# how i graft



## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

i was reading all kinds of posts, and i decided to start my own post. 

i would say that i have grafted ever since i was a kid, and this is a method, that after many years, and working with many beekeepers all over the nation, and on 3 different continents, i came up with. 

i am also trying to select my bees, naturally , looking for the best bee i can find for my area. i live in Louisiana, so it gets hot and humid here, and we only have 2 good flows /year...seeing that i am not moving my bees anywere. 

so first thing first, yesterday i went out there and painted my hives...i should have done it a while back, but it only hapened yesterday  

today i will go home, and graft, since i already have my nuc prepared for grafting, and my graftee hive, behind my garage...so if it does not rain too hard, i will graft when i get home, and ask a friend to film, and take pictures.

normally, i would not make queens, but i was talking with somebody off this forum, and i was encouraged to present my method to everybody, since it is simple and easy to do, even for the beginer beekeeper. 

the first picture is of my regular bee yard, with the "face paint" on  
i do that, because on regular basis, when i get a hive that is strong enough, i divide it in the beeyard, so all those markers, help my queens find their way home.








i will follow up with some pics later on this week.
i hope you enjoy.
Radu


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

hello again, 

so yesterday it was sunny so I could graft. unfortunately I did ran into some technical problems. my friend that vas supposed to film the whole thing, had manned the bbq all day, and with a few beers behind him, his skills at operating the camera were below standards.

so I am trying to upload the video's we made, this is my first attempt ever to video while doing this, so I apologize for the technical difficulties we ran into. you might want to have your volume down while you are watching the videos. 

the pic is from behind my garage, yesterday afternoon. my donor hive and my nuc for the cells.
as soon as I upload the videos, I will follow up with a post .


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## tpope (Mar 1, 2015)

I'm not laughing at your efforts. I want to see what you are sharing so I'll just stay tuned in and wait.


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

View attachment 20150525951756422.bmp


Tpope, you can laugh my friend, this is a free country we live in.

anyway. as I said, my friend, was a bit on the intoxicated side yesterday and he messed up my camera, so with my own device I got 0 seconds of footage, and the most important thing, I got none of the grafting. I will see if my wife has a second tonight when I get home and I will try to film that. the whole thing took about 20 min, with all the camera setting up and beer sharing and stuff....after all, it was memorial day and we celebrated our own way.
so we first opened the nuc box, just to see how that was going....then I opened the main hive....I had placed 1 deep on top of if Saturday, and they had already placed some honey and drew comb in it by Monday. I took 3rd box off, and looked in my second, but I had no larvae....all the space left by hatching brood, was full with honey (the reason I placed the 3rd box in the first place). I had to go all the way down to the 1st rood chamber. I had 7brood and 1 egg frames down there. I estimate in total between the 2 boxes I had 12-13 frames of brood. not bad for a nuc dating back from 1st week of march.2015 queen in it , natural selection right behind my garage. 
in the second video, I realized that my video was not working at all, so I asked my friend to video again with his phone, but we had missed the grafting part, because I thought my camera was set up correctly, and he was worried about the grill more than my camera action , so we missed that and the replacing of the frame in the nuc box. but I will try to do that tonight. 
now I had prepared the nuc box on Saturday, and I took only capped brood, to my surprise they only had 3-4 q cells drawn out. sometimes you get dozens. 

so, video 1 and vide 2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIciu_P5fhA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FKzD9PFc6M


the only image I have from the grafting process is what my friend took with his camera phone.

so let me know what you guys think. I will look again in my nuc tomorrow , to see what my result was. 
I grafter 16 cells, no specific reason, other that to show that if you have 5 hives and you need 5 queens, if you take 1 frame out of each, you can make your 6 queens, with some to spare, and not spend $30 /queen. the bonus is, you end up with a new colony at the end of the process.
all together I think the whole process was under 20 min , after a day's work at the office and with the "help " of a drunk friend 
we'll see what my graft did tomorrow. I usually let them do 3 days before I look, and also usually I feed some syrup...this time I was not prepared. as I mentioned, it was just a try out, to show some of the beginner beekeepers here how they can do this easy, without too much headache.

