# Put a frame of eggs and larvae into a cell builder today



## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

What a waste of the newly drawn frame. I would rather do a graft for faster result or even use a nicot cage to
see if the queen will lay in it. These are all newly introduced bought queens. One of which is a nicot cage frame using it as a
queen introduction cage.


Nicot system in use:


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

I gave this frame to the bees to get it drawn so I could raise queens. I'm testing the Miller method and Jay Smith's method of getting cells drawn.

A queen is worth $30 to me. 10 queens are worth $300. A drawn comb is worth maximum $10. I'll take the queens thank you.

Looks to me like you demolished a perfectly good comb to insert that nicot box.


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

A quick check of the frame showed at least 6 cells started. There are still plenty of eggs and young larvae that can be made into cells if the bees decide they want them. I would like a dozen cells, but will be happy with however many they build. I put on a fresh jar of syrup with a small amount of fresh honey washed from cappings. There is plenty of pollen coming in, but nectar is limited. I want these cells to be very well developed so will feed as needed.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

please describe how you went about getting the newly drawn frame. did it have anything in it when you gave it to the queen to lay in?


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

I put 3 frames of foundation in a large hive during the last of the main flow. The bees drew it out but did not fill with honey except a 2 inch wide band at the top of the frame. When I was ready to start these cells, I moved a selected queen into a nuc and gave her two frames of sealed brood and one of the new frames. A week later, she had laid a patch about 9 inches wide by 6 inches deep on both sides of the new comb. I pulled the comb when the eggs were 3 days old and cut two strips out of it in the area with eggs and larvae. The strips are wide enough for normal cells to develop. No grafting required, just let the bees build cells. As noted above, there are at least 6 cells started and I think they will start a few more over the next few days.

I have several more newly drawn frames similar to this one. When I'm ready for another round of queens, I'll put one in a nuc with a breeder queen.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

understood, thanks dar. are the strips cut out below the eggs/larvae in order to make room for the cells?


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

> are the strips cut out below the eggs/larvae in order to make room for the cells?


 Yes

I'm looking forward to these. They are from my best queen that did not swarm 2 years in a row.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

This old comb is moldy in the middle and too old to be of service anymore. So I just cut the middle part out where
the molds are growing. It is a plastic foundation as I prefer the wax foundation better. This flow season the bees drawn out
more new wax frames than I can use. So I have many more to spare. Now I got the hang of how to make the drawn comb.
Now I understand your logic of making queens. I put some on CL last time and they are sold out in half hour at $20 each. Too cheap now thinking about it. Queen price has been rising since then every year it jumped $2 dollars more. Going to be at $50 each later on so it makes sense to master the art of raising new queens. A frame here cost $25 each after drawn with some bees attached and queen at $38 each now. If you give them subs and more open nectar/honey frames they will draw out more cells. Take away the first batch and give them new cells they will drawn more. This is what I call stacking!


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## Snugs (Apr 6, 2016)

Fusion_power said:


> Yes
> 
> I'm looking forward to these. They are from my best queen that did not swarm 2 years in a row.


Do you think you will have any extras to sell?


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Fusion_power said:


> I'm using a modified Miller method where I gave a queen a newly drawn frame and let her lay in it. I pulled the frame today 2017/06/09 and moved it into a cellbuilder. I'll check tomorrow to see how many cells they have started.


Put 3 frames in on sunday, 15 larvae to 3 different hives, Cloake method, looked yesterday, normal result:
14/15
13/15
10/15 accepted


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

I made up nucs and distributed a total of 7 cells today. Now the waiting begins.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

As a matter of course I insert empty foundationless frames into the brood nest of most of my hives to get comb drawn. With hives I want queens from I get lots of new white partial drawn combs with eggs and young larvae that can be inserted into a cell builder.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

beepro said:


> What a waste of the newly drawn frame. I would rather do a graft for faster result or even use a nicot cage to
> see if the queen will lay in it. These are all newly introduced bought queens. One of which is a nicot cage frame using it as a
> queen introduction cage.
> 
> ...


What a waste of screen and duct tape. :lpf:


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

I checked the mating nucs today and saw 4 virgin queens. The others are probably there. I did not search for them, just checked to see that they were behaving like they had a queen.

I found a minor weakness with this method of setting up mating nucs. I split a huge colony into nucs and set all of them out at the same location. Quite a few of the bees drifted to one of the nucs making it about 3 times as strong as the others. I gave them a frame of foundation so they would have a place to draw comb. The spring flow may be long gone, but there is a weak flow ongoing that is just enough to encourage comb building when there are too many bees to fit on 2 frames.


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

I marked the first laying queen from this batch today. She had 2 frames of eggs of which a small amount had hatched into larvae. from the 9th to the 29th is 20 days. That is about as short an interval as is possible to raise a queen and have her laying in a hive.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Fusion_power said:


> I marked the first laying queen from this batch today. She had 2 frames of eggs of which a small amount had hatched into larvae. from the 9th to the 29th is 20 days. That is about as short an interval as is possible to raise a queen and have her laying in a hive.


