# 1rst Round



## Angi_H

Gotta start somewhere. Good luck my fingers will be crossed for you. I would love to do that with that ferel hive I have.

Angi


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## Michael Palmer

WVbeekeeper said:


> I'm kinda scared I used too much honey to prime the cell cups. It seemed like I only put in a very small amount with the syringe but when I floated the larvae of the grating tool it seemed like a lot more was in the cups than there should have been. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.


I've never primed a cup, and don't have any problems with acceptance. My usual take is 40-43 of 50 grafts. With those results, I can't see the benefit of priming. Why not try a chinese grafting tool..for less than $5. It picks up the larva and the puddle of jelly it sits on. Depositing the larva/jelly in the cup is just as simple. No chasing the larvae around the cell as with a stainless tool.


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## tecumseh

WVbeekeeper writes:
I started going cross eyed by the time I was finishing transferring larvae to cell cups. Hopefully I'll get a few queens out of the deal to start some nucs with in a few weeks.

tecumseh suggest:
1) next time get larvae from some very dark to absolulely black comb. you will be surprised how much the dark background helps. 2) get yourself one of those large magnifying glass + light on an extentable arm (when I had young eyes this device definitely helped in regards to eye strain... now it is essential).

I think??? those plastic queen cell cups are sold as you don't really need to prime or polish the cups. priming does make the larvae come off the grafting tool a bit easier.


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## Chef Isaac

I cant wait to start grafting. The only problem is is that it has been lightly snowing the last few days...

where is spring???


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## HVH

It's not meant as a criticism, but wasn't that larvae kind of old? When I graft 12-24 hr larvae they are either much smaller than the one shown in the photo, or I just wasn't seeing the larvae in the photo clearly. Also, I would think that priming with honey may cause some osmotic shock to the larvae. Maybe a pro can weigh in on this subject. 
When I purchased a dissecting microscope I also purchased a really nice LED light on a flexible arm. Having a cool bright light that can be focused to the bottom of the cell really helped me out. Also, I used the same type of grafting tool as shown in the photo, and found it very difficult to handle. It was like using a shovel to pick up a tiny larvae. The Swiss made tool seen in some of the catalogs (around $35) has really fine tips and is extremely well designed. The tips are fine enough where I can easily get the larvae off and into the cup. How Marla Spivak can work with a head lamp is beyond me. Speaking of Marla Spivak, her grafting video is excellent. 
http://www.beesource.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-201285.html


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## tecumseh

upon review I think HVH comments about the size of the larvae is quite correct. I am however unfamilar with the style of your grafting tool. I use one of those automatic grafting tools from Kelleys and the larvae should be no larger (curled up) than the width of the tongue. 

do keeps us informed as to how your effort goes.


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## WVbeekeeper

Michael Palmer, I'm sure I'll learn as I go. As I use different tools and try different methods I'm sure I'll find what works best for me when I get the right components together. If the cells don't take all I'v elost is a little bit of time, a few cell cups, and a few eggs. I'll still have the cell starter to try again with the great advice I'm getting from everyone.
tecumseh, I agree about the dark comb. Maybe I did grab a few larvae that were slightly on the old side because the smaller ones were too hard to see on the light colored comb. I think I will use a magnifying glass and a light next time as I have both on hand.
HVH, here's a close up of the larvae. This was the third one I transferred. About half were about this size and the other half was maybe a little smaller.
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u76/ccohenour1/grafting larvae/untitled.jpg
I'll be sure to keep you posted.


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## WVbeekeeper

I do appreciate all the help. This is why I wanted to post a few pictures and briefly explain what I'm doing (wrong). Thanks.


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## HVH

WVbeekeeper said:


> Michael Palmer, I'm sure I'll learn as I go. As I use different tools and try different methods I'm sure I'll find what works best for me when I get the right components together. If the cells don't take all I'v elost is a little bit of time, a few cell cups, and a few eggs. I'll still have the cell starter to try again with the great advice I'm getting from everyone.
> tecumseh, I agree about the dark comb. Maybe I did grab a few larvae that were slightly on the old side because the smaller ones were too hard to see on the light colored comb. I think I will use a magnifying glass and a light next time as I have both on hand.
> HVH, here's a close up of the larvae. This was the third one I transferred. About half were about this size and the other half was maybe a little smaller.
> http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u76/ccohenour1/grafting larvae/untitled.jpg
> I'll be sure to keep you posted.


The larvae do look much too old to my eyes. You may still get some queens, but younger larvae make better queens. I will give a long winded reply below and maybe get some of the pro's to argue about the fine points of queen rearing.

I have been rearing queens for only a few years and am near the bottom of the learning curve as well. The dark comb as mentioned, a pair of 3X glasses and a good grafting tool (BetterBee GT3, page 65, 2008 catalog) really added to my success. I have been getting over 80% of my grafted cells with queens and my speed quadrupled when I got the Swiss grafting tool (I tried the auto tool, the chinese tools, and the double grafting tool). To me the most frustrating part was getting the tiny larvae on the grafting tool without crushing it, and then getting the larvae back off again without crushing it. The grafting tool in your photo looks like the double ended grafting tool GT1 in BetterBee. That tool is responsible for the invention of new expletives in my grafting room. The thickness of the leading edge made it difficult to get underneath the larvae so I found myself smashing larvae and taking a long time before picking one up successfully. When I switched to the Swiss tool, the number of mutilations dropped dramatically and I found myself adding one larvae after another to cell cups as though I knew what I was doing. Since the Swiss grafting tool was on backorder it took forever to arrive. I bought three of these tools because I never wanted to do without one again. 
Since my perfect eye sight of four years ago seems all of a sudden not so perfect, the 3X glasses are a blessing. 

My approach adopted/modified from Spivak -

So for me, I confine the queen in one of my nucs with a push in cage (#5 excluder wire) on a Tuesday morning (before my real job starts) , and release her the following morning (Wednesday with eggs under the wire being no older now than 24hrs). On Thursday evening after work I add the cell cups frame to the finishing colony to be polished. Friday morning the first eggs that she could have laid would start to hatch into larvae, so this is when I add the frame to a finishing colony that has already been arranged for queen rearing (actually, I replace the frame of polished cups with the larvae). The nurse bees upstairs will add more royal jelly than the nuc would, resulting in easier grafting the following morning. Having Saturday off of work allows me to graft larvae no older than 24 hrs old and possibly as young as newly hatched that morning. If I can't get to them until afternoon sometime, then the oldest eggs may be up to 30hrs old. So first thing Saturday morning, I set up a swarm box from a colony arranged to harvest nurse bees (see Spivak video) and place the box on the cool garage floor with moist sponges inside the box. Next, I get a small towel large enough to wrap around a frame, and get it wet with warm water and head to the apiary to recover the frame of larvae and immediately wrap with the towel (brush bees off first). Once in the grafting room where the humidifier has been on for a few hours, I place the frame of larvae on a wooden frame that holds it at a comfortable angle for me to graft. The cell cup/bars are on a moist towel on top of my plant propagation mat previously set to 95F and the towel folded over them. Once I have the 3X glasses on, the fiber optics lamp pointing into the cells where the #5 wire used to be, I am ready to grab a cell bar from under the moist towel and start to graft. I graft about 57 cells in an hour. After each cup on a cell bar is complete, I place it under the moist 95F towel and grab the next cell bar. When all the bars (3) are complete they are added to the frame and then to the swarm box. A gentle tap of the swarm box drops the bees to the bottom, on top of the wet sponges, giving just enough time to place the bar inside between a frame of open nectar and a frame of pollen. It is good if the swarm box sits a few hours in a cool place before adding the cells. 
These techniques are covered in the Spivak video and work book. 

Sorry for my long response, but others may be more tempted to get into details if they have something in print where they disagree. Good Luck


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## tecumseh

I will add to HVH comments after first saying well done.

Steve Taber suggest that about 95% of workers eggs hatch on a nocturnal schedule.... so I like to graft in the am. 

feeding the queen mother hives several days in advance will make the food at the bottom of the cell much more plentiful. this makes scooping up the larvae with a good dab of feed attached, plus removing of same, much easier.

the HVH writes:
a pair of 3X glasses

tecumseh ask:
where might one get a good set of those?

the tecumseh adds:
I don't confine the queen but do add frames and pulled foundation to the queen mother hive which I date and recheck on a 24 hour schedule. after some experience you can just about pull any frame and hunt and search for the proper aged larvae, but this adds signicantly to the time the larvae are exposed in the cell cups (which I don't like to do personally).

just to add some 'feel' for the proper sized larvae... if you divide 'a' cell into six pie shaped wedges then a very young, newly hatched, larvae should fit into one of those six wedges. having some method of positively indentifying larvae age (such as HVH described in the prior post) makes the grafting quicker, better and less subject unneeded variation.


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## Brandy

HVH: "plant propagation mat"

Now there's a new idea for those cell bar's. I just happen to have 3 of them but never thought about using them this way! I also use a smaller nuc for my queen breeder but never really thought about the difference in feeding those 1-30 hr. larva with different size colonies. Interesting thought on moving into a larger population of nurse bee's. I think I just naturally selected those with more royal jelly but having an entire frame better fed makes sense. 
Just show's again all the different variations to get to the end goal!


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## HVH

I came to the conclusion a few years ago that having control over queen production was a key factor in any apiary. I got really tired of having 50 colonies with 1/3 strong, 1/3 medium strength, and 1/3 poor. If I have enough nucs each year, I can adjust colony strength and replace queens at will. I purchased 50 Buckfast queens one year and most were killed within a week or superseded thereafter. I was so angry I decided never to purchase queens again unless as breeding stock. The Marla Spivak video got me started and then I read Alley and Doolittle (great books). After reading Brother Adams, I decided His approach was brilliantly simple - raise your queens near the swarm season, when nature prefers, and overwinter them as nucs. The nucs that survive winter are used to requeen in the spring (last summers queens are the most productive). Instead of destroying the old queens, He would place them in the nucs where the new queens were taken. Then when the season is right for queen rearing, He would go to the nucs, kill the old queens (that have kept the nucs stocked), and then add a new virgin queen. When I read this, I new that I had stumbled across a jewel. I tried this approach on a small scale with a dozen nucs and it worked extremely well. So I built 100 four frame nucs last month and painted them last weekend. Each nuc is half the size of a full depth brood box, so that two will fit on top of a hive (a standard box divided would have worked also). I plan on making up two-queen colonies each year with this approach. I have a long ways to go and many mistaked to make, but I look forward to the journey.

tecumseh ask:
where might one get a good set of those?

I don't know about a good set, but my wife picked up the 3X glasses that I use at the dollar store. She got 2X, 2.5X and 3X which provides a range for different applications. The fiber optics lamp I purchased makes a huge difference, but was several hundred dollars (meant for the day I am willing to fail miserably at instrumental insemination). You may be able to locate a cheaper fiber optics lamp at a lighting store or another hobby house of some kind. The nice thing about fiber optics, is the flexible arm that allows you to focus the "cool" light right down the middle of any cell without cooking them.


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## WVbeekeeper

HVH, I've seen that video before but thought I would just try to read up on grafting and give it try before purchasing the video. Anyway I went ahead and ordered it from Kelley's today. I can't wait to get it. I'm going to open the cell starter tomorrow and see what's going on inside. If they are raising some queens for me do you think it would be alright to start some nucs with them even if the queens were started with larva which were a little older? I'd like to start some nucs early and then replace the queens with some better ones later when I start doing better.
On those magnification glasses, I bet you could find some in a fabric shop. People who sew use them or a magnifying glass to be more precise with their needle placement when sewing. My mother uses a large magnifying glass sometimes when she sews. Also, here is a link to some safety glasses with the bifocal magnification lenses. They seemed to be priced at a really reasonable price. There are a few listed at the bottom of the page that are 2.5 magnification priced between $9 to $13.50. There is on pair on there for $6.75.
http://www.tasco-safety.com/sglasses/magnification-safety-glasses.html


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## HVH

WVbeekeeper said:


> HVH, I've seen that video before but thought I would just try to read up on grafting and give it try before purchasing the video. Anyway I went ahead and ordered it from Kelley's today. I can't wait to get it. I'm going to open the cell starter tomorrow and see what's going on inside. If they are raising some queens for me do you think it would be alright to start some nucs with them even if the queens were started with larva which were a little older? I'd like to start some nucs early and then replace the queens with some better ones later when I start doing better.
> On those magnification glasses, I bet you could find some in a fabric shop. People who sew use them or a magnifying glass to be more precise with their needle placement when sewing. My mother uses a large magnifying glass sometimes when she sews. Also, here is a link to some safety glasses with the bifocal magnification lenses. They seemed to be priced at a really reasonable price. There are a few listed at the bottom of the page that are 2.5 magnification priced between $9 to $13.50. There is on pair on there for $6.75.
> http://www.tasco-safety.com/sglasses/magnification-safety-glasses.html


If you get your new queens laying eggs, I would think they should last long enough to get replacement queens. In fact, if they perform well, I would put them to work in hives or in nucs until they seem to run out of gas. Even if the queens are inferior, you might get a few pounds of bees for free - sure beats driving across town to collect a swarm.


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## WVbeekeeper

I went to the local beek meeting this evening. The state inspector which is designated to my area was there. We talked after the meeting about how I was learning to graft and he said he would come up in a few weeks for a tutorial. It will be really nice to have someone who is experienced to to take the time to help me out.


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## tecumseh

thanks for the input...

I would go ahead and install those cells in the smallest unit I could put together. the next step (problem) in queen rearing is stocking those nucs which (at least it seems to me) can be an different kind of talent.


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## Michael Palmer

tecumseh said:


> the next step (problem) in queen rearing is stocking those nucs which (at least it seems to me) can be an different kind of talent.


This job becomes a pleasure when you learn to overwinter your mating nucs.


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## berkshire bee

Michael, We're still hoping to get you down to tell us about your queen rearing methods. Another alternative might be a few of us coming up and giving you a days work in exchange for some OJT. berkshire


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## Michael Palmer

WVbeekeeper said:


> Michael Palmer, I'm sure I'll learn as I go. As I use different tools and try different methods I'm sure I'll find what works best for me when I get the right components together. If the cells don't take all I'v elost is a little bit of time, a few cell cups, and a few eggs. I'll still have the cell starter to try again with the great advice I'm getting from everyone.


One thing you might consider. Especially if you try the chinese grafting tool. Do you have a breeder hive, or do you keep the queen confined to one section of the hive? If you make sure the breeder colony is strong, with lots of emerging brood, and has a good pollen comb next to the frame of eggs, there will be nice puddles of jelly under the larvae. Much easier to graft.


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## Flyman

*Magnifier Glasses*

Tecumseh, Fly fisherman are notoriously old and can't see. There are a lot of aids to both fly tying and tying a fly on the line that can be had at a good fly fishing store. Orvis comes to mind, but they are expensive. Bass Pro Shops has a goose neck 4x magnifier for about $20. They also have "natural light" lamps that illuminate with cool light. These are more expensive...about $80. Fly shops also have mag glasses and even little magnifying discs that stick on real glasses in power from 1.5 to 4.0. 

Happy grafting,

Tom


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## WVbeekeeper

Well the grafts didn't take at all. The bees decided to remove the larvae and polish the cups. I'm not giving up so I'll be trying again in a few day.


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## CSbees

I must be the exception to the old flyfisherman/fly-tyer who can't see rule. I am 17 years old and have 20/10 vision. I utilize my flytying aids when grafting. I think I like natural cells that the bees draw this time of the year to put in queen rearing nucs.


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## Michael Palmer

berkshire bee said:


> Michael, We're still hoping to get you down to tell us about your queen rearing methods. Another alternative might be a few of us coming up and giving you a days work in exchange for some OJT. berkshire


Am I still on for the 19th? Wasn't that the plan?

As far as coming up for OJT, what did you want to see. The schedule is an 8 day rotation. Something different each day. Cell builder set up day, grafting day, queen catching day(s), cell spreading. Most time probably spent catching queens.

Better let me know if there has been a change in plans for the 19th.


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## berkshire bee

Michael, I wasn't sure if you were definite, but yes we are on for the 19th. I PM'd you just to see what time and what you need for a setup. We'll fill in the other details from there.


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## WVbeekeeper

I tried again today. Tell me if this larva is the right age.

http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u76/ccohenour1/100_02711.jpg

I have desk mounted a magnifying lens with a light but it got in the way. All the larvae I transferred were about this size. I split a colony and the queenless half started drawing queen cells so I harvested the royal jelly to prime my cups with. I ended up with 1cc of jelly and used almost all of it priming 27 cups. I used my grafting tool to get the larvae out of the queen cells so they would not be pulled into the syringe with the jelly.

http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u76/ccohenour1/100_0258.jpg

I hope it goes better this time seeing how my last attempt was a dismal failure.


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## peggjam

Well, there're better, but I think your still alittle too big. These might take though. You want to find the ones that haven't formed a C shape yet, they can have some curl to'em, but not into the full C shape.


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## Chef Isaac

They say that if you can see them, they are too big!


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## peggjam

"They say that if you can see them, they are too big!"

Then I guess you would need to be blind to graft. Blanket statements like that give people the wrong impression. I know guys who couldn't see 5 day old larva, so I guess they could say they were good for grafting?


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## WVbeekeeper

I had to hold the end of my grafting tool under the magnifying lens to make sure that I had them on the tool. After I put them in the queen cups I could barely see them. I was trying to follow tecumseh's advice about dividing the cell into sixths and made sure that none of the larvae were bigger than this. That magnifying lens was very difficult to work with. I guess I'll be ordering some of those glasses I found.
http://www.tasco-safety.com/sglasses...y-glasses.html


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## peggjam

"That magnifying lens was very difficult to work with."

I bought one at a yard sale, couldn't use it either. Found out I had too many left hands.


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## WVbeekeeper

Let me ask a question. Seeing how the small larvae I transferred were still in royal jelly, why would they be inferior if there is never an interruption of them feeding on royal jelly? Is the type of jelly fed to newly hatched larvae which is to be worker bees different than what is fed to newly hatched larvae that the bees plan on making into a queen?


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## peggjam

"Is the type of jelly fed to newly hatched larvae which is to be worker bees different than what is fed to newly hatched larvae that the bees plan on making into a queen?"

That's pretty much it in a nutshell. The nurse bees will remove most of the RJ that you transfer with the larva, and replace it with RJ that has a much higher protien rate. I also don't prime my cups, as I find it doesn't make alot of differance on acceptance rate. Ditto for having the cells polished by the girls before grafting.


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## Angi_H

It looks better and I would think they would take if you took them out of queen cells already. Here is keeping my fingers crossed for you this time.

Angi


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## beemanlee

*Don't use honey!*

Honey is not to be used. Priming the cell with royal jelly is the only way to do the job of grafting larve. Use older larver cells to get the jelly from. Remove the older larve for access to your sorce. Just a small amount is needed in each "Q" cell. Wet only the very bottom of the cell so the grafted larve will stick in the cell when the bar of cells is put back in a Queenless starter/finisher hive and fed with a feeder frame from the top super,not from a entrance feeder which will cause robbing when there is not a honey flow going on.




WVbeekeeper said:


> I put together a cell starter the other day and grafted some larvae for the first time ever today. I started going cross eyed by the time I was finishing transferring larvae to cell cups. Hopefully I'll get a few queens out of the deal to start some nucs with in a few weeks.
> 
> Larva on the end of the grafting tool.
> 
> http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u76/ccohenour1/grafting%20larvae/IMG_2773.jpg
> 
> Transferring larva to a cell cup.
> 
> http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u76/ccohenour1/grafting larvae/IMG_2774.jpg
> 
> Cell cups primed with a little honey, didn't have any royal jelly, and each contains a larva. I used the smallest larvae I could find.
> 
> http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u76/ccohenour1/grafting larvae/IMG_2778.jpg
> 
> Here's the frame from which I found larvae of appropriate age.
> 
> http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u76/ccohenour1/grafting larvae/IMG_2775.jpg
> 
> I was looking through the colonies today and have plenty of drones. If the cells don't take I'll try again here in a few days. I'm kinda scared I used too much honey to prime the cell cups. It seemed like I only put in a very small amount with the syringe but when I floated the larvae of the grating tool it seemed like a lot more was in the cups than there should have been. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.


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## WVbeekeeper

I primed all the cells yesterday with royal jelly before transferring the larvae. I checked the cell starter today and all 27 cell cups are being drawn out. I'll take a picture when they get the job done. I can't wait to start making some nucs.


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## WVbeekeeper

Angi_H said:


> It looks better and I would think they would take if you took them out of queen cells already. Here is keeping my fingers crossed for you this time.
> 
> Angi


I harvested some royal jelly yesterday to prime my cell cups with. I made a half a colony, a deep hive body full of brood, queenless Friday and went into it yesterday to get the jelly. I didn't want to use this colony to breed from because it is too aggressive. I removed the larva from the would be queen cells and discarded them to get the jelly without sucking the larvae into the syringe as well. The larvae I grafted was from a feral queen I got last year. They are gentle, produced good, overwintered well, passed a hygienic test late last summer, and are currently raising a lot of brood. If I get this batch of cells off without any difficulty I'll definitely be hooked.


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## peggjam

WVbeekeeper said:


> I primed all the cells yesterday with royal jelly before transferring the larvae. I checked the cell starter today and all 27 cell cups are being drawn out. I'll take a picture when they get the job done. I can't wait to start making some nucs.


 
Don't make your nucs based on the number started. Wait til there're capped and then make your nucs up.


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## beemanlee

*Making up nucs*



WVbeekeeper said:


> I primed all the cells yesterday with royal jelly before transferring the larvae. I checked the cell starter today and all 27 cell cups are being drawn out. I'll take a picture when they get the job done. I can't wait to start making some nucs.


Cass....

I would not make up the nuc till just before the new Queens are going to emerge. The easy way to tell this is when the bees in the finishing hive start to remove some of the wax from around the bottom of the cells. If your new nucs are made up too soon, they may draw their own Queen cells and will also destroy your new Queen cell when you add it to this nuc.

Lee.


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## WVbeekeeper

I bought a few nursery frames in which the queen cells can emerge. I also have some of those plastic queen intro cages I was planning on using. I know it would be easier to add the queen cells to a nuc but would it be better than giving them a queen which has already emerged which they have to release from the cage?

>The easy way to tell this is when the bees in the finishing hive start to remove some of the wax from around the bottom of the cells.

I checked out "The Complete Guide to Beekeeping" by Roger Morse and have been reading it. It had some pictures of queen cells with some of the wax removed at the tip so I know exactly what you are talking about.

I may not be around when the queens emerge so they will most likely end up in the nursery frame. If my thinking is correct they would only be in the nursery frames for one or two days before I get back to take care of them. If I use the queen cells to make the nucs I'll have to do it next Sunday, otherwise it will be the following Friday or Saturday with queens which have emerged.


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## beemanlee

*An easy way to get some queens*



WVbeekeeper said:


> I bought a few nursery frames in which the queen cells can emerge. I also have some of those plastic queen intro cages I was planning on using. I know it would be easier to add the queen cells to a nuc but would it be better than giving them a queen which has already emerged which they have to release from the cage?
> 
> >The easy way to tell this is when the bees in the finishing hive start to remove some of the wax from around the bottom of the cells.
> 
> I checked out "The Complete Guide to Beekeeping" by Roger Morse and have been reading it. It had some pictures of queen cells with some of the wax removed at the tip so I know exactly what you are talking about.
> 
> I may not be around when the queens emerge so they will most likely end up in the nursery frame. If my thinking is correct they would only be in the nursery frames for one or two days before I get back to take care of them. If I use the queen cells to make the nucs I'll have to do it next Sunday, otherwise it will be the following Friday or Saturday with queens which have emerged.


Cass,

If you really want a quick way to make some queens, try this: Find a good quality Queen that you like with bees that work good around your way of working them.... Put the Queen in a nuc box with a couple of frames of bees and capped brood and a frame that has space for the Queen to lay eggs into in between the brood. Add some honey frames on the outside of the nuc box. Put this behind the hive with the entrance facing the opposite direction of the original hive you are going to raise the Queens from.

Add this nuc back when you have your Queens or put it in a new hive.... This middle frame in the nuc can be switched back to the starter/finisher hive after the queen has layed in it, if the first try didn't take in the next step. A new empty brood frame should be given back to the Queen nuc box's center frame position when you do this next step. 

Now your ready to start...... Find a frame of brood with all the cells layed about the same time in the center of the frame on one side with day old eggs, they can be primed or not by the nurse bees.... Take a nail and make a grid of grooves following the cells so every other cell is distroyed, kind of like a tick-tac-toe grid but big enought for the amount of Queens you want to have pluss some.... This allows the cell bilders to creat a nice Queen cell for each of the un-distroyed eggs left in the frame. ...Now lay this frame in the center with the cells you just scratched out facing down over the brood on top of the frame bars.... Now space this frame so you have at least one half inch between the drawn comb containing the eggs you have chosen and the top bars of the brood frames.... Or, in the past I made a section of a super, about 2 inches high, notched out for the top bar to rest, on its side, and added a small support in the box to catch the botton of the frame..... This will allow you to open the hive and check the progress of the cells being drawn out into Queen cells. A super can be added with more bees and honey to this hive and a feeder frame can be used if you find there is not a honey flow going in your location.

Watch the developement of the cells. You'll find that as the cells are drawn out and capped you can have a good idea of how many divides you will need to make up....

If its a week of time before you visit your yard maybe you should do the queen cells at home so you can check on them every other day or so. This is a must so you can get a good idea of the process taking place inside the starter/finisher hive! 
Lee....


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## beemanlee

*Push on Queen cell protectors*



WVbeekeeper said:


> I bought a few nursery frames in which the queen cells can emerge. I also have some of those plastic queen intro cages I was planning on using. I know it would be easier to add the queen cells to a nuc but would it be better than giving them a queen which has already emerged which they have to release from the cage?
> 
> >The easy way to tell this is when the bees in the finishing hive start to remove some of the wax from around the bottom of the cells.
> 
> I checked out "The Complete Guide to Beekeeping" by Roger Morse and have been reading it. It had some pictures of queen cells with some of the wax removed at the tip so I know exactly what you are talking about.
> 
> I may not be around when the queens emerge so they will most likely end up in the nursery frame. If my thinking is correct they would only be in the nursery frames for one or two days before I get back to take care of them. If I use the queen cells to make the nucs I'll have to do it next Sunday, otherwise it will be the following Friday or Saturday with queens which have emerged.


Cass....
I don't know if Walter T. Kelly Company,1-800-233-2899 is still around. I purchassed some Queen cell protectors.from his catalog years ago.You push them in the comb under the cell that are ripe. They worked very well to keep all the Queens from getting in to the fight for rule. Someone might know if his family is still there in Clarkson Kentucky My catalog is from 2000. What also works.... I would roll up some cut screen and cap it with some wax rolled into a small ball with a nail in the top to hold it over the Queen cells 
Lee....


----------



## beemanlee

*Royal jelly is made by the nurse bees*



peggjam said:


> "Is the type of jelly fed to newly hatched larvae which is to be worker bees different than what is fed to newly hatched larvae that the bees plan on making into a queen?"
> 
> That's pretty much it in a nutshell. The nurse bees will remove most of the RJ that you transfer with the larva, and replace it with RJ that has a much higher protien rate. I also don't prime my cups, as I find it doesn't make alot of differance on acceptance rate. Ditto for having the cells polished by the girls before grafting.


peggjam,
The "Royal Jelly" produced by the nurse bees and fed to the Queen and larve up to three days old... Is a glandular secretion in the mouth of the younger bees, up to six days old. Only nurse bees will have "Royal Jelly", The older bees also feed the larve after they are in to the cast of worker bees. The cast starts at three days after the first instar. Honey and pollen mixed is then fed to the larve by the rest of the worker bees older than six days. The Queen and larve in the brood chamber before the first shedding of the cuticle are fed the same food!.
I hope this helps you with what is ment by "Royal Jelly". 
Lee....


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## peggjam

beemanlee said:


> peggjam,
> The "Royal Jelly" produced by the nurse bees and fed to the Queen and larve up to three days old... Is a glandular secretion in the mouth of the younger bees, up to six days old. Only nurse bees will have "Royal Jelly", The older bees also feed the larve after they are in to the cast of worker bees. The cast starts at three days after the first instar. Honey and pollen mixed is then fed to the larve by the rest of the worker bees older than six days. The Queen and larve in the brood chamber before the first shedding of the cuticle are fed the same food!.
> I hope this helps you with what is ment by "Royal Jelly".
> Lee....


Yea, I think that's what I said......


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## WVbeekeeper

beemanlee, I've made some queens before as you described. I can get them to make emergency queens no problem. I have always wanted to graft my own so I decided to do it this year. Kelly's is still in business but they don't have the type of cell protectors you were describing but Mann Lake sells them. I place a rather large order with them last week and suggested that maybe they should sell them and the waxed cardboard nuc boxes. I bought my queen rearing supplies from Tim Arheit, Honey Run Apiaries. I bought a few nursery cages, queen cell frames, cell cups, and queen cages. He sent me few NWC queens last year so I gave him business this year.
http://www.honeyrunapiaries.com/store/-c-24_33.html?osCsid=28761f9507090cdb3b880cbb4d3f5ae0
I'll know in a few more days how many queens I'll have after the cells are capped. If I get at least half of what I grafted I'll be happy and the queen rearing equipment will have paid for itself. I need about 14 queens to make some splits with. The queens left over will be placed in some mini mating nucs and will be used for requeening a few colonies and hopefully there will be a few left to sell.


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## beemanlee

*Keep on top of the operation*



WVbeekeeper said:


> beemanlee, I've made some queens before as you described. I can get them to make emergency queens no problem. I have always wanted to graft my own so I decided to do it this year. Kelly's is still in business but they don't have the type of cell protectors you were describing but Mann Lake sells them. I place a rather large order with them last week and suggested that maybe they should sell them and the waxed cardboard nuc boxes. I bought my queen rearing supplies from Tim Arheit, Honey Run Apiaries. I bought a few nursery cages, queen cell frames, cell cups, and queen cages. He sent me few NWC queens last year so I gave him business this year.
> http://www.honeyrunapiaries.com/store/-c-24_33.html?osCsid=28761f9507090cdb3b880cbb4d3f5ae0
> I'll know in a few more days how many queens I'll have after the cells are capped. If I get at least half of what I grafted I'll be happy and the queen rearing equipment will have paid for itself. I need about 14 queens to make some splits with. The queens left over will be placed in some mini mating nucs and will be used for requeening a few colonies and hopefully there will be a few left to sell.


Cass....
It sounds like you'r on your way to making your first batch! 
Keep the feeder full, and make sure you have plenty of nurse bees in the starter/finisher hive.
Lee.....
Do you have a yard to trash for the nucs? Thats 14 nucs to make up with young bees.


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## WVbeekeeper

beemanlee said:


> Do you have a yard to trash for the nucs? Thats 14 nucs to make up with young bees.


I have shallow supers over deeps. I'm planning on taking a shallow super from each colony and giving it a queen then placing a deep over that when the queen starts laying. I checked my colonies today and the supers all have a mixture of brood, honey, and bees and are strong enough to start a colony with. For whatever queens are left over I'll be making some two by four mating nucs. I'll be starting some more cells Friday or Saturday to use in some more mini nucs.


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## beemanlee

*Finding the Queen*



WVbeekeeper said:


> I have shallow supers over deeps. I'm planning on taking a shallow super from each colony and giving it a queen then placing a deep over that when the queen starts laying. I checked my colonies today and the supers all have a mixture of brood, honey, and bees and are strong enough to start a colony with. For whatever queens are left over I'll be making some two by four mating nucs. I'll be starting some more cells Friday or Saturday to use in some more mini nucs.


Cass...
The job will be to find which super the Queen is laying in..... Do you have tops and bottoms at the yard? If you do then most of the work will go OK.
Also don't plan on trashing the best laying Queen's hives, 'cause she is going to supply most of the drones for the new Queens to mate with,,, Susan Cobey says that each new Queen mates with at least 10 drones...Steve Taber says 15 drones max to fill the spermatheca. 
I like to find the Queen and take her brood to the other side of the yard and use a crayon to mark both boxes with the same identitys: A,B,C etc. just in case you want to know which Queen the brood is from later. You may want to put them back with the old queen if the new cell doesn't take..... The original top should stay with old Queen.... All the field bees will be comming back to this location....By doing this you have only nurse bees when you start to put the cells in the nuc, which makes the job of checking on the new queens easy.... They are less wanting to protect the hive and more into feeding the new Queen and brood....
Then by two weeks you should start to see the results of your labor....
Have a fun weekend with the bees. 
Lee.......


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## WVbeekeeper

Well, I had a 78% take on the queen cells. They capped 21 out of 27. I figure the ones that didn't get capped were either mangled when I grafted the larvae and I also think that maybe I accidentally put two larvae in the same cups. I checked the cell bar Wednesday evening and there were a few cells capped, I guess these were grafted from slightly older larvae. The rest were capped yesterday when I checked, which was five days after I grafted so I think this might be a good sign that the larvae I selected were the right age.
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u76/ccohenour1/100_0323.jpg
I'd like to thank everyone who replied to the post and thank you for all your help. 

There is a beekeeper from NC who will be in the area and visiting me tomorrow to give me a good hands-on lesson. I can't wait to learn firsthand from someone who has a lot of experience in queen rearing.


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## danno1800

*Nice job, Cass!*

You are on your way..good luck! -Danