specialkayme said:


> Nice looking cells Joe. Two observations from that picture: 1) you are using a JZBZ cell bar holder. Do you like it? 2) you don't leave much room below the cells, or is that just for the photo?


From what it looks like he just set the frame on the top bars....
I have used one of those bars before...work good! I need to get some !
mike


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## David LaFerney

Took this yesterday - grafts from SKC queen - right at 48 hrs old. At this point they are fairly comparable to Josephs, but I bet his end up being 1/4 longer.

Although on second look, mine look like his poorer ones.


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## Specialkayme

They look good to me David!

I just did my first round of grafting about an hour ago. I know Russell will be pissed at me, but I caved and ended up feeding them some pollen sub and a pint of sugar water (although, I did without the HBH this go around). I figured if they didn't want it, they wouldn't eat it.

I'll check on them tomorrow when I do my second round of grafts (thinking about doing three total rounds, about 10 cells per round). Hopefully I'll have great pictures to share with you guys!


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## rrussell6870

Pissed?? No way! Lol. I use open or scratched honey comb and at least 1 (usually several) frames filled solid with pollen (bee bread) to feed my starters, but I'm also in MS where 90-99% humidity is common and I use the full hive split method when it gets really really hot, so they are free flying and there are always ponds, creeks and rivers around for plenty of water... giving them 1:1 will raise the moisture levels which is probably going to be a necessity for your climate, and certainly for Joe's... so you guys are doing exactly what you should do... as for the pollen substitute, if you need to use it, by all means, do so... you are also doing right by not using the hbh... you've got this man, now let's see some pics of some pretty cells and ladies!


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## Specialkayme

Lol, I thought you were going to flip over the pollen sub, not necessarily the 1:1. They have a few frames of pollen, so I don't think they will need the sub, but I felt it was a "better safe than sorry" kinda thing (although, you can't really call feeding them playing it safe).


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## rrussell6870

No worries. True pollen and nectar are of course the best for "Moving from ok queens...to Great queens". Lol. But summer queen rearing presents many challenges that are rarely discussed in books because its something that has generally not been a common practice of large queen producers... in general, queen producers get as many queens mated as possible during spring and early summer, while banking as many as they could... then they stop rearing queens and rotate their manpower back to the honey harvest... more northern producers mate a bit later since they still have a flow and they start later than the southern producers... but for the south, summer is very tricky... you evaluate what you need and make adjustments so you can give the best situation that you can under the circumstances..."stay flexible" and make notes on your calendar of what you experience this season... that way you can make earlier adjustments next season to keep up the optimal provisions... like storing a few supers after extracting just to throw on the hives at the right time so you can utilize the open honey frames in your starters instead of having to feed... or placing thumb tacks in the top of frames that are filled with pollen (bee bread) during your inspections, so you can easily locate them to use for provisions in your starters... etc.. you are doing a great job, keep it up...


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## HVH

rrussell,

Since you mentioned that there are differences in raising queens in the summer, I have a question. I'm getting better than 90% acceptance of grafts and had really good looking (long and light colored cells) in the early summer but as time went on, the acceptance of the grafts remained the same but the colonies kept on tearing down the cells as the summer progressed. The cells were shorter, darker, and between day 10 and 14 they were systematically torn down. This happened 5 times in a row with different finishing colonies and "no" queen above the excluder. The last batch had a lot of torn down cells so I decided to let them emerge in cages. Only about 2/3 of the cells that were intact actually emerged. During the first part of the season I took 12 queen cells home, after requeening out-yards, and did the same with 100% emergence. Something changed between May and August. I do start all the cells in a swarm box, so initial graft acceptance is good. What do you think accounts for the appearance of the cells changing in color and size plus them being torn down? The only thing I can think of is a dearth because there was less burr comb on the cells later in the season. I don't fully understand how that could make a difference when an internal feeder full of syrup is in the finisher.

p.s. Should I toss queens from batches that survive the above scenario because they may be inferior?


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## David LaFerney

Specialkayme said:


> They look good to me David!


Thanks for the encouragement. Despite my less than impressive cells I've gotten some pretty nice queens, that lay great patterns and produce nice tame bees - so I feel pretty good about my learning experience. Also, it looks like I'm going into (my 3rd) winter with 20 strong hives (17 headed with my own queens) and a good stock of comb - where last year I had 10 hives with every scrap of crappy comb I had just to fill out their boxes. So progress is being made.

3 day old grafts - 










I doubt if I'm helping anything by pulling them out every day for family portraits, but they grow up so fast.


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## ginn68

David,

Looks good. Thanks for the post. I am going through the learning curve also. My last grafts only one took. Which I planted in a sub par hive last night. Pinched her head. I would like to try some of the jz cell bars. I am using a homemade one now. When I receive my rj from russell this week I plan to try my hand at some more great queens. Good stuff. Keep it up.


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## David LaFerney

I've only tried rj that I harvested myself, but i've about come to the conclusion that a tiny drop of suger syrup works about as well for me, and since it isn't refrigerated it's simpler.

Keep trying, but think twice before pinching a reject. I use my culls to keep idling nucs healthy, then just cage them and hang them all in a queenless nuc until needed again.

BTW I took that last picture with my droid phone- I finally figured out that it has a macro setting.


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## Joseph Clemens

Kingfisher Apiaries was right, that cell bar is just a JZsBZs plastic wide base cell bar (holds 15 cells). It's fastened to a narrow strip of wood which extends beyond each end so it hangs in the hive like a frame. I did pull it out and rest it on its side on top of a top bar for the photo.

David, your cells sure look good to me. Not every batch of mine turn out that little bit longer and better provisioned like I wish they would. I have hopes for this batch, the batch just before this looked prime, they're placed now, so we'll see what the queens look like that emerge from them.


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## rrussell6870

HVH, are the finishers in the sun or a mix of sun and shade? Have you been resting them every so many cycles? What type of bees are in the finishers? Are you moving open brood to the top and capped brood to the bottom between each cycle? and finally have you checked to make sure that the finishers have not thrown a swarm?

Sorry for all the questions, hopefully we can get to the bottom of your troubles and get you back up and rolling quickly.


Guys I sure wish I could join you with pics of cells in different stages, but even though I graft pretty much every day, it is such a rushed process because of the number of cells... I will start trying to remember to take a few pics as I am working... Here is what an average day's cell bars set out the night before so they are ready to go when we get started the next morning...


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## Specialkayme

David LaFerney said:


> BTW I took that last picture with my droid phone- I finally figured out that it has a macro setting.


Which droid do you have, and how do you get to the macro setting?

Russell - very impressive photo.


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## ginn68

Same question I have about the droid camera setting. 

Robert,
Do you re-use any of your cell cups?


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## David LaFerney

Joseph Clemens said:


> David, your cells sure look good to me. Not every batch of mine turn out that little bit longer ...


Thanks, that actually makes me feel better. Still gonna keep trying though.

Specialkayme - Ginn68

I have a motorola droid. Just fire up the camera app and tap the center of the screen, and that will activate a menu on the right side - Scenes, Effects, Flash, Switch to video. One of the scene settings is macro. Found it by accident when my grand son accidentally set it to black and white while playing angry birds.