Kind of what I was thinking as well. Are you questioning the age of the larvae they chose to feed? I'm sure you will track these queens. Keep us posted. Nice experiment btw.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

I just came about this thread.

I think I would do much better with this method than with grafting. I already stored some fresh comb for putting it into the best hive next year to be layed. I cut it to let the bees build drone cells at the bottom which I will cull out.
So I will have the right eggs in the comb in spring when they breed drones. I had some drones layed into worker cells this spring. (Not a queen issue, they just wanted to have many drones). Because of the weather i will try this once early in year and once this time of year. More success with matings in unpredictable weather.

I still have these frames. Maybe spray them a little bit with syrup and let them be filled.


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

> Are you questioning the age of the larvae they chose to feed?


 I saw the larvae when the queen cells were first started. All of them were so small I could barely see them. Given a choice of eggs and larvae to make queen cells, the bees will always choose a newly hatched larva to make queens. The queen I marked today is very large and well fed. Just rating her on 3 days of egg laying, I'd estimate she has very high potential. Two Dadant frames each about 1/3 full of eggs works out to about 3000 eggs per day. That is clicking them out for a newly mated queen.

I made up the cell builder from an exceptionally strong colony by moving the queen and 3 frames of eggs/larvae to a new hive. All of the sealed brood and quite a few frames of honey and pollen were left in the cell builder along with the entire force of foragers. This was in a square Dadant hive so it was crammed full of bees. A day later, I gave them the frame with eggs and larvae from the breeder queen.

What I found interesting was that the bees only started a total of 8 queen cells. There were enough bees in this hive to have easily cared for 30 or more cells. They had plenty of eggs and larvae to have started that many if they chose. One queen cell was from a larvae on one of the brood frames. I squashed this cell after it was sealed to prevent it from emerging and destroying the cells from the breeder queen. One positive of the small number of cells is that the queens were all exceptionally well fed in nice large cells.

The queen that I marked today was the first cell that I pulled from the breeder hive and moved into a queenless colony here at home. I was taking advantage of having mature queen cells and a queenless colony that needed a queen. They were queenless because of a complex series of missteps on my part. I had pulled the queen and 3 frames of brood from the hive and moved them to a nuc sitting to one side. The parent hive then raised a round of queen cells - which they had already started as they were trying to supersede their queen. When the cells were ready, I pulled all but one and moved them to mating nucs. The cell I left emerged and the virgin went on mating flights but returned to the nuc her mother was in. Two days later, my breeder queen was gone and the newly mated daughter was happily laying eggs in the nuc. This left the parent colony without a queen. And that is the story of the one time I've seen proof positive of a virgin queen going into a nearby hive. This caused the demise of the breeder I planned to send to Mike Palmer.

A side benefit of the Dadant frames is that I don't have so much mixed age brood. The queen tends to lay on one frame and stay on that frame until it is pretty much full, then move to another frame. There are usually 3 frames with eggs and larvae and the rest of the brood frames are sealed. This makes it easy to separate the sealed brood when setting up a cell builder.

I am taking advantage of the natural flows in this area by raising queens in early summer after the main flow. There are still plenty of drones in most colonies so mating has been very successful. Using a strong colony as a cell builder, then splitting it into mating nucs is a good way to get mated queens while avoiding problems with hive beetles. Moving the resulting 2 or 3 frame nucs into hives with a divider as a 2 queen colony for winter is just a natural succession to the process.

The joker in the deck is that we have had more rain this year than normal resulting in a weak flow long after normal start of a midsummer dearth. I am getting good results with about 70% mating success when in a more normal year I might only be getting 30%.


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## Knisely (Oct 26, 2013)

How many of the 14 frames are brood frames?


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

> How many of the 14 frames are brood frames?


 Two colonies had 12 frames with an average of 65% to 70% of each comb used for brood. That works out to around 70,000 cells of brood. Using the 1:2:4 ratio, 12 frames of brood would be @5 frames of eggs and larvae and @7 frames of sealed brood. Since the flow ended, most colonies have backed down to 3 or 4 frames of brood with about 30,000 cells total. This year is definitely not normal. I am used to colonies having no brood at all during most of July. Regular rainfall has kept plants blooming prolonging the flow which is affecting brood rearing.