I will follow up with pics and videos, as soon as I make some ))) and my thing is to always have fun, work the bees only if it makes me happy first, and you saw my dog wonder around, my bees were busy binging in nectar, that is why I did not feed. on the other hand, I have not grafted in 2 years, and this would be the first time in many many years, I have not fed syrup after I introduced the graft frame. 

and it was about 88F with probably 98humidity in the air, I was all wet at the end of the 20 min.....

Radu


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## rookie2531 (Jul 28, 2014)

Says video is private.


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

sorry, they should work now.

again, I would lower my volume, they are loud.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIciu_P5fhA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FKzD9PFc6M


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## cristianNiculae (Jul 2, 2013)

Grafting is easy. Making queens is easy. The whole apiary management is harder.


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

ok, so yesterday after work, I could not get help, the wife was busy with something else, so I had to video myself. 
it did not came out so great , but for a fist timer, I think it's ok.

https://youtu.be/s71k20IdXxk

let me know what you think. i would appreciate some comments.


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## Brad Bee (Apr 15, 2013)

You are a heck of a lot faster than I was the other day.

I've got to know, how does larvae and royal jelly taste?


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

Brad Bee said:


> You are a heck of a lot faster than I was the other day.
> 
> I've got to know, how does larvae and royal jelly taste?


i always eat them, since i was a kid. you take larvae and you mix with pollen and honey....it is very energetic...my dad use to feed me that when we were extracting honey...we did not had red bull growing up, this was our power up secret ))

you have to try it...they taste good. a bit like royal jelly, on a steake )))


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

so, I was busy lately but I did this on Saturday. I went out there and checked on my queen cells. 
the nuc box cells, were just being capped. out of 11 surviving (remember I had 13 the next day, then I opened it up, and I said they will probably kill some, well they did 2) 2 were just being capped. on my other hive, I grafted in the vide, and set above excluder, I had 5 cells out of 11. a bunch of the cell cups fell off the frame...it happens. so I had 6 there and 11 in the other one. that is 16 cells in total, and I did this to them. they should hatch by the end of this week, and I hope to be able to go out there and make some splits while there is still some honey flow going on. I will set them in the bee yard, so that all the workforce will go home to mama, and let my young bees raise these virgins right .
so because I did not buy the whole jee z bee zeee queen system  I had to improvise.
now the cells I grafted the next day were all capped, so that means I grafted older the second day, and younger the first day.
I will let you know how it worked when I go there and check on them.

if you have any questions, let me know.


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## Robbin (May 26, 2013)

Thanks for the videos! You make it look easy, which gives me the courage to give it a try.


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

Robbin said:


> Thanks for the videos! You make it look easy, which gives me the courage to give it a try.


it is quite easy, it takes a bit of practice, but it is easy. if you look up youtube videos of people grafting, you will be amazed at some speeds out there. I saw one where it looked like her hand was going 100mi/h and I am sure she had a great take. 
you should try your own grafting, because I believe, especially in the stationary situation, where you do not move your bees over state lines from FL to Ca, your queens are adapted to your area, so especially if you have a queen that year after year, her or her replacement daughter, did great in that location for you, made you honey, and also survived the winter and parasites, you might want to perpetuate that right?
that is what I am trying to do with my hives.

try it and let us know how it went.


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## cristianNiculae (Jul 2, 2013)

God taught me a lesson yesterday when I grafted 30 and got maybe a half of them accepted though the starter was properly made. I wasn't in my best shape.

This morning I took the frame from where I grafted and used Mell's notching method on it. I'm eager to see the results.

I'm thinking on giving up grafting especially after reading Jay Smith's - Better queens.


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## Robbin (May 26, 2013)

I think you said In your video you said you often use sugar water in the cells you are moving the larva to, you did't do that in your video, so I thought I would ask to be sure. Plan to graft this evening for the first time. My starter hive is slam full of bees.... I've just got to pick a good frame to graft from now and I'll be ready to go.