It's actually a pretty decent camera. Cell phones have about put snap shot cameras in the dust bin along with CDs - the 8 tracks of the new millennium.


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## Specialkayme

As requested, here are some pictures.

I set up the cell builder the way Russell described for summer cell building. I took the queen and three frames of open brood from a busting hive and put them on a new bottom board. The queenless hive I then let sit for about two hours or so, queenless, with pollen sub and 1:1 sw. I primed the cells with a drop of RJ. I only put in about 10 or so cells the first time. Checked on them today, about 23 hours after I first put them in, and added a new frame of freshly grafted cups.










I thought they should have been filled with a little bit more RJ by this point, but not too certain. Thoughts?


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## Joseph Clemens

Those cells look just fine for 23 hours old.

After I install a set of grafted cells into my cell builder, if I check them for the first time, within a day or two, I also usually feel that they should already contain a larger quantity of royal jelly than they usually do.


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## Specialkayme

Good to know, thanks for the input Joe.

I'll take a picture tomorrow, of both the (then) 48 hour old grafts and the new 24 hour old grafts. Then I'll put the queen back to make a queenright finisher.

The starter downed a quart of 1:1 in 24 hours. Had to fill it back up. They also went to town on the pollen sub, even though there was plenty of pollen in the cells and some coming in (not too much coming in though).


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## David LaFerney

4 day old grafts - some just capped - best cells ever for me.










That's the best one for sure, but they all look pretty good in this batch. The main thing I did different this time was I gave them a frame of young larva/eggs (thanks!) for 4 days before swapping in my grafts. I only started 12 - 10 built into cells. I'm pretty happy with this.

Again - what did we do without the internet?

Another droid phone picture BTW.


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## Beezly

Great looking cells David!!!
Can't wait to see the pics of the queens!
Congrats!


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## David LaFerney

Me neither. Thanks.


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## RAK

Keep the photos coming.


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## rrussell6870

Well I took a few quick pics this morning... will have some more later today (have to get back to work now before it reaches 100 degrees, suppose to hit 114 today.. ugh...)

This graft was added to this swarm box at 7:08pm yesterday... pic was taken at about 8:00am today, so around 13 hours... I gave them a full medium frame of grafts, 42 in all... 100% have been started, this evening these will be rotated to a finisher and the swarm box will be given 1 single grafted cell to raise for themselves... (five frame nuc that had been used as a hatchery for virgins up until yesterday afternoon, never can resist giving cells to bees that are THAT needy)  









This bar was started yesterday early afternoon at 12:44pm...









This one was a full medium (42 cells started at once) in a single deep 8 frame was made queenless yesterday at 8:00am and the graft was given to it at 10:21am... just goes to show just how quickly news travels in a small hive. lol.









Here is a closer look... I havent had a chance to play with my Droid Incredible to see if I can get the great pics that David is getting, but will try this evening.









Hope everyone has a great day!


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## rrussell6870

Ginn, yes, I do reuse plastic cell cups... not because it makes them take any better or anything, but just because dad was cheap and old habits are hard to break... lol... we also save a pretty good bit in expenses by doing so too... I think I get the wide base cups for about 4 cents a peice and even with reusing cups, we still spend about $3,500 per year on those cups alone, so you can imagine how much we would be spending if we werent reusing them... of course we cull any that arent completely cleaned out when we pinch off the last cell... and we only reuse those that are used to hatch virgins or produce Royal Jelly... not the ones from the nucs (that habit, I WAS able to break... cant begin to tell you what it was like as a little boy to sit under a tree during the "hot part of the day" with 20+ five gallon buckets of cells that had been gathered from the nucs while caging queens and cleaning each one with a special tool that we made out of pearing knifes)...


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## Specialkayme

Just checked up on my 24 and 48 hour old cells as I moved them to the cell finisher, per Russell's "Summer Queen Rearing" method. Actually, I just added back the queen and her three frames of brood to the cell starter, and added an excluder, but we'll call it a cell finisher 

Here are some pics. Please feel free to let me know how you think I'm doing, and how I can do better!

24 hour old cells:



















I thought that the second round would look well better than the first round, but they look about the same. Not bad, but about the same.


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## Specialkayme

Here are the 48 hour old cells:



















The cups arn't ENTIRELY filled with RJ, but almost, and I think for the heat of summer when things are slowing down around here, that'll have to do 

I'll be checking up on them in about a day or two to see how they are progressing. I'm keeping a 1:1 sw feeder on them, but haven't given them more pollen sub (they took it up fast). Do you think I should add more?

Anything you think I should be doing between now and day 8, when I cull the cells that are capped early or not 100% filled with RJ? Anything you think I should be doing to help them fill the cells to the max with RJ?

_ Sorry, I had to divide my first post into two posts, as for some reason the forum thought my 4 photos were 6 photos, and wouldn't let me do it all in one post _


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## HVH

rrussell6870 said:


> HVH, are the finishers in the sun or a mix of sun and shade?


 Full sun


> Have you been resting them every so many cycles?


 Different finisher each time


> What type of bees are in the finishers?


 I usually pick a strong colony, add an excluder and then provision with half a dozen frames of open brood, near the center, and uncapped nectar and pollen on the outer edges.


> Are you moving open brood to the top and capped brood to the bottom between each cycle?


 I used to do it that way but have chosen to add the excluder and brood on top of a strong colony. It helps me to reduce the number of impacted nucs in the yard.


> Have you checked to make sure that the finishers have not thrown a swarm?


 I don't think they have swarmed. They seem just as strong as when they tear into the cells. 

Thanks


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## rrussell6870

HVH, have you torn open any of the cells that did not hatch when you put them in cages? The first thing that I would do is clean all of my grafting equipment and hive tools thoroghly with alcohol and then I would deviate from the routines to look for changes... depending on the heat of full sun in your area, that may have some effect on them as even cells that are capped can get too dry from excessive heat and the bees may abort them realizing that they are dead... but I would suspect black cell virus to be the culprit and simply cleaning everything will get you back on track... the other possibilty could be that the bees are starting to backfill the brood chamber, so putting to brood and grafts above the chamber may not be pushing their swarm instincts enough and instead making them view the over head cells as competion... try one run with the cells in the upper chamber and excluder in the center of the chamber (queen below of course) and see if this will give you different results... but still clean all of your tools first, it cant hurt eitherway. Let us know what you find.


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## rrussell6870

SpecialKay, nice job!


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## Specialkayme

Thanks for the kind words. More pics and updates will be forthcoming.

I just realized the importance of keeping some type of a record. With two batches going at the same time, one day apart, I'm already at the point where I stop to think "ok, what day was it?" I'll have to go back and recreate what I did on paper today, lol.


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## Michael Bush

"Ready Date Nuc Calendar" 
http://www.bushfarms.com/images/TwoByFourMatingNucs.JPG

I use them on everything from starters to mating nucs.


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## Specialkayme

I saw them before I started grafting queens and thought they were pointless. Now that I graft queens, they actually look very helpful, lol.


