# Yogurt Vs. Royal Jelly



## aam (May 1, 2007)

I would think that one raised of yogurt would be much more fit than one raised on jelly.

aam


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

Huumm. . . I've never heard of this technique. Where does it originate? How does it work? It sounds as though it would be a disastrous waste of time. But does it work?


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## BigDaddyDS (Aug 28, 2007)

Yogurt does work!

Normally, I harvest rogue swarm cells by carefully removing them from the frame, remove the queen pupae, and then pop the resealed queen cell in a bag and into the freezer until I'm ready to graft. That way, I have frozen fresh royal jelly at my disposal.

But, this year, I've had a problem with a lack of swarm cells. (What a problem, right?) My supply of royal jelly has dwindled and my dry grafting skills need some serious work. What to do?

Two options: Sacrificial larva in queen cups, placed in a starter nuc, and then harvest specifically for the royal jelly, which seems like a waste to me. Or, yogurt. 

Per Dr. Larry Connor, plain yogurt, mixed 1:1 with water, provides a reasonable substitute for royal jelly for grafting purposes. Flavors will increase the chances of rejection, as will sugar-free variations. No comment was made about fat-free yogurts. A half a spoonful, mixed with room temperature water, will warm to room temperature quickly and prevent shock to the larva. 

Is it "better" than royal jelly? Probably not. The nurse bees will eat all the royal jelly out of a queen cup and replace it with fresh, so by using yogurt, they'll be eating yogurt instead. By the way, lactose (milk sugar) has no nutritional value as a sugar for the bees, but the casin may provide "some" dietary protein.

Hope this helps!
DS


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

Thanks BigDaddyDS, I hadn't heard of that before.


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

Rob What was your take?


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## rainesridgefarm (Sep 4, 2001)

I was told coconut milk. the correct sugars and protien content


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## Rob7 (May 22, 2008)

For the record I used vanilla low fat yogurt. I could not find plain yogurt. I am happy with the take so far, although it is only a couple days since grafting and I imagine the actual queens harvested will be less than the number of cells that are being drawn out now. I started 40 or so queens and it looked like 30 or so were being drawn out. My colleague started over 100 queens a few days before me with the same yogurt and about 75% were being drawn out. Hopefully that means will have lots of nucs to overwinter and possibly some queens to sell. 

I would also advise in general that you test the consistency of your yogurt to water ratio before grafting---one time I made it too watery and when I flipped my frame upright after grafting I had several larva drip out of the cup.


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## bleta12 (Feb 28, 2007)

I do graft dry myself and I believe priming the cells will RJ or other stuff does not improve the take, it just makes it easier the release of the larvae. 
There are other conditions that are much more important in the cell starter and they have direct influence on the results.
My last graft of 60 cells, 54 started and look very good. I use a swarm box and a very strong 2 story queen right cell builder.

Gilman


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## Rob7 (May 22, 2008)

what do you consider the most important factors in queen rearing?


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## bleta12 (Feb 28, 2007)

Rob7 said:


> what do you consider the most important factors in queen rearing?


 
Time of the year, weather, number and age of bees in the cell builder and cell finisher, enough drones and the weather during potential matting time.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I used to gather royal jelly to prime them. But I quit priming and have just as good of a take.


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

bleta12 said:


> I do graft dry myself and I believe priming the cells will RJ or other stuff does not improve the take, it just makes it easier the release of the larvae.
> There are other conditions that are much more important in the cell starter and they have direct influence on the results.
> My last graft of 60 cells, 54 started and look very good. I use a swarm box and a very strong 2 story queen right cell builder.
> 
> Gilman


I too seem to be poor at dry grafting and as you say, the small drop of royal jelly makes transferring the larvae from the grafting needle much easier.


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## BjornBee (Feb 7, 2003)

As some of these same people replied and suggested, weather and timing does have an impact. For much of the season, I'll use a little diluted honey. And I guess for those who only graft a couple of times under the optimal conditions, just about anything works.

But if were talking optimal results in a prolonged season, or under conditions less than ideal, I have been playing around using royal jelly from the same hive I am grafting back into. It seems that about the first of July the past few years, I hit a brick wall and the bees, no matter what I did, would just make a fraction of the cells they would make 30 days prior. But harvesting the royal jelly from the hive that was made queenless for a few days, then using it to prime the cells and grafting these back into the hive, has seen my numbers shoot back up at the same time that other techniques show less results.


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

bjorn: even using royal jelly from another hive?


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## BigDaddyDS (Aug 28, 2007)

And so, after handing out advice about using yogurt, I leave the house today to do grafting and what do I forget?

My yogurt. 

I had mentioned that I have a lack of queen cells this year to sacrifice, so yogurt was my chosen substitute. I'll let you know how my dry grafts went.

And, by the way and without meaning to derail this post, the Chinese grafting tool does a much better job at lifting some royal jelly with the larva, but the JZ BZ tool is much easier for a right-handed person to successfully pick up a larva without "rolling it up the side", although the placed larva is much "dryer". (I kept everyone placed in cups moist with wet paper towel.) We'll keep you posted...

DS


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

DS:

The chinese grafting tool and JZBZ tool work in two different ways. The JZBZ tool hooks in the middle of the larvae while the chinese grafting tool scoops the larvae out. 

I agree, I like the chinese grafting tool the best.