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## Beebeard (Apr 27, 2016)

This all sounds similar to what I'm trying. I've never grafted before and while it's on my to-do list to figure out, I haven't had the time. I have this one hive that is very strong, but more aggressive than I'd like, and another hive that has good temperament and productivity. I caught the meaner hive beginning swarm preps last week, So I took a partial built frame from the breeder colony and trimmed the bottom in a zigzag, leaving cells with eggs at the point of each piece of comb. I pulled 4 frames from the swarm prepping colony, two with capped brood, and 2 honey/stores, no open brood, and put these in a nuc with the breeder frame in the middle. I shook about 4 more frames of nurses into the nuc and sealed it up. It has a screened bottom I can set a sponge under for water, and having it sealed up sure kept them from drifting. I left that for a day, and culled out the QCs from the meaner hive. The next day I checked the Nuc and found at least 10 cells started on the frame, most right at the point of comb on the bottom, a few scattered elsewhere that might be a bit challenging to cut out. Everything went back into the big hive for a finisher. I figure if they had already started a bunch of fat swarm cells, they ought to build out the ones I gave them real well. I should have cells ready to harvest by Saturday. I will pull the grumpy queen from the finisher hive and drop her into a nuc for building more combs, and use the rest of the hive to make up the mating nucs. All told, took maybe 15- 20 minutes active time to swap a few frames around and trim the one from the good hive.


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

I put in a bit more time finding and removing the queen from the cell builder but probably a max of 30 minutes working on the bees. Planning was important since I had to have a frame of eggs and larvae to give to the cell builder at the right time. I gave the breeder queen limited space to lay and then added a newly drawn comb. Three days later it was full of eggs and larvae. This is not a difficult method to produce small numbers of queens. I wouldn't want to produce a few hundred this way.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

When I use a snelgrove board, where I put all the brood above a double screen board on a strong hive with foragers diverted to queen rearing part, I typically get 7 to 15 well fed queens. I don't get many small queens using this method. Removing the queen cells and replacing with cell strips or grafted queen cups, I get another 7 to 15 queens depending on my competence. They also seem to be pretty nice. Then I let the hive return to normal.


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## Lburou (May 13, 2012)

Fusion_power said:


> Yes
> 
> I'm looking forward to these. They are from my best queen that did not swarm 2 years in a row.


Was this one of your BWeaver queen lines? Here in Texas, a queen from a Bweaver line emerges at least a day earlier than other lines when they are side by side. These queens mate and lay in six or seven days of hatching if the weather cooperates.


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

This breeder queen was from my line. The BWeaver queens I retained are much more likely to swarm. I have a queen raised from a BWeaver queen that I am using as a breeder for a small number of queens.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

have you determined how many of your 7 cells ended up as mated queens dar?


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## Knisely (Oct 26, 2013)

Yesterday was my first go-round with grafting. Lots of capped brood (6 frames) and a marked
Queen were pulled to a nuc a week earlier, and the queen and a frame of emerging brood from my builder nuc were pulled out the day before grafting, to become a little 3 frame nuc. 
A Michael Palmer queen was my larva source, and I used a Chinese grafting tool to pull larvae to 15 cups. Some were as tiny as the pictures on the Internet, and others were bigger/older. 
Bees festooned between the frames as I put the frame with the larvae into the queenless builder. I won't get back to pull the frame to see how I did for another week. I'm sure I'll have a few cells to feel good about, but I'm now wondering if anyone has recommendations about how to deal with these cells when they're not at the 10 day "pull" time.


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

I wound up with 5 mated queens SP. One cell did not emerge. One queen did not return from her mating flight.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Fusion_power said:


> What I found interesting was that the bees only started a total of 8 queen cells.


This would be fairly typical with this method, and even with a very strong starter they may not even do 8. Reason being the purpose as far as the bees are concerned, is just to requeen themselves with one queen only. They start more cells as a safety factor but not always a huge amount. If 2 suitable combs were put in, seperated by a few combs, the bees will likely start more cells, but on one comb they realise they have a number of cells and leave it at that.

With a system where cells are artificially started for the bees, such as grafting, nicot, cut cell, etc, the started cells may number 40 or 50 or more, but are a _fait accompli_, so the bees are inclined to work on them anyway, at least for the first 24 hours till they figure out what's going on and how many they have and will then stop caring for some of them as so many are a waste, far as the bees are concerned. Which is why cells are transferred to finisher colonies in smaller numbers.

Anyhow FP, to end up with 5 mated queens from this endevor is a pleasing result, they should be well raised and serve you well, nice work!


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

I agree re the quantity of cells started OT. I could easily have produced more. My ability to make up nucs and give them cells is the limiting factor. If I could get each cell builder to make 8 cells and then divide that cell builder up into 8 nucs when they are mature, I would consider this to be a totally successful method of queen rearing. This method is somewhat similar to Mel Disselkoen's method of "notching" combs so the bees will make queen cells. He breaks up each colony into 4 or more nucs each with a queen cell. The difference is that I am using a selected breeder queen to produce the cells.

Note that one of the 8 cells was produced from a larva on one of the cell builder's frames. I squished that cell as I did not want it to emerge early and destroy the rest of the cells. That left me with 7 cells of which 5 resulted in mated laying queens.


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