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## rrussell6870

Mike is giving some good advice... I had something similar made up a few years back out of sign vinyl... mine was just a grid with 1-31 then 11 spaces with single letters for noting the condition of each hole... ie.. cell, virgin, to be released, needs more bees, needs food, needs new cell, ok... etc... they worked well and never faded or became brittle... they were 3"x3" and cost about $400 for 1,000 of them in six different colors to show what strain of queen was planted... we have since returned to using direction tacks (some can be seen in pics of the threeways and mini nucs)... records for breeders are as important as a note pad for an attorney or a tool box for a craftsman... the job can be dome without it, but only after a ton of headaches... for small scale breeding, I recommend at least three clip boards with legal pads... one for grafts, one for planting/caging, and one for starter/finisher records... being organised makes things so much more enjoyable... number every nuc, every hive, and every cell bar...


----------



## LT

We paint letters on the mating nucs and use push pins to mark whats going on with the nuc. C=Cell V=Virgin L= laying queen It= Italian, etc. Then we walk with a I pad to take notes, records etc.


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## Specialkayme

rrussell6870 said:


> ... for small scale breeding, I recommend at least three clip boards with legal pads... one for grafts, one for planting/caging, and one for starter/finisher records...


Can you go into detail on what those three notebooks should contain? What type of notes should I be taking?

I know I can write down everything (for example, on the grafts I can record when I did it, the numbers of the JZBZ cups, the size of the larvae, what I prime with if anything, the weather, ect) but I don't know if that would be helpful. I don't know what looking back will be beneficial the next round.


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## Beezly

Good question Justin,
I'd like to know that if possible too.


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## Joseph Clemens

To keep track of the status of my nucs and hives I simply picked up some spray paint and thumbtacks. I lightly sand the heads of nickle plated thumbtacks, to roughen them up so the paint will adhere better, then paint them a dozen or more different colors. I use a single white thumbtack to indicate the colony needs a cell, MQ's each have their own color, that I place on cell bars containing their developing daughters, then, as cells are placed, I locate the colored thumbtack on one side of the white tack, once the virgin has emerged and looks good, I move the colored thumbtack to the other side of the white tack, once the virgin is mated and laying, I mark her, then replace the white thumbtack with a fluorescent green one. I have thought about using numbered push pins if I should need to track dates.

No thumbtacks indicates an empty nuc/hive.


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## David LaFerney

Joseph - 

I think I've finally figured out the main reason why your cells have been so much bigger than mine even though I've been copying your system - You keep open grafts in your starter finisher all the time don't you? I've been putting a set of grafts in, letting them get ready to plant and then doing another set - 5 or 6 days without queens to feed. That also might be why I've had so much cell waxing - all of those nurse bees with nothing to feed start producing wax.

This time I started with a frame of young larva/eggs for 4 days to get them warmed up, and I got relatively nice cells, as those were being capped I gave them a fresh frame of larva/eggs to keep them busy for a few days. I bet my next set of cells comes out at least as nice as the current one has and my waxing problem goes away. I'll know for sure soon.

Thanks for all the input this thread has been very helpful.


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## Joseph Clemens

That may be so, I usually keep at least one bar of open grafts in my cell builder almost all the time, even if I don't anticipate the need for the cells. I can usually find a place for most of the cells before they expire. I'm planning to do another bar this morning -- I've been a little under-the-weather, which has slowed me down, so I have a partial bar of completed cells remaining and I need to get some fresh grafts in there ASAP.


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## Specialkayme

I checked on my grafts in the finisher (for the first set of grafts, today is day 8 or the day you cull the cells capped early), and something terribly wrong has occurred. The first batch of queens that were grafted on the 23rd had about 10 cells that were accepted and filled with royal jelly on the 25th. Today, only one cell is filled with RJ. The others the workers appear to have torn down, and are consuming the little royal jelly that is left.

Of the second set of grafts, about three or four cells appear to be left. I'm not sure any of them, in set one or two, have larvae in them. But only one in set one, and three or four in set two appear to have enough royal jelly for me to consider larvae to be in there.

What went wrong?

I made sure to put the queen in the bottom box (below the excluder), and I also made sure to destroy all e-cells when I moved them from the starter to finisher.

What would make the workers want to tear down the cells?


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## Joseph Clemens

The most usual thing (and it's happened to me many times now), is that a stray virgin, somehow found her way into the area where the cells were growing, and she's doing what she does best. So far, every time that's happened to me, that's what I eventually discovered. A few times I've even discovered stray virgins pulling young larvae out of three-to-five day old cells. It's why I now keep an excluder over the entrances to my cell builder colonies. Of course, I've never used a queenright cell builder (though I'll probably try it out, eventually).


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## Specialkayme

That's what I thought, but I don't even have any other hives at this yard. It's just two hives: the one I grafted from, and the one that I made the starter/finisher out of. There shouldn't even be any virgins running around. Hrumpf. Frustrating.


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## Joseph Clemens

In my neck of the woods, some of those annoying virgins might be AHB usurping queens -- I've snagged a few of them trying to enter my queenless, queen cell builder through the queen excluder entrance guards.

I will, reluctantly, admit that most of the stray virgins that have wound up destroying my cultured queen cells (CQCs) were from rouge queen cells I failed to locate and destroy - early enough to prevent this issue.


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## ginn68

Intresting Joesph! 

Here is my adventure in moving to Great Queens.

I started the day out great. I checked the one cell I planted for the SKC breeder today. Should have hatched yesterday. Peaked in and saw the ole vigin girl. Beautiful Cordovan colors. I pull the emptied cup out. I then deceied to go through my started to ensure everything was up to par for my grafts this evening (Twilght). I added a few frames of capped brood and some syrup.

Here comes the good part. I opened up my breeder hive. Found a good frame of young eggs and larve and came inside to graft. Just some history on my breeder hive. The last time I went into to pull a frame to graft I noticed several capped queen cells. I went through the double deep and one med and cut down 3-4. No hatched cells found. Upon this I decied to mark my breeder for good measure. Put a nice white dot on her and back and then wached her for about three to five minutes to ensure everything was ok. Looked great. So here we go. After I competed my 12 grafts. Went well with the Russell RJ. Placed the grafts in my starter. And then went to replace the graft frame to the breeder. I went ahead and checked for my marked breeder. Went through the top deep. She was no where to be found. I went through the frames again and spot a virgin running on the frame. Defienite cordovan (Red Legs and all). Shocked me. I went to catch her to cage. And the dang heafer flew off. 

So a couple things come to mind. Did the fresh hatched virgin go for her mating flight and return to the wrong hive. The two hives are at least 20 feet away and turned in 90 degrees from each other. Or did I have a rogue cell that hatched and killed my breeder? 

I guess the plan I can think of is to go through my breeder hive tomorrow to thriple check for the breeder. Also, check the gound to see if she was killed. Secondly, which I really don't want to do, go and disturb the hive with the freash hatched virgin. 

Any other ideas?


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## Joseph Clemens

ginn68,

Entrance guards (excluders), help, I think. At least those wandering virgins can't easily enter, find and kill queens we intend to keep and use (our breeder queens or MQs).

And you have inspired me.