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

Robbin said:


> I think you said In your video you said you often use sugar water in the cells you are moving the larva to, you did't do that in your video, so I thought I would ask to be sure. Plan to graft this evening for the first time. My starter hive is slam full of bees.... I've just got to pick a good frame to graft from now and I'll be ready to go.


yeah, I do use usually sugar water, warm sugar water. with a pulverizer...I need a light mist in the cell, to where there Is no excess water in it but when I place my larvae in it, it will sit on a light film of sugar water. bees will go in there and take the larvae into custody and clean everything.
another thing I do is I leave my frame with the cells in the starter for at least 24 h, they will clean the cells, and then I will graft into it. I do not know if that helps, but I always did it like that. again, the more bees you got, from several hives, and hatching brood, the better it is. 

the whole trick is to not hurt the larvae. so if you think you touched it, graft another. if you pay attention, you will see it will work just fine. 
make sure you graft same age larvae....it is not big deal if you don't , but, if you are not careful towards the end, you will have one hatching sooner, and she will kill most of the other ones. that is the reason I placed the roller cages on them, because I am not really interested in being precise, I that gives me a margin of error, and peace of mind. mine should hatch by Thursday, I mean tomorrow, so I will go check on them Friday. I will go make my nucs on Saturday or Sunday if it is not raining. I will try to post video of it.

good luck Robbin.


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

Cristian, 
I will use these cells for now, but my goal was to not graft at all, just let them naturally make queens, survival of the fittest. that means I will end us with the best queens for my area in maybe 3-5 years....after that I will begin to graft out of my best stock. i think grafting is good, but too much of it is not. i was running 4000 hives in France, and we would make about 1400 nucs/year....i always had at least 300-400 without grafted queens in them. my grafted queens cells nucs had a 85% take and my non grafted , in natural selection yards, had 80% success rate. now for 5% you can say it is not worth it, but in honey production the second year, the grafted nucs had 35% more honey than the natural, and i mean on average. so in the natural nucs, i always had the 150% above average hive, and usually that hive got selected for grafting next year.
grafting is a tool for the beekeeper, a tool to improve his production. sometimes, or most of the times, people forget that. they graft and make queens because they need queens. take for example the large queen breaders here in the US. they sell over 11000 queens / month for example( this co i know) so how do you think they graft? what s their selection? i will tell you what, their selection is for gentle, good queen raisers, and less other reasons....so people buy the queens from them because they need a queen in their nuc, but all they get is a lazy queen, that is nice and can raise another queen. she grew up in a warm climate, and all of a sudden her daughters are sent to a cold climate, or dry climate, and they are expected to do great....it will not work.

so me, at this stage of growing my business, i am willing to loose hives, i mean nucs , if they do not make a queen and mate....because i am looking for survivor genes. i will use these queen cells because to begin with , the queen i grafted from, is good. she is a queen from march this year, that when i grafted her, she had over 11 frames of brood, honey and a ton of bees. i am happy with her. 
let us know the notching method worked.
radu 




cristianNiculae said:


> God taught me a lesson yesterday when I grafted 30 and got maybe a half of them accepted though the starter was properly made. I wasn't in my best shape.
> 
> This morning I took the frame from where I grafted and used Mell's notching method on it. I'm eager to see the results.
> 
> I'm thinking on giving up grafting especially after reading Jay Smith's - Better queens.


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## Robbin (May 26, 2013)

Well my grafting was a complete failure. I need more light, more magnification and a steadier hand. I won't be surprised if I get NONE to take and will be thrilled if I get 4 or 5.

I decided to buy a larva transfer station to hold the frame at the angle I want, and I ordered a 4X glass desk top magnifier with a ring of 48 LEDs. I had a 2X plastic with some leds on the side.
It wasn't nearly good enough for what I needed. Plastic just isn't clear enough and the light was worthless at that angle. 

I'll make another try next week with better equipment. I'm also going to try and get my grand daughter to take a crack at it. She's always a big helper anyway.
She can probably do it easily. 

I tried every tool, the one that worked the best was master grafting tool. The expensive one. The next best was the SS german grafting one with the side that looked like a spoon, but I could never get them off of it. The china tool worked good once... Found the JB tool to hard to use on the little bitty larva.

I can tell you, it was as difficult, and frustrating as I was afraid it was going to be.... Next step will be graft-less systems...


