# Nicot 201- Asking for advice, suggestions, and constructive criticism



## soarwitheagles (May 23, 2015)

Nicot 201- Asking for advice, suggestions, and constructive criticism...

Hi again everyone! This is my second attempt to use the Nicot queen rearing system. Tried last year and did not do so well due to poor timing [heatwave in August], weak starter hive, weak finisher hive, dearth, and anti robber screens placed on the nucs before the virgin queen could do her mating flight.

Fast forward to this year...this is the greatest bloom/flow I have ever seen here, so I believe my timing is excellent. I have a number of hives that are producing honey, pollen, wax, eggs, etc. faster than anything I have ever seen...so, I believe I have some really strong and healthy hives to start and finish with.

Weather is very mild, so no need to worry about the 5 day 105 heatwave we had last year during queen mating flights....

Here is where we presently are in the process:

Hive 1

Installed Cloake board over a week ago, separating the upper super from the lower super. Installed the queen 6 days ago. Queen did not begin laying eggs for 5 days! Now she is laying and she is one of our greatest layers right now [she was popping out nearly 2,000 eggs per day before we placed her in the Nicot box]. We have installed the board to seal off the upper super from the lower super. We also did the hive reversal thingy, closed the bottom off, then reopened it after a couple of days.

Most of the cells have eggs, but don't see many larvae or royal jelly...

She now has substantial numbers of eggs in the Nicot box, but I hardly see any royal jelly in the these cells...which leads me to ask a question:

Do bees place royal jelly in the cell of an egg, or do they wait until the egg hatches into larvae?

She now has substantial numbers of eggs in the Nicot box, but I hardly see any royal jelly in the these cells...which leads me to ask a question:

Do bees place royal jelly in the cell of an egg, or do they wait until the egg hatches into larvae?

I keep reading that we are to wait until the eggs hatch before placing the cells in the bars in the upper queenless part of the hive...

Quick question: when should we begin placing the queen cups in the queenless part of the hive?

Hive 2: Queen began laying immediately. This is her second day in the box. But we still see no larvae, just lots of eggs...

I see pollen in the frames near the Nicot box, but wondering if we need more. Today, I added pollen sub right next to the Nicot box on both hives...

Don't bees need pollen to produce royal jelly?

We placed the separating board in the Cloake board on hive 2 this evening.

I am attaching some pics of our Nicot system. 

Please share your ideas with me.

Thank you,

Soar


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## soarwitheagles (May 23, 2015)

Oh my! No advice or suggestions...

Could someone please look at our plastic queen cups and give us some good advice [especially you grafters]!

I am thinking the queen cups are filled with eggs, not larvae and that I need to wait another couple of days before pulling em' and installing them in the queenless hive...and I thinking correctly on this?

Special note: I base my hypothesis upon the fact the eggs hatch in 3.5 days...

Yo, please help me out if ya can!


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

The bees won't feed eggs until they hatch.
You need to look at some grafting videos on youtube so that you can figure out what you're looking for in the Nicot.
You're wanting freshly hatched larva that are 3.5 to 4 days old. (newborns)
The cups that you install into a cell builder must have freshly hatched larva or you're wasting your time. 

Hint: eggs that are standing up on end aren't quite ready to hatch yet. When they start laying down you know it's close to the time when they'll hatch. 

Again...you want the eggs to hatch before you transfer.

Take my advice lightly. I'm not far into the Nicot program and have not attempted it yet. Have raised many queens though. It's not that hard until you start trying to force it to happen on your schedule or terms.


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

They give RJ to the larva as the eggs hatch. 12-24hrs after the eggs turn into larva I make up the cell bars and move to a cell builder. I don't use a cloake board, so won't give any advice on that.

The pollen and syrup or incoming flows are needed to produce and feed RJ. This usually gets added to the cell builder as you insert the cell bar frame of larva, or the day before. I usually add pollen patty and put on a syrup feeder 8-12hrs before the cell bar is made up and put into the cell builder. The only time I don't is if a have a frame of mostly pollen on one side of the cell bar and a frame of mostly open nectar on the other side of the cell bar.


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## Saltybee (Feb 9, 2012)

Picture 2 lower right, larva and jelly to me. Some in picture one, maybe. Multiple eggs showing, queen in too long.


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## soarwitheagles (May 23, 2015)

Thanks for all the nice replies everyone.

Now I understand the eggs receive no royal jelly, only hatched larvae. Well, that should make it very easy to discover the larvae then...

I looked again today and out of 110 eggs, only see 3 larvae. The queen has been in Nicot box in the first hive for 10+ days, second hive, the queen has been in for 2 days. Both have pretty much filled the Nicot box now. Thinking about releasing both queens. Yes, you are right, first queen has been in the box way too long...she laid two eggs in some cells.

I am hoping by tomorrow we will see many more larvae and quickly move them to the cell finisher hive.

Will take more pics tomorrow and post the results...

Quick question: do people here put the entire Nicot box with the brown plastic cells in the hive for cleaning, or ONLY the box? I did not put the brown plastic cells in for cleaning but I did put the box in for cleaning for a two day period prior to installing the queen.

Perhaps this was my mistake

Please help me out if ya can.


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

I put the brown cell cups in the unit to be cleaned and get the hive smell a day before putting the queen in it.

When I put it in the hive, I put it between two frames of open larva.

I check for eggs daily, when it's full or mostly full of eggs, then I pull the small round plug on the unit so the queen can come out as she pleases. This helps prevent the queen double laying. I check back 3 1/2 to 4 days from seeing eggs to transfer to cell bar frame. The first hatched larva looks like a very tiny wet spot in the cell.


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## soarwitheagles (May 23, 2015)

RayMarler said:


> I put the brown cell cups in the unit to be cleaned and get the hive smell a day before putting the queen in it.
> 
> When I put it in the hive, I put it between two frames of open larva.
> 
> I check for eggs daily, when it's full or mostly full of eggs, then I pull the small round plug on the unit so the queen can come out as she pleases. This helps prevent the queen double laying. I check back 3 1/2 to 4 days from seeing eggs to transfer to cell bar frame. The first hatched larva looks like a very tiny wet spot in the cell.


Thank you Ray for the clarity. I will open both hives this afternoon and release the queens. Hopefully many eggs will have hatched and we can put them in the finisher hive.

Will update later today or tomorrow and hopefully with some nice pics!

*UPDATE:*

Nine larvae with royal jelly in the brown plastic cells. We moved them into the top part of the hot hive that we made queenless a week ago via Cloake board.

*Special note: * We found 6 or so natural and sealed queen cups in the same top box where we just moved our 9 larvae. 

*Riddle of the day:* If we sealed this top part of the hive [the top super] one week ago, and 6 queen cells since then were built and capped, how many days do we have until we must remove the frames with the queen cells so they will not hatch and gobble up our new queen larvae? Hint: Queen bees eat their way out of [emerge] from their queen cup 8 days after their cell was capped...

Winner will receive one free luscious queen bee [but you must pick it up locally]!


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

I installed my nicot system in a brood comb from a topbar hive. Put it in one of my stronger topbar hives to polish it up. Will be interesting to see if that queen lays it up with eggs without being trapping in the cage. She's laying everywhere else in this small 30" hive. Here is the video I did today. https://www.facebook.com/topbarbeehive/videos/1696757993684057/


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## soarwitheagles (May 23, 2015)

Ruthie,

Really nice video and thanks for sharing. I hope your queen will fill the Nicot box and hope you have many, many queens!

We will open our two queen starting hives today, remove the queen from the boxes, and hopefully continue to transfer the larvae!

Will do our best to post some pics.


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## soarwitheagles (May 23, 2015)

Here are some pics of our Nicot system progress. I do have some questions...

First question: Does it appear as if these bees are darker or larger than normal?








Second question: Anyone know what kinda queen this is?








Third question: What type of cells are these? We left the Cloake board on too long in the finisher hive and found 8-10 of these peanut size cells. Are they emergency cells, supercedure cells, or swarm cells, or normal queen cells?








Last question: Queen cells on top are 3 days old [after larvae hatched]. Queen cups on bottom were installed today. How many days until I should start placing these queen cups in the hair curlers?








Thank you for helping a newbie!


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

soarwitheagles said:


> Here are some pics of our Nicot system progress. I do have some questions...
> 
> First question: Does it appear as if these bees are darker or larger than normal?
> View attachment 31938
> ...


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## Saltybee (Feb 9, 2012)

Anybody else seeing a torn open QC in picture 3? Not the best angle but looks like a free virgin is already on the prowl.


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

soarwitheagles said:


> How many days until I should start placing these queen cups in the hair curlers?


Will you keep the queen cells in this hive until they emerge, or put them in an incubator? I put the roller cages on mine when they are within about 3-4 days of emerging and due to the small hive beetles in my area, I always add some worker bees to the cage. Of course, if you are not exactly sure of the queen cell ages, you don't want to risk failure by and early emerger destroying all your hard work, so you might put them on a few days earlier.


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## Colobee (May 15, 2014)

A while back there was an interesting "nicot" (also commonly referred to as "cup kit", or Jenter) discussion over on another bee forum: http://www.beemaster.com/forum/index.php?topic=46987.msg406526#msg406526. 

Eventually the discussion of cell size came up. Apparently some manufacturers decided to cast the ("Nicot") base unit with ~5.6mm cells. It was suspected that this might, at times, lead to some confusion by the queen as to whether she should lay a drone or worker egg. "Small cell" queens might be more prone to lay drone eggs in the prospective "over sized" queen cell cups. There was a reference to info from MB's website but I couldn't find the details.

That said, early Nicot attempts (here), with "small cell" queens yielded pretty fair results from the cells that were actually started.. No records were kept of the number of failed larvae.


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

Wild drawn cells in the cell builder can cause rejection of some or all of any grafted or Nicot cells added on a cell bar. Preparing the cell starter/builder starts 7-9 days before grafting, so that all viable eggs and larva have become too old to turn into queen cells. Go through and destroy any queen cells they've started by that time, and then add the grafts or nicot cell bar frame later in the day.


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## soarwitheagles (May 23, 2015)

RayMarler said:


> They give RJ to the larva as the eggs hatch. 12-24hrs after the eggs turn into larva I make up the cell bars and move to a cell builder. I don't use a cloake board, so won't give any advice on that.
> 
> The pollen and syrup or incoming flows are needed to produce and feed RJ. This usually gets added to the cell builder as you insert the cell bar frame of larva, or the day before. I usually add pollen patty and put on a syrup feeder 8-12hrs before the cell bar is made up and put into the cell builder. The only time I don't is if a have a frame of mostly pollen on one side of the cell bar and a frame of mostly open nectar on the other side of the cell bar.


Ray, thanks. I did not add any sugar syrup or pollen sub for the initial 10 days. I did add some pollen sub a couple of days ago and the bees are devouring it. I may add the sugar syrup today or tomorrow.



RayMarler said:


> I put the brown cell cups in the unit to be cleaned and get the hive smell a day before putting the queen in it.
> 
> When I put it in the hive, I put it between two frames of open larva.
> 
> I check for eggs daily, when it's full or mostly full of eggs, then I pull the small round plug on the unit so the queen can come out as she pleases. This helps prevent the queen double laying. I check back 3 1/2 to 4 days from seeing eggs to transfer to cell bar frame. The first hatched larva looks like a very tiny wet spot in the cell.


Now I wish I had added those brown cups. The queen in hive 1 took nearly 5 or more days before she began to lay.



Juhani Lunden said:


> soarwitheagles said:
> 
> 
> > Here are some pics of our Nicot system progress. I do have some questions...
> ...


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

Ditch the cloake board, it causes extra steps and maniplations. That's what I say anyway, Although I know some people do use them and like them. Another nifty little piece of hardware that just causes more steps and manipulations as far as I'm concerned. It's bad enough using a Nicot, adding a cloake board along with it just seems like a hard way to make up a good cell builder to me... sigh...

Please don't anyone take offence. I mean none. Try any little gadget or manipulation or management technique you like, we all get to do it however we want. This is just my opinion and tried to resist speaking it but just could not help myself.


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## soarwitheagles (May 23, 2015)

RayMarler said:


> Ditch the cloake board, it causes extra steps and maniplations. That's what I say anyway, Although I know some people do use them and like them. Another nifty little piece of hardware that just causes more steps and manipulations as far as I'm concerned. It's bad enough using a Nicot, adding a cloake board along with it just seems like a hard way to make up a good cell builder to me... sigh...
> 
> Please don't anyone take offence. I mean none. Try any little gadget or manipulation or management technique you like, we all get to do it however we want. This is just my opinion and tried to resist speaking it but just could not help myself.


Ditch the cloake board? But I just made a much better Cloake board and installed it in the second Nicot hive!


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

That's great, I hope it works fantastically for you!


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## soarwitheagles (May 23, 2015)

RayMarler said:


> That's great, I hope it works fantastically for you!


Ray, I like how it makes it possible to take a strong hive and create both the starter and finisher with one hive...then put it all back together and it is just as it was at the beginning.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

soarwitheagles said:


> Are swarm cells good for anything and did I make a good decision by making up a nuc and installing the swarm cells?


Queens taken from swarm cells make swarmy bees.

Larvae grafted and queen raised from non swarming hive gives nonswarming bees.


It is up to you what you want tour bees to be in the future.


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## Colobee (May 15, 2014)

soarwitheagles said:


> Colobee, "small cells yielded 'fair' results." Is fair one step above "poor" results?


 For me, "Pretty fair" was having about 60% of the _queen cells_ become productive colony leaders. It brought a new perspective to the actual value of mail order queens at the time. The time & resources involved in queen rearing didn't really "pay", but the experience was enjoyable.

Having downsized, I'm looking forward to more smaller scale attempts, and the Nicot system is a part of the plan. Good luck with yours!


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Do bees place royal jelly in the cell of an egg, or do they wait until the egg hatches into larvae?

They only feed larvae, not eggs.

>Quick question: when should we begin placing the queen cups in the queenless part of the hive?

Right after they hatch on day 4. Then into the mating nucs 10 days after they hatch, or 14 days after the queen laid them (same thing).

>Hive 2: Queen began laying immediately. This is her second day in the box. But we still see no larvae, just lots of eggs...

You will not see any larvae until at least 3.5 days after the queen starts to lay and most will not be hatched until 4 days after you confined her.

>Don't bees need pollen to produce royal jelly?

Yes.

The sequence is this (just substitute "Nicot" for "Jenter"):
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesqueenrearing.htm#beekeepingmath


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## soarwitheagles (May 23, 2015)

Michael Bush said:


> >Do bees place royal jelly in the cell of an egg, or do they wait until the egg hatches into larvae?
> 
> They only feed larvae, not eggs.
> 
> ...


Michael Bush,

Thank you for sharing your article. You sure are helpful and I appreciate you and all the hard work you have done to help us newbies get a start with bees.

Have a wonderful day!


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

Here is an update on the topbar hive Nicot experiment: Polished cassette and comb went into a booming nuc, and the queen was put in the cassette on Tues PM 4/4. Checked on it one day later and the queen had laid up the plastic cells (only put about 50 in there). Removed queen from hive on Wed PM 4/5. Will check back on Sat/Sun to see if there is royal jelly in the plastic cells and to move them into the vertical queen cell bar. Any queen cells started on the natural comb will be moved over to another queenless hive to be finished (as that is how I normally raise my queen cells).


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## soarwitheagles (May 23, 2015)

Good job Ruthie!


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## soarwitheagles (May 23, 2015)

Very, very bad job Soarwitheagles!

Must have either missed a swarm cell, or one of the queen cups hatched much earlier than I anticipated. Every queen cell eaten through and every beautiful and new queen-to-be dead!

Dang, 20+ hours of labor down the drain...

Now to hand out the grades:

We get an A+ for effort.
We get an F for success.
We get an F for carefully following instructions.
We get an F for not installing the roller cages earlier.
We get an F for making awesome queens for our nucs.

Man, when ya average out the entire report card, my dad would've blistered my bottom good if I brought home a report card like that! Our GPA is 0.8.

So sorry, thinking about going back to the walk away splits like our good friend JRG showed us...

Dang, should have listened to JRG and Ray!

Here is our present batting score averages: 0/3.

Kind of wish I had done bowling instead. Not very good at it, but at least I knocked a couple of pins down every once in a while.


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

Soaringeagle, I think you are being too hard on yourself. Wasn't it an awesome learning experience even if you can't measure it by successfully raised queens? I'm loving every minute of it, just to be able to say "I've done that".


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## soarwitheagles (May 23, 2015)

ruthiesbees said:


> Soaringeagle, I think you are being too hard on yourself. Wasn't it an awesome learning experience even if you can't measure it by successfully raised queens? I'm loving every minute of it, just to be able to say "I've done that".


ruthiesbees, For me it was a very painful and disappointing experience. Not sure why, but this time around we had problems with queen not laying eggs for many days, then, once eggs were laid, one starter colony would not hatch the eggs. Then, no royal jelly because the eggs did not hatch.

It was another big failure and costly loss. I probably will not try it again unless I am retired and have hours upon hours to burn, hours and hours to monitor and do all the extra work. I have decided for now to return to simply and easy walk away splits. If I had done simply splits this year and last year, my beehive count would have been up past 50 instead of a mere 12. To be honest with you, right about now I feel like throwing all my Nicot equipment in the garbage or burning it. Kinda pissed off about the results after trying and failing two years in a row. I am so done with the Nicot system.


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

Disappointed by the Nicot system as well. In theory it's a great tool but in practice not so much.
The bright side is I did learn how to set up a really good cell-starter. Once I had the starter and nothing from the Nicot it sort of forced me to get out the grafting tool. Once I started figuring out how easy it is to graft I was kicking myself for wasting 4 or 5 good spring days waiting on the danged Nicot system. 
Got 12/19 of my grafts to take. 

Used really dirty brown cell cups from the Nicot and got a couple to take. 
Got closer to 100% with brand-new charcoal JZBZ cups. Wish I'd had more clean new ones. 
Grafting is fun. Nicot...not so much.


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

I have followed this thread since last week. I got a nicot system a few weeks ago and before I installed into the hive I dipped each side in honey/sugar/pollen syrup for the bees to clean up. Next day (4 days ago) I placed the queen and it had workers going in and out. Placed in hive between brood frames, and the frame I put it in had drawn dark comb around it. 

Today I looked for the first time. I had my lighted magnifier head gear on and I did not take off the back panel. I couldn't see eggs or larvae but maybe I just couldn't see them. Plenty of bees inside and the queen looks fine. 

With the back cover on, can you easily see the eggs and larvae? 

On the same day I put queen in the nicot, I grafted for the first time (other than a few larvae at a class last summer) 12 larvae into jz bz cups. I checked today and there are 2 cells started from that bar in the starter hive. I had one used chinese grafting tool from class, and only grafted 12 because I could tell I'd ruined the tool. Now I'm waiting for my order for a pack of new ones, plus I ordered a jz bz grafting tool. 

I sure hope I will one day come here and say how "easy" it is to graft. I did ok with punch cell last year until my mating nucs (queen castle) got robbed out to the point of death. I would have done some more punch cell last week but it was too cold in my house and I need melted wax for the process. I did the grafting in my car which was plenty warm from sitting in the sun. I set up a pretty neat way to do it--for when I do get good at grafting. I'm also going to use mini mating nucs this year. I got 15 when they were on sale from Mann Lake.


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

Today was Day 4 since eggs were laid in mine, so I moved them over to the vertical queen cell bar. Now I just have to wait to see how long it takes for them to be drawn out, and how many they draw out. Guess it's beginner's luck for me. If I get 8 really good cells from this, I will be very happy.

The video on the transfer can be found on the bees' FB page. https://www.facebook.com/topbarbeehive/videos/1708785859147937/


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Excellent job! Next time I would use less time making videos, those little larvae dry very quickly; leaving them to sunshine for just a minute may be fatal.


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

I think I answered my own question. After much turning and moving to different light with the frame, I think I see eggs, possibly newly hatched larvae in some of the cells in my nicot. 

I watched a video that looked like a slick way to move the cells to queen frame by using the yellow cups to press into back of brown cup and then attach to dark brown attachment piece nailed onto queen bar. Did either of you move them that way? Looks like you don't have to touch the larvae cup at all. 

I may be too late on those larvae, and now afraid to mess with the queen frame bar after I place the nicot cells into the main queen frame that has 2 queen cells going from the grafting last Wednesday (separate bar, same frame). The bar does not slide in easy and I'm afraid of jarring the existing cells. Sigh.


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

I thought I would be able to press the peach holder onto the brown cell cup, but the spacing on the cell cups was too close to allow that. But it was easy enough to move them with my latex glove finger and get them off the plastic frame. (didn't even really need gloves there were so few bees where I was working). Once they were on the peach holders, then I did pop them onto the black holders which were hot glued to the corex plastic frame (beeswax didn't hold to the corex)


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