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## BigDaddyDS (Aug 28, 2007)

UPDATE:

Yeah... my dry grafting skills netted me a big ol' goose-egg! Zero grafts took. A lot of the cups appear to have dried out larva in the bottoms, although they were covered with wet paper towel during grafting. As expected, the water soaked sponge in my confined starter nuc was dry as a bone. Only about a cup of nurse bees appeared to have perished, which seems to be normal. 

So, now that I'm a few days behind, you can guess where I'll be tomorrow WITH my pint of yogurt!

DS

(Every so often, stuff like this happens to remind us: THIS IS FARMING!)


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## Kingfisher Apiaries (Jan 16, 2010)

I am going to revive this thread. Anyone using yogurt? I am starting my first graft tomorrow, I plan on doing a 3rd of the cells each of dry graft, plain yogurt, and flavored yogurt. Will see how it works. Dry grafts sometimes have issues here if it is to dry, this week not a issue, very wet. Will keep everybody posted, and want to hear any suggestions. 
mike


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## Whitetail (Feb 3, 2011)

I would say the most important things are: larvae of the proper age, abundance of nectar and pollen, abundance of nurse bees, and desireable genetic base. Of course there are other factors, but those are muy importante.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Use a chinese grafting tool, and graft larvae that have a nice puddle of jelly under them. I've never used yogurt, jelly, or anything to prime. My usual take is 40-45 accepted out of 45 grafted. Rarely do I see anything less than 40.


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## Card's Honey Farm (Jan 5, 2011)

Mike-
Do you use homemade wax cups, plastic cups or something else?


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## Kingfisher Apiaries (Jan 16, 2010)

Plastic cups.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Plastic


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## bleta12 (Feb 28, 2007)

Plastic


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## broodhead (May 30, 2009)

Dry prime is the best, but yogurt does work. I have tried different flavors, but plain works best. My take rate is higher when no prime is used.


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## Kingfisher Apiaries (Jan 16, 2010)

I am running a side by side test on the same cell bar in the same starter, we will see! I mixed them up on the cell bar for a fair test.

mike


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

Another "take" on the issue - oviaroles. Gary Reuter (U. of MN.) was saying that in order for queens to make their maximum number of potential oviaroles they needed an uninterrupted supply of royal jelly. 
Perhaps people are in favor of the chinese grafting tool (which makes it easy to transfer the jelly with the larva) because the bees recognize that these larva are well provisioned and accept more of them.


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## Kingfisher Apiaries (Jan 16, 2010)

Checked cells, about 90-95% take. This is on all the things tested. Will check and get more details this afternoon as to which royal jelly substitute worked the best. 

mike


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## broodhead (May 30, 2009)

I tried Guava yogurt a few years back, also did the banana and peach yogurt, no luck at all. Went back to the plain and all went well. Good luck, I will be looking for the results.


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## Kingfisher Apiaries (Jan 16, 2010)

Will have to run more tests, but cells from all methods were accepted. 

mike


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## Velbert (Mar 19, 2006)

Royal Jelly Will be far better 

I know the the cell start will remove it and place the proper strength RJ it mainly is for keeping the larva moist but they will consume a small portion before the proper strength is added I know there has to be some ill effect when useing yogurt 

You might not see it, at first but it will show up down the line they may well start your cells but what about after the queen has mated and lays 

I will dry graft before I would use Yogert.
And I Sure would not want to buy queens that was primeded with yogurt


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## standman (Mar 14, 2008)

In Queen Rearing Essentials, Lawrence John Connor recommends using royal jelly or yogurt mixed 1 to 1 with water to make it easier to slide the larva off the grafting tool. He says the nurse bees will eat the yogurt and replace it with royal jelly.


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## Kingfisher Apiaries (Jan 16, 2010)

Like said above, larry connor says yogurt is ok, I had just as much success with dry grafts so I may stick with that, or the water drop in the dry months.

mike


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## muskratcreekhoney (Mar 30, 2010)

Does anyone know for a fact that the nurse bees will remove the primer royal jelly? Why would someone like Miksa go to the expense of filling up the cups with organic royal jelly if the bees would just remove it? I think I will try dyeing the R.J. to see if it is in fact removed.


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## Velbert (Mar 19, 2006)

I have checked them 30 or 40 minutes after grafting and they looked like they had sucked it all up don't think the larva ate all of it. 

and if you were to fill the cells half full or fuller they might not remove all of it have not tried it

But the early studied of grafting and raising queens said they found that the make up of royal jelly feed to larva's that were to become queens was different make up as the larva got older.

They use to graft then place in a cell starter then after a 24-36 hour period they would carefully remove the larva and re graft a younger larva thinking they would be well fed and become a superior queen but that was not true. There body weight were lighter than a normal grafted larva. 

If you want a well fed queen cell use the Nicot.
Place the queen in it and keep trace of the time

Place queen in box to lay then in 3.5 days re check if she laid in it soon after placement and if it did take her 3 or 4 hours to start laying the larva is still under 12 hours old more like 8 hrs old

Or Place a small area of comb into your breeder hive and let the queen lay in it then after 10-12 hours after placing it into the breeder queen to lay in, remove it and place in a well stocked W/young nurse bee's, queen less and this is the only open frame of brood for them to tend to until graft day 3.25-3.5 (They will be very well fed and easy to pick up on your grafting tool) from day the frame was placed in your BREEDER QUEEN hive to laid in and the larva to be grafted is no more than 6-12 Hours old


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