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

Robbin said:


> Well my grafting was a complete failure. I need more light, more magnification and a steadier hand. I won't be surprised if I get NONE to take and will be thrilled if I get 4 or 5.
> 
> I decided to buy a larva transfer station to hold the frame at the angle I want, and I ordered a 4X glass desk top magnifier with a ring of 48 LEDs. I had a 2X plastic with some leds on the side.
> It wasn't nearly good enough for what I needed. Plastic just isn't clear enough and the light was worthless at that angle.
> ...


i am sorry you are having so much trouble Robin. i have used in the past http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/351470/V-Light-Daylight-Magnifier-Clamp-On/ and i liked it. i still have good eyes and i do not need it, but i did had better results when i used it.
i got my queens out of the hive. the first one i grafted in the 5 frame nuc box, they all hatched on the 4th -5th. but the other ones i did in the other hive , sunday on the 7th,were still not hatched, that means i had grafted too young and the nuc box i grafted too old. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpV7gw15ULA
the video is shot with my phone. i had started the camera, but again i had issues with it. i think it is time for a new one. the video is not great, and it is sideways. i do not know how to work on th evideo , to edit or anything like that. 

i did made 12 nucs, and introduced the queens in there. i did that sunday , and i will go check on them tomorrow and make sure they were relesead from the cages. so if that works i will have 33 hives. one of my big hives also had a problem, they changed queen, and so i could not make 2 nucs of it as i planned. i would have had 14 made, but it just did not worked out. i could probably split again in 1 month and set them up to where this winter they will be good to go, but for now i am stoping here. 33 hives is a lot for a part time hobby. on the other hand, the wife was complaining about me spending time out there, and after i told her i have over $4500 in hives right now, if i was to sell, she calmed down a bit  plus at least 2 drums of honey on them. 
i bought a new extractor, 4-8 frames, it came in today. this weekend i will go extract some honey. 

if they relesed my queens, and if the weather is not going to be bad, by sunday, i will know if they are laying...they should mate by then.

let me know what you think, and please do not critic the quality of the video....i also was having a party going on at the house as i was dooing this, and had some margaritas )))

robin, do not dispare, it is easyer after you do it a few hundred times  joke


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

oh, and i remember why i used to work bees on pallets and forklift. i had to move 12 x10 frame boxes, load them in the pickup, drive 30mi, unload in the new beeyard....i can tell you am am a big strong man, but at 90F and the humidity and oh yeah, the honey i had in those boxes, it broke my back. those hives are so heavy it;s not even funny. at least i know i do not have to feed for the next 6 months )


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## tpope (Mar 1, 2015)

If it were easy everybody would be doing it. Those boxes do get heavy in the heat and humidity.
I like your solution to the hair rollers on the cups.


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

tpope said:


> If it were easy everybody would be doing it. Those boxes do get heavy in the heat and humidity.
> I like your solution to the hair rollers on the cups.


Yup they do get heavy. So what do you think of my efforts  
i really think it is easy, but i grew up into it so it comes natural. I was just trying to show my own no head ake method of dooing it.


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## tpope (Mar 1, 2015)

I like what you have shown thus far. I am studying how I can follow your lead. Please continue to instruct about your methods.


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## Robbin (May 26, 2013)

I wrote this in another thread... but it was intended for this one.

Well my grafts failed, but not for the reason I expected. I was going in to look and see how many cells took, but decided to check for queen cells on the frames.
So as I was going thru them, I reached my graft frame and no takes, I hadn't found a queen cell on any of the other frames and I look at the one in my hand and there is a queen on it. I thought Darn, I'm sure I had her in the bottom box, so while I've got her on a frame, I'll put her in the bottom box. So I set her in an empty nuc, removed the cloak board and pulled the center frame to swap out for the one with the queen, and there was a queen on that frame. Both boxes had full size, laying queens in them...
So I put that one back, put the cloak board back and left an empty space to put the grafting frame back in and went off to build a nuc with the second queen and to try another round of grafting. I think that is the 6th double queen hive I've had. 4 others I've found because I pulled a queen because she was my best, only to discover no queen cells where made because there was a second queen and two queens always look like there is a great queen in the box.  I also found two queens in one box once, on frames next to each other. Both full size laying queens.
Makes you wonder how many second queens you just don't know about. If she hadn't been on the one frame I pulled from the bottom box, I would have stuck the second queen in there and would never have known...


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## Robbin (May 26, 2013)

I watched the video, it was very informative. i took my second crack at grafting on Sunday. I'll go back Friday and see if I got any takes. I'm sure there is no queen in the top box this time as I placed her in a nuc.