I've had many similar situations and done most or all that you describe. Now, I'm actually giving serious thought to moving my MQ nucs to their own yard, half-way between the two apiaries that I already run on my (almost acre) in the desert and the cell-builders to the opposite side of my property from the MQ nucs. There are suitable areas in both those locations I should have done it sooner, but hopefully it will help reduce the chances of these kinds of incidents in the future.

Afterwards I will have four small apiaries on my one acre, where I now only have two, one in the back (of fifteen full-size hives), and one in the front (a mixture of nucs, mating nucs, cell builder, MQ nucs). My (almost acre) is about 130' wide x 290' long. I propose to relocate my MQ nucs and cell builder to opposite sides of the property about three quarters of the way towards the back.


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## ginn68

Joseph,

I'm glad I inspired you. 

I have a similar situation. I live on one acre. I have three other yards setup across a couple counties. I have one yard setup just for my mating nucs (sunkist/skc). I allowed this one queen to hatch at home to replace a aging queen. Lord willing I will find the breeder tomorrow. I will also start setting up my starters with queen excluders on the entrances. The last thing could happen if the virgin flew into my starter hive. It will all work out.

Have a good night. I hope you feel better.


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## Joseph Clemens

ginn68,

I have beekeeper friends who are trying to help me find one or two other locations for my queen raising efforts - potentially in a semi-mountainous area where the climate would be slightly less Summer intense, and isolated enough to reduce undesirable drone influence. It would just be a Spring/Summer mating yard. My OCD-like tendencies don't like me messing much with sticky, gooey, messy, honey.

Thanks, I'm starting to feel better, now it's my wife who's feeling poorly - at least it wasn't both of us at the same time.

-----------
Today I was able to start two new cell bars, one from each of two different MQs - I'll know if they took in the A.M. My older cell bar, still has six ripe cells, I moved it up into the empty super used primarily to surround the pollen substitute. Every so often one of my virgin queen problems comes from not placing all of these older cells, soon enough. I'm determined to also set up a small holding box for these groups of left-over ripe cells, so they aren't a threat for my new grafts, or growing cells.


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## Specialkayme

Joseph Clemens said:


> I'm determined to also set up a small holding box for these groups of left-over ripe cells, so they aren't a threat for my new grafts, or growing cells.


You could always set up one of those hatchery frames, like Russell was talking about.

I got one going for the grafts that I made last week. Too bad I won't be able to use the hatchery frame until next season


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## Joseph Clemens

Actually, I think the hatchery frame idea sounds great, lots better than letting virgins rampage. That way, too, if one or more looks like a superb example of queenliness, I could then place her and check out how she performs.


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## rrussell6870

Ginn, sounds like you need to locate the breeder and move her to a nuc until you can find the virgin and get her out of the way...OR... If you think you can make a split, now is your chance... just move the breeder in one chamber to the new location and leave the virgin in the original... once a virgin decides that she wants that hive, its almost impossible to get her moved as she takes mating flights because she may keep going back to the hive that you don't want her in because of the pheromones... 

Hope the momma is still there in the morning. Let me know eitherway, I will see if I can find you another one laying around somewhere. Lol.

Joe, I will send you some California mini cages if you do not have any. They work well for creating hatcheries that you can take queens from as you need them, and they are already in the cages for quick introduction.


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## rrussell6870

Specialkay, could be a virgin, or could be cells being capped on the brood in the finisher... may want to get a good look in there.


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## Specialkayme

Thanks Russell. Yesterday's hurricane prevented me from doing more than a spot check on the cells. Hopefully at least a few of the cells are left today and I can find out what's going on.

I'm crossing my fingers that a stray virgin didn't show up and eliminate the mother of the finisher. She was my last surviving sunkist . . . at least until next season, lol.


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## ginn68

Robert,

That's the plan. As soon as I get home from church I plan to fix the problem. I just hope the breeder is still kicking. I can't wait to check ob my grafts also.

Thanks for the pointers.


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## ginn68

Well good news. I found the breeder and the virgin. Both in their correct hives thankfully. I put a queen excluder below the second double deep on the breeder hive for good measure. That was a close one.

I also checked on my grafts from yesterday. I doubled my success rate (2/12). Lol. I have two cells being drawn out and half full of Rj. I was hoping for better. I tried all the tricks on this round of grafts (e.g. patty, priming w/RJ, booming with bees and capped brood, starter built up a week in advance, syrup, wet sponge, and twilight grafting). Regardless, I am happy. I will continue to push forward to great. It is just so hot and dry in Ga. We haven't had any rain in five weeks. I will definitely sleep better tonight. Lol


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## Specialkayme

Well, like Ginn, I figured out my culprit. I found the queen ABOVE the excluder. There were no other virgins or queens running around.

I now know why, but I don't know how. I'm 100% positive I put the queen below the excluder, with three frames of brood (all three mostly capped). I checked on the three frames below and it looks like some is still capped, and whatever wasn't capped was destroyed. I even saw a few ladies trying to drag the larvae through the excluder. The queen, along with a bunch of her eggs (worker, that is) was above the excluder.

Since I'm 100% sure that I put her below the excluder, how does that happen? Did she work her way through the excluder? Why did they remove the open brood?


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## David LaFerney

Ginn,
If you aren't already, cover your grafts with a damp cloth as soon as you deposit one- and keep the frame covered too. Beginners like us are probably slow enough for it to make a difference. 

I got a lighted jewelers visor (donegan optivisor 2.5 X) a couple of months ago and I'm now grafting larva that I can't even see without it. About 80 % success at cell production.

Mainly though keep at it. Practice.....


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## ginn68

Thanks David.

I cover the frame with a damp cloth as a bring it in to graft. I also cover the cups with a damp cloth as I graft. I need to get a lighted jewelers visor. My eyes are good, but for now I have been using my headlamp for hunting and a mag lense. The main thing I have noticed is eggs are laying dry in the cell and the larva are floating in Rj. I focus to find the smallest larva now. Trust me I will continue to pratice. 

I am also going to modify my grafting tool. I want to either put it in a vise to flatten the tip down or I am going to hone down the paddle to be thinner.


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## Specialkayme

I checked up on my mating nucs today (the batch that I grafted on 8/5 from). I decided to take everyone's advice, and wait this long until I checked up on them. Of the 13 two frame mating nucs I made up, and the 1 five frame mating nuc, only three had laying queens as of today. Two out of those three appeared to be laying monsters though, thanks no doubt to their Sunkist mother (who unfortunately, and mysteriously, is no longer with us. Checked her hive today and there were two frames of bees and three e-cells. That's it. I'm assuming it was beekeeper error). Overall, I'm pleased with two out of the three queens that made it, and I'm going to give the third girl another week or two to see how she performs. But, I'm not really pleased with a 21% success rate (from planting to laying queen, that is. I'm not taking the best notes at the moment, and I'm sure if I was the overall rate would be in the teens, at best). Of course, a number of those didn't hatch. I don't know how many exactly. But I know several of the empty mating nucs had cells that did hatch, which means that they eventually flew the coup. Only one nuc had bees left over in it, with no queen. All other nucs were just empty.

Obviously, I need to work more on learning how to better populate and manage these mating nucs.

The nucs that were abandoned were just destroyed by wax moths too. If you are supposed to wait a full three or four weeks between planting and peeking, how do you keep the combs from just getting wrecked?


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## rrussell6870

That's where hatching virgins and making far more grafts than you think you will need comes into play... if you graft, raise the cells, and hatch your virgins, you then can stick your mating nucs and install a virgin in each one... then between the presence of the virgin and the brood that you stocked the nucs with, you will get a better take in your mating nucs and you would know for sure that a queen was at least present in each one... of course, not all will make it back from mating flights, but at least they did have the opportunity to get a mated queen instead of just a dud cell... at each caging, "poop-outs" are restocked and overcrowded nucs are weakened to keep everything flowing... this requires fresh virgins to be readily available and brood factory hives to be nearby (or five frame nucs of brood to be pulled from another yard and taken to the mating yard to be used for brood and bees)...

I will send you another momma... Was that queen in the cell finisher?


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## David LaFerney

I'm guessing that you made those nucs up right before planting the cells? 

The conclusion I've come to is that Nucs in established locations, with foraging work forces, and a mix of eggs through emerging brood (and capped honey) go the distance a lot better once times get tough in the hot dry summer. IE if at all possible pull the queen right before planting the cell. Build them up early when life is easier in the bee yard.

Still probably lose a few.

Otherwise make them up a lot stronger.


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## rrussell6870

That's exactly right David. One trick that I have used many times before is to time things so that a few yards of singles that are being moved will be moved mid day and freshly stocked threeways are put in their place at that time to catch the extra returning work force... then as the center hole gets too strong (as it usually does), I will rotate the box catch foragers in the weakest hole of the three way... the mist important thing is to be sure that a healthy queen is in every hole and that there is open brood in each one... if one hatches all of its brood, drift can quickly wipe out that hole and you end up with an overly strong hole that will draw other queens to it as well as the work force...


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## David LaFerney

For me managing the mating nucs has been the biggest challenge and the most work. I believe i've learned some things that will make it better next time though.

When you first see those pictures of frames coming out of a finisher with 50 or so nice fat cells.... once you try it though, It doesn't take long to gain some perspective on why those bugs are so expensive.


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## Specialkayme

rrussell6870 said:


> That's where hatching virgins comes into play...


I didn't learn about the hatchery frame until after this batch was scheduled to hatch. In hind sight, it probably would have made things easier.

But how feasible is it on a larger scale? I think I remember reading about your operation, Robert, and I don't remember you talking about using a hatchery frame in your operation. From what I remember, you talked about planting cells into your mating nucs, at the same time as you plucked the previous queen. Do you use them in your operation? Do you think you can talk about their use in a larger operation?

I also don't have much experience (and by much I man any) installing virgins. Do you have any advice?



rrussell6870 said:


> ... at each caging, "poop-outs" are restocked and overcrowded nucs are weakened to keep everything flowing...


I wasn't able to do any "consecutive cycles" of queens this season. I had that pesky little bar exam to deal with for most of it, lol. So this year it involved two isolated rounds of queens. For both of those rounds I stocked the mating nucs, and tore them down when the queens were mated. There wasn't any opportunity to add bees, or take away bees between rounds, or compensate in any way. If I made it too strong, or too weak, it failed, and that was the end of it.

Next year I plan on doing consecutive rounds. Not only will it give me more queens and more experience, but I think it will help me to better understand what population in the nuc is most efficient. Of course, at that point I will need to co-ordinate the schedule side of things a little bit better. The dates I do certain things becomes even more important. But steps forward.



rrussell6870 said:


> I will send you another momma... Was that queen in the cell finisher?


You don't need to Russell. I actually ended up combining the hive with another stronger one. It wasn't worth it to try and nurse that weak one through with an e-queen (and people on this site know my attitude toward them). If I had another queen I'd have to make a split (and while I could, it isn't necessary). 

It wasn't my cell finisher from the last round of queens (that ended up failing). I still have that Sunkist hive going. At the point that I wrote that it was my last Sunkist I had a feeling that the other one wasn't doing so well. I had actually already counted it gone, but didn't confirm it until today. So all in all, I have one Sunkist left. Hopefully I don't do something to screw her up too, lol.



David LaFerney said:


> I'm guessing that you made those nucs up right before planting the cells?


That's correct. 

At the moment I'm mating queens at an out-yard, about an hour away. With my work schedule I'm not able to get out there that often, at best once a week. I also can't guarantee that I can make it out there every week, as work and family usually comes first. For that reason, I'm not able to make up nucs beforehand. I know it would make things easier for me to make them up a day or two before, but it isn't feasible at the moment.

I'm working on moving to a better location that allows me to keep a few hives at my house year round (at the moment I can only have them at my house from September through March). Once I find a place and make a move, mating will obviously become a bit easier schedule wise. 



David LaFerney said:


> IE if at all possible pull the queen right before planting the cell. Build them up early when life is easier in the bee yard.
> 
> Otherwise make them up a lot stronger.


Very helpful. Thank you David, I will keep that in mind.

One issue that comes to mind with keeping mating nucs stocked with open brood in all stages is the problem of developing e-cells. If you are expected to plant a cell (or a virgin) and not recheck it for three weeks to allow the queen to properly mate and lay, how do you ensure that no e-cells develop?


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## Specialkayme

David LaFerney said:


> once you try it though, It doesn't take long to gain some perspective on why those bugs are so expensive.


For sure David!


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## rkereid

I don't know exactly how your flow is in piedmont NC, but I am guessing it is a lot like ours 3 hours west of you in the mountains of VA. Very little nectar from end of Tulip Poplar until early Sept, if it rains then. Because of that, I figured out the hard way that those 2 frame mating nucs everyone talks about fail miserably for me. I have to either make up mating nucs early when they can build up during a flow, or make up all mating nucs strong with bees, brood, and honey. I use all mediums so strong for me is 4 frames with 3 of bees, 2 of brood, and 1 of honey/pollen in a 5 frame nuc. The empty space can hold a feeder or a frame later when they build up. Once I started doing that my success rate in mid summer went way up.


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## rrussell6870

David, Lol. Very true... and one of the reasons that I wish everyone could try their hand at queen rearing... it takes a lot of skill as a bee keeper to manage many small colonies that are always one step away from collapse... that kind of skill is only learned through trial and error, and once you have done it, managing full colonies is a breeze... its an awesome learning experience for any bee keeper that wants to get a better understanding of the if, how, why, where, when, and whats of the colonies that they manage.


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## rrussell6870

With caged virgins on hand, you can make up the nucs and install the virgins at the sane time... that way they will not start cells... leave her caged for 2-4 days and then release her... this will get them started... when that queen is caged, a cell or virgin is planted right away... during summer, virgins are best because you only get one shot before you have to stock a hole all over again..


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## rrussell6870

I use cells during the season, but for preseason and postseason, I use virgins... installing is simple... just press the mini cage in, screen down just below the top bars, above the brood... then shut them up... the bees usually take to her really quickly and you can just ease the cell out of the cage to release her... leaving the cage behind to be pulled out when you return...


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## David LaFerney

Specialkayme said:


> One issue that comes to mind with keeping mating nucs stocked with open brood in all stages is the problem of developing e-cells. If you are expected to plant a cell (or a virgin) and not recheck it for three weeks to allow the queen to properly mate and lay, how do you ensure that no e-cells develop?


Let them. Then put the e-queen into a bank (I mark them with 2 year old green so I know they are "culls") when you are ready to plant cells - or if the nuc is strong enough split out the queen into a new location and use the existing location, most of the nuc and it's workforce of foragers as the mating nuc. A weak nuc that has a laying queen is more likely to be alright than a queenless one, and if it's during the spring flow you will be amazed at how fast a queen and one really good frame will grow into a hive. *You might* not want to use e-queens as permanent heads of household, but as brood producer/house sitters during the season they are great. They produce very few drones in small growing colonies so they won't even mess with your genetics.

But once the dearth, and hive beetles set in it's probably better to bank the spare queens - and leave the nuc as strong as possible. Then you can reinstall them into the nucs that don't make, and let her lay it full of brood for the next go round.

I made up mating nucs with a frame of brood and a frame of food in the middle of March this year, because my hives were so strong I was trying to prevent swarming. I didn't think I was ready to graft yet at the time. But, most of those little 2 frame hives produced e-queens that I'm still using to produce resources. They've worked so hard I might even let some of them try to overwinter nucs. At the time I started in March I had no idea how useful those weak early splits would be.


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## Specialkayme

rkereid said:


> Very little nectar from end of Tulip Poplar until early Sept, if it rains then.


Bingo. Nothing from the end of Tulip Poplar on. They call our goldenrod in September a flow, but around my parts it isn't a flow at all (rain or not). They can usually get a few frames of honey out of it, but nothing more than that. They usually use it for brood too, so it's almost like it never happened at all.



rkereid said:


> Because of that, I figured out the hard way that those 2 frame mating nucs everyone talks about fail miserably for me.


I just made up a bunch of mating nucs of various sizes. Some 3 frame mediums, some 5, some 3 frame mini's. Along with the 2 frame castles, next flow I'm going to try them all and see which ones appear to work best. So far the 2 framers havn't shown much of a return. I'll keep your suggestions in mind, and stock a little heavier from now on.

I was hoping the feeder would offset the "no flow" thing, but it doesn't look like it.

None of the hives left any brood behind. Nearly all the nucs had brood at all stages. That leads me to believe that the queen emerged, and the hive absconded later. I set up a bait hive, but no such luck. More room in the future may have better luck.


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## Specialkayme

rrussell6870 said:


> ... leave her caged for 2-4 days and then release her...


This doesn't affect her development at all?

I know it's best to handle the queens as little as possible, if at all, from the time that she is hatched till two or three weeks after mating.


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## Specialkayme

rrussell6870 said:


> I use cells during the season, but for preseason and postseason, I use virgins...


I know there is a simple answer (and maybe it's just my brain shutting down after a long day) but why the difference?

Do hives accept cells better during a flow? And virgins better when a flow is off?

If using virgins works like you say, why would you not use them during the season? Or is it just too much added work?

I've been reading up on a few commercial operations (of what little I can find) and I'm not seeing any other commercial queen breeders using virgins instead of cells in their nucs. Dr. Connor mentions their benefits quite often, but that's it. If they seem like such an ease to use, why is no one actually using them? Other than your operation, of course, which we all know is not "typical" and does not give "typical" results, thank god!


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## Specialkayme

David - I'm not discounting your experiences, and I've been down this road on this site SEVERAL times, but I'm not a fan of e-queens. From a biological standpoint, I view them as inferior. I've read the studies by Dr. Tarpy (and been harassed for taking his findings to heart, especially over other 100+ year old 'advice').

I understand where you come from as a "temp head of household." That is an interesting thought that will require a bit more pondering.

But my question was more in the lines of what do you do about the e-cells when you install the queen cell or virgin? It has been said that the queen needs 3 weeks after hatching to fully develop, and that time needs to be uninterrupted by beekeeper intervention. That means planting a cell and waiting three weeks. But what if in day one or two after you plant, they start an e-cell? If you arn't supposed to open the hive, how do you know that a competitive e-queen won't jump out and kill _your_ queen? How do you even know if there are any e-cells in there? Normally you crack the cover and look for them. But if you arn't supposed to do that . . . . 

Or maybe I'm missing something.


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## rrussell6870

Some do, but fail to mention it as its sometimes deemed as a "trick" or "trade secret"... the reasoning is simply because cells are easy during the flows, virgins are a sure thing when there is no flow, and when nucs are being set up, virgins will hold the bees in the nuc better... when package season is over, I stock new nucs with whatever mated queens I have left from the packages... those nucs are guaranteed takes... then those queens are rotated to my own splits, and virgins are installed at the time that they are caged... we start grafting in late Jan/early Feb so we have queen mated and laying by late Feb to go with packages... we graft consistently every single day during that time so that we have plenty of queens to cover losses to cold, or poop-outs in the early nucs... if we used only cells, we would have many more losses and would have to wait for the next cycle to find out what took and what did not, only to risk another loss if the next cells get chilled... the virgins are fresh when they are given to the nucs, so they are fed a consistent diet from day one, so keeping them from flying for a few days will not effect them...


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## rrussell6870

Actually, they are best left alone for four weeks, but its hard to meet demand and keep to that schedule... the e-queens that David is using are just a temp method to keep the nuc going... you have to look at the nuc as a separate entity altogether... the queens that we put in are only temporary occupants, but the bees and combs have to remain going... 

When planting your cells, you inspect the nucs and remove absolutely Every possible e-cell... your queen should emerge first and destroy any if they start them while she is hatching... there is always a chance that the cell doesn't hatch or they kill the emerging queen and create their own... when this happens, you will know it when you inspect at the caging of that cycle... if you find any cells that are on the comb that appear hatched or if you cell appears to have not hatch, you find the e-queen, kill her, and plant a new cell... or like David is doing, mark her as a cull and cage her for resources later on.


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## Specialkayme

rrussell6870 said:


> when nucs are being set up, virgins will hold the bees in the nuc better...


That makes alot of sense. So you should be using the virgins when there is a greater chance that the bees will leave the nuc, but not so much when you have a flow going on with good populations, right? During the flow, the bees are content and happy, but before and after they have a greater chance of leaving, even with a feeder.

This may sound dumb, but how do you make sure they don't leave AFTER they have accepted their virgin or cell?



rrussell6870 said:


> ... we start grafting in late Jan/early Feb so we have queen mated and laying by late Feb to go with packages...


What are your temps like at those times of year?

Obviously I wouldn't need to make as many queens as you, so I probably wouldn't need to start as early. But I've read not to graft until you have drones in the purple eye'd stage. For me, I've noticed that's the end of Feb at the very earliest, usually closer to mid March.

But for me, if I'm only working with 28 five frame mating nucs (assuming that their 2 frame counter parts don't work so well, as I don't think they will do so early in the season, so I'd be taking out their dividers and using them as 5 frames instead), and I need to leave the queens alone for 3-4 weeks, I'm trying to figure out the best way to start the season. If I started in March, that would give me probably three cycles until Tulip Poplar ends, at which point I could continue but things would get a bit more difficult. At my current success %, I'd be lucky to end those three cycles with 28 TOTAL queens. So the earlier I start, the better I'll be.



rrussell6870 said:


> we graft consistently every single day during that time so that we have plenty of queens to cover losses to cold, or poop-outs in the early nucs...


So early in the season you plant with cells, but have virgins hatching as back ups? That actually sounds like a very good and very feasible option.



rrussell6870 said:


> ... the virgins are fresh when they are given to the nucs, so they are fed a consistent diet from day one, so keeping them from flying for a few days will not effect them...


I've read studies about banking queens and the effect it has on them. I only assumed that caging virgins had a similar effect. I'll take your word on it though.


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## Heavenly bees

...bump...


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## Specialkayme

Lol, thanks for the "bump" it could probably use it.

I've been out of internet for the past three days . . . I didn't even see it.


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## David LaFerney

Here are a couple of the results of what I learned from this thread:



















That one is cordovan colored - kinda hard to tell because she is shy. Both out of a Russell Sunkist Cordovan.

They both just started laying. I've raise other queens that were nice and big after they lay for a week or so, but these are the nicest ones that I've ever had considering they just started.

Pictures from my droid phone BTW.

Thanks for all the help.


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## Beezly

Excellent David! Been waiting to see the results. Good pics too!
Can't wait to start breeding them in the spring.
mike


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## Oldtimer

Nice work!

I wish we had the cordovan color in my country I really like it.

Pretty impressed with the droid photography, what model do you have?


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## Specialkayme

Very nice pics!


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## David LaFerney

Oldtimer said:


> Nice work!
> 
> I wish we had the cordovan color in my country I really like it.
> 
> Pretty impressed with the droid photography, what model do you have?


The cordovans are definitely easier to spot. 

It's just last years motorola droid with the slide out keypad. I should probably disclose that those pictures didn't come straight from the phone - I cropped and adjusted them using Picassa. You can't take a close up that close just with the phone - I held the phone about 6" away.


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## SERGE

rrussell6870 said:


> Mike was exactly right about giving them plenty of time to lay, not just let them start, then cage them... but one thing that he said that may have slipped past most and is truly important is the *Undisturbed* part...


I am understanding the important role that the first three weeks of undisturbed laying has on the queen development, but I am curious if the rate of laying in those three weeks has any lasting effect also, because often times as with two frame mating nucs there is very limited room for the queen to work in?
thanks
Serge


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## Joseph Clemens

Something occurred to me, so I tried it out - I placed two-three day old cells (post-graft) into nucs/mating nucs as I harvested their mated/laying queens. This was the result -->


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## ginn68

Dang Joe, you still have drones. I have only a few hives with a couple of drones. Good looking cell.


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## David LaFerney

Pretty cool. You are the king of big cells. By the color of it I guess there is not a flow on? I would also guess that it was already well started.


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## Joseph Clemens

ginn68,
If this coming season happens to have a "normal" Winter for us, I should be able to keep them raising drones. Right now most of my stronger hives are still loaded with drones. Though I still have a few hives with drones emerging from undesirable genetics from their former queens, I have been eliminating these, by hand -- as I find them, I pluck one of their wings off and leave them on the ground for the lizards to eat. Saturday our high was 104F, and today was just under 100F.

David,
No flow, but pretty good quantity and variety of pollen, though I am also feeding pollen substitute, but with lots of extra sugar to replace the lack of nectar. When I placed this cell it was between two and three days after grafting, it was built out to about where the bees abdomen tip almost touches it on the right of the pic and below where the date is in the pic caption.


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## Joseph Clemens

Most of my full-size hives (also serving as drone factories), have two to four of their outermost frames looking like this -->







Don't forget to scroll over to see the entire image <if you need to>.


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## ginn68

As always. Looking good. 100° f , that's hot for mid oct. We are in the eighties today, but a high of 50 on wed. 

I can't wait for spring. I plan to build/buy mating nucs over the winter. You run 5 deep frame nucs for your mating nucs?


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## Joseph Clemens

I have a few 5-frame medium nucs that do double-duty as mating nucs, but most of my mating nucs are 3-frame medium condos. I have five, 5-frame deep nucs, but currently none of them have deep frames installed, just medium. I have five, 5-frame deep nucs that were provided by a customer, and I am growing medium nucs into those boxes at the customer's request.


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## ginn68

Thanks Joe,

I went through and counted what I have built so far (5 frame); three med nucs, ten deep nucs, and two three way deep mating nucs. I have another 6-8 deep nucs I plan to over winter. I like the med setups. I traded some honey for six med cypress supers (8 frame) I will probably turn these into two way nucs. That setup I should be able raise 30 or so queens each rotation. 


Do your bee's not build comb on the bottom of the med frames in the deep boxes? Don't get me wrong I love my good ole deep seasoned comb, but I am leaning towards a more med setup. 


Last thing, I will give some of Russell's equipment a try. Should be good.


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## Specialkayme

Very nice work Joe, impressive pictures for mid October . . . 

My plans are just starting to go into writing for next spring. I have my queens ordered from Russell's (hopefully the mothers, if they don't get too bogged down next spring), I'm making plans to build a bunch of 5 frame mating nucs, 4 frame condos, and half frame Russell devices, and figuring out my best timeline . . . hopefully everything will be in place come next spring.


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## robherc

Hey guys, I just got done reading through this thread (all 9 pages of it), and I must first start off with: "THANKS for all the great advice!"
I think, before I start up my first attempt at a batch of queens, I'll read through all of it again, just to absorb some of the ideas I may have missed the first side. Flattery aside, however, has anyone here gotten much of a start on their queen rearing for this year yet? Here in coastal TX we're already starting to see swarms (FAR earlier than normal); I actually just did a removal on some bees that swarmed about 2-3 weeks ago! Gentlest honeybees I've ever met too; residents were routinely getting within 2-3 feet of the hive entrance without a single incident! I'm hoping this hive does well at producing honey & controlling varroa too, so I can raise a batch of super-gentle queens from them


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## lakebilly

I have found to copy & paste into my word program all the info makes for easier reading. got a lot of good reference reading that way.


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## Specialkayme

robherc said:


> has anyone here gotten much of a start on their queen rearing for this year yet?


First, welcome to the site!

Second, all my hives died. I haven't been able to get ANY kind of start on queen rearing for this year.


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## Joseph Clemens

I've been rearing a few queens continuously all through Autumn and Winter. We've been having a nice wildflower flow, which was starting to fade away, but last night it began to rain and is continuing today -- hopefully that will keep the wildflowers going.

I recently restocked my queen cell builder, then started a batch of thirty cells, however, only about ten of them took, so I added even more nurse bees and feed, then regrafted the vacant cups.


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## robherc

Specialkayme said:


> Second, all my hives died. I haven't been able to get ANY kind of start on queen rearing for this year.


YEOUCH!!! That SUCKS!

Well, I can tell you what has worked alright for me as far as saving $100+/hive on buying package bees:
1. Post an add in the "Farm+Garden" sales section of your local Craigslist site for Honeybee removal or relocation (I like to throw "humane" "sustainable" or "eco-friendly" in there to draw more attention)
2. Get your "big-boy-pants" on (and your bee suit+gloves+veil) and load a few hive boxes, 5-gal boxes, a thin pry-bar (a 12" flat pry bar works well; but you may want to sharpen and take the "flare" out of the ends with a grinder first), a nice sharp linoleum knife, a 3' wrecking bar, and your bee brush into your car. (the bee suit & "big-boy-pants" are in case you have as bad an AHB population there as we have here in coastal TX)
3. Remove & box-up the first few hives/swarms you get asked to remove (oh yeah, don't forget to bring a few empty frames for splicing brood comb into)
4. TAKE DOWN your ad before you run out of hive boxes; unless you want your phone ringing off the hook for the next couple months.
5. Once your new hives are established, order a few queens to re-queen the nastiest of them with (unless you get lucky like I did, and end up capturing a really good-natured hive to start breeding new queens from).
6. Go out and buy lots of nice shiny new equipment with the $100s you just saved on buying pkg bees. ;-)


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## robherc

Oops, almost f-got a VERY important step....

2.5 If someone calls you and says "I've got a bee hive somewhere under my Mobile home that was abandoned for 4 yrs before I just bought it..." *RUN AWAY SCREAMING!!!*

LOL; That hive cost me 3 days to remove; the bees had torn an entrance out of the pressboard under the floor joists; had filled in between 2 joists with about 22 combs all aligned diagonally (about 16"x48"x8" total hive volume) almost 4 feet under the home! The worst part was that once I finally got it all out, I ended up losing the entire hive as they'd filled in the brood comb with honey stores so most of the bees got smothered in honey as the comb sections fell out. :lookout:


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## David LaFerney

Set up my cell builder on Wednesday - tomorrow is grafting Monday. Fingers crossed.


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## Specialkayme

robherc said:


> I can tell you what has worked alright for me as far as saving $100+/hive on buying package bees:


Thanks for the advice. I may end up doing just that.


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## robherc

t:


robherc said:


> I can tell you what has worked alright for me as far as saving $100+/hive on buying package bees


*sobbing* ...Okay; maybe it DIDN'T save me $100/hive this time.......*crying some more*
.....[clipped] At first I thought it was stresses I placed on the first hive during removal that caused it to collapse in my hive box, but today, when I went to check on my wonderfully gently new hive, I found the dastardly culprits red handed! There were streams of THOUSANDS of [Red Imported Fire Ants] running up and down THREE LEGS of my stand for the new hive, carrying death into my hive box, and little pieces of my bees' precious brood back out and into the pits of hell (their mounds) with them. [clipped]

Sorry to get a bit off-topic with this post, but I'm at an impasse here; if I can't get these ants under control, my career as an apiarist might have already reached a premature end. 


[edited due to leading topic off-topic; so I re-posted the removed comments here: http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?265682-Fireants!!!!!&p=770362#post770362 ]


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## rrussell6870

Amdro granules, not broadcasted, but poured directly into a few holes in the nest that you make with a stick... after you have treated each nest, get some grasses growing... the added moisture in the soil caused by the shading of grasses will make them seek a more suitable home... 

For your stands, place each leg in a pail of water... keep an eye on the water level to keep it from evaporating... 

We don't really have a problem with ants, even though there are plenty around and some even build nests under hives and even between hives that are on pallets... a good healthy hive will teach the ants that its easier to find a safe meal elsewhere...

On the timing of queen rearing question... Been going at it since early Feb... 

Hope this helps.


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## robherc

...
...

And now, watch me dissapear... *POOF!*

**steps back into the shadows & stops hogging the thread for a while**


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## rrussell6870

Lol. For the grass, you may want to try mixing a pound of ball clover per acre into some rye seed or that buckwheat seed... its pretty drought tolerant, but adding some form of irrigation will help all around... Texas is home to Fairly Seed Co. who grows Ball Clover and has great success with it there... clover is a nitrogen fixing plant that I have been doing a good bit of research on and have used a LOT throughout my life... it starts well in poor quality soil so long as it has water and it corrects a lot of problems and only releases the N when the plant dies... it reseeds itself heavily and provides an excellent protein forage for cattle and other livestock as well as wildstock like deer and turkeys... if you use a rotation program, it can give you forage for livestock year round... and forage for bees year round as long as the droughts don't get the blooms... 

We did a study in pecan orchards where constant herbicides had been used beneath the trees for over a decade and the soil had become a total wasteland... ball and crimson clover were used in separate rows and both made a moderate stand the first year and a full stand the second... for pecans, clover is an excellent cover because it harbors the predators of pecan pests, controls the amount of N released into the soil and helps hold in cool moisture so the soil doesn't bake in the summer... pecan crops nearly doubled by the second year and the amount of pesticides needed were less than a quarter of what was needed before... 

The point is that cover can resolve some of the "hard soil" issues that fire ants seem to thrive in, and it sure is a lot safer than importing phorid flies. ;-)


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## rrussell6870

Ok, back to better queens... seems like most everyone is seeing what the spring is like with Sunkist hives... so now you just have to figure out what to do with all these darn bees right? Start stocking mating nucs and trying your hand at grafting... use the bees, they don't mind at all... lol. 

Here is a pic of what a split looks like ten days after busting up a three deep eight frame Sunkist hive... 
http://i1040.photobucket.com/albums/b404/RussellApiaries/IMAG0884.jpg

That's two new hives and the one original... and still way more bees than necessary for stocking a few nucs and making a good honey crop... I hope you all have a great season and look forward to seeing some great pics of bees and the queens that you raise!


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## fieldbee

Hi Joseph
What are the temperature high and lows where you are, through the winter? (Dont think I could do that in my part of the world, but are curious - it would be a help if I could)
Secondly I am guessing you have drones right through or are you deliberately raising drones as well?


Joseph Clemens said:


> I've been rearing a few queens continuously all through Autumn and Winter. We've been having a nice wildflower flow, which was starting to fade away, but last night it began to rain and is continuing today -- hopefully that will keep the wildflowers going.
> 
> I recently restocked my queen cell builder, then started a batch of thirty cells, however, only about ten of them took, so I added even more nurse bees and feed, then regrafted the vacant cups.


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## RayMarler

RayMarler said:


> Yes Joseph Clemens, I remember your posting.
> I've noticed in past years that the second round always seemed to come out better. I seem to remember reading somewhere about setting up the cell builders before hand with a frame of eggs/larva that were removed as the grafts put in, but can't remember where. Then I read your posting and so started doing it this way this year. I've liked the results so far. Thank you!


G. M. Doolittle in Scientific Queen Rearing is where I first heard of this method. He claimed that for queenless cell builders, this method of leaving them larva to feed three days before introducing grafts would produce cells every bit as good as natural swarm cells. I myself came up with 4 days, it just sounded like a good time as cells are one day from being capped over.


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## rmdial

Ray, why do we close off the cell builder to keep bees in?

Thanks for the very helpful info.

Soapy


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## RayMarler

I do not close off my cell builders as they are full of nurse bees and placed in the location of a strong hive to get field bees as well. Some people do close them off, and some put them into the basement where it is cool and dark as well. It keeps the bees in the cell builder, instead of the older bees flying back to the old location where they were pulled from.


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## Father Time

bump


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## dtrooster

bump again


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