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

Robbin said:


> I wrote this in another thread... but it was intended for this one.
> 
> Well my grafts failed, but not for the reason I expected. I was going in to look and see how many cells took, but decided to check for queen cells on the frames.
> So as I was going thru them, I reached my graft frame and no takes, I hadn't found a queen cell on any of the other frames and I look at the one in my hand and there is a queen on it. I thought Darn, I'm sure I had her in the bottom box, so while I've got her on a frame, I'll put her in the bottom box. So I set her in an empty nuc, removed the cloak board and pulled the center frame to swap out for the one with the queen, and there was a queen on that frame. Both boxes had full size, laying queens in them...
> ...


there is a guy in Canada that all he runs are double queens. i would like to have one of your queens if i can, because that is something i am interested in studying. i had that happen to me a couple of times, but i had realized it was the old queen and her daughter. they only worked together for a few weeks, and then the old queen was gone. so check back on your nucs in a few weeks, and see how those queens are doing, they might be old and the hive was trying to change them. but if you have a strain of bees that are gentle enough to where they would have 2 queens working together for the honey flow, man, i want one of those. and i am sure most of the beekeepers would too. that is a almost double the production hive  they should have 2 times the bees the other hives have )


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

i m curious how it turned out for you. i am going to check on my queens today. we had a storm blow by around noon, so i hope i can enter the bee yard after all that water. i need to make sure they were released from the cages and if i took by mistake some old queens with me, i need to get the virgin out , if she still lives, and go back to my other hives and see where the queen is missing from. sunday it is honey pulling day for me, i hope for 1 drum of honey, but i would be happy with anything i get, especially after making splits on them.


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

not related to the queen stuff. I have yet to go check on them. after I introduced, I went back 3 days later and released the queens. I think I introduced to fast, and the large no of workers killed my virgins, at least some of them. I found cells, and I only had 3 in the cages, so I released them. I went and pulled honey off the other hives, and I noticed that one of them was growing cells, I suspect I took the old queen away, I know also the hive in question. I had already placed a second deep on it since at my release visit, I noticed large amounts of bees on it. they usually do that, they feel orphan and some of the worker bees will migrate to the hive in the yard that has a queen...I believe it has something to do with the smell of it. so that one has a second deep on. so I have 1 queen less hive in my main bee yard and the queen in my nuc yard. all good there, seeing that I did not paid much attention to what I was doing. 

I am please to announce that by only pulling a few frames/ hive and a couple of shallow supers, I managed to extract 10 x5 gal pails of honey. I will be selling them this weekend , and make my first bee money  will buy more boxes with that. 

I extracted using my brand new vivo extractor, bought off amazon for $250. made in china piece of you know what , so I am sending back today. it worked after I had to rig it to work, so broken extractor being sent back. I thought, that since I only have a few hives, I can afford the 250 for a machine I will use once a year, until I have more hives and I can buy like a 18/9 frame extractor from M Lake. this vivo 8/4 frame was a bust. poorly engineered. it runs smooth empty, and with some light frames. once you put heavy frames in there and you are not 100% level, all heal brakes loose. 

just giving my 2 cents on this endeavor. I would have pulled 10 more pails if I would have not made those nucs, but hey... I need numbers more than money now 

robin, any news on your grafting?


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## Robbin (May 26, 2013)

crocodilu911 said:


> not related to the queen stuff. I have yet to go check on them. after I introduced, I went back 3 days later and released the queens. I think I introduced to fast, and the large no of workers killed my virgins, at least some of them. I found cells, and I only had 3 in the cages, so I released them. I went and pulled honey off the other hives, and I noticed that one of them was growing cells, I suspect I took the old queen away, I know also the hive in question. I had already placed a second deep on it since at my release visit, I noticed large amounts of bees on it. they usually do that, they feel orphan and some of the worker bees will migrate to the hive in the yard that has a queen...I believe it has something to do with the smell of it. so that one has a second deep on. so I have 1 queen less hive in my main bee yard and the queen in my nuc yard. all good there, seeing that I did not paid much attention to what I was doing.
> 
> I am please to announce that by only pulling a few frames/ hive and a couple of shallow supers, I managed to extract 10 x5 gal pails of honey. I will be selling them this weekend , and make my first bee money  will buy more boxes with that.
> 
> ...


Second attempt wasn't much better, I only got two takes, I'm on my third attempt now, but I found that I was trying to hard to make sure I was under the larva, and was getting old cocoon and that was pulling the larva into the cell wall. I bought a new, good magnifier with 48 led lights. It's real glass and 4 power so now I can see, and could see what was going wrong. I softened my touch up a little and did much better. I figured this out about half way thru the last attempt. So I should do considerable better the next go round. I built a queen timing box so I won't have any trouble getting larva the right age from the queen I want to use.

I've got the same extractor, I built a 2X6 so that the feet could be screwed into the leading edge of the boards and filled the center with 4 bags of concrete. That stopped the wobbling. I found it extracts better with just 4 frames than 8 as the 4 are as far out as the can go which increase the speed they spin at. All said and done, I'm glad I've got it and didn't spend 600 dollars on one. If I did upgrade, it would be for a motorized one, thou you can take the handle off and use a .5 inch variable speed drill as a motor. I did that some when I got tired. 

I'll update this weekend when I check on the number of cells that took, thou I do expect I will try one more time now that I'm starting to get the kinks worked out.


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

Robbin, how was grafting? i have yet to go back to my hives. i have not seen them in over a week now, and i will only go there this weekend. i hope they are doing fine. and that by now my queens are laying


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## Robbin (May 26, 2013)

crocodilu911 said:


> Robbin, how was grafting? i have yet to go back to my hives. i have not seen them in over a week now, and i will only go there this weekend. i hope they are doing fine. and that by now my queens are laying


Again only two takes, but I learned a lot and I've been waiting for a new queen that I hope was accepted. took the cage out 3 days ago, I'll probably put a frame in there for her to lay on tomorrow in hopes of grafting over the weekend. Don't plan to tear the hive up looking for her, just set a frame in the empty spot left by her cage. I can't wait to try again, but I've lost several nucs to robbing as we are in a full on dearth now. Not good for queen rearing and I'm terrified they will find and destroy my new nuc with my new queen. I've got a disc on the front so I can close it to protect them, but I lost one on Sunday that I had looked at Saturday evening and was destroyed by the time I saw it Sunday afternoon despite the entrance reducer. 
I'm going to put a moving a robbing screen on it when I move her to a new box this coming weekend. Hopefully that will buy me some time to seal it off. I've also got it very close to the house so it's easy for me to check on.


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

Robbin said:


> Well my grafting was a complete failure. I need more light, more magnification and a steadier hand. I won't be surprised if I get NONE to take and will be thrilled if I get 4 or 5.
> 
> I decided to buy a larva transfer station to hold the frame at the angle I want, and I ordered a 4X glass desk top magnifier with a ring of 48 LEDs. I had a 2X plastic with some leds on the side.
> It wasn't nearly good enough for what I needed. Plastic just isn't clear enough and the light was worthless at that angle.
> ...


LED lighting is very bright but the color is pure white. Pretty much worthless unless you want to see in black and white. Try grafting in the dark with your headlamp magnifier, one with incandescent battery powered lights.


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

so a little update. out of 12 nucs, 11 have nice queens laying. one was the old queen i took away, and when i checked last time i saw she was really not so good. her wings were worn out bad, so i killed her to give a chance to a new queen. i left them alone, and they did their own thing. so i got 11 laying up a storm in there, and the 12th, well, the bizarre thing is, last tie i checked i saw the virgin, or better said the just mated queen lay, so i left her be. it seems she died or got killed or something, because they have 1 queen cell in there, very nice, in the middle of the frame, no eggs, a few larvae.... And some capped brood. i am guessing, she started laying, then she died, maybe when i opened the hive or something, so now they have a queen cell. the way it looks it will hatch soon, so i hope for the 12th nuc to be successful. 
see the pics attached, i already have a second box on them, in anticipation of the honey flow in august. they have something coming in because at this inspection as i was moving frames up in the foundation box i just placed on top ( i move 2 honey frames up, to give them an incentive to climb up on foundation) i shook some and i had nectar  not rain of nectar, but a good drizzle.
so 11 are set to go, nice new queens, and the 12th got some brood, eggs and larvae to boost it up until they get a new queen in there to lay.

not a big deal, but after a lot of work, i just got 33% more hives


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

crocodilu911 said:


> View attachment 19745
> View attachment 19746
> 
> 
> ...


Take what you get and get what you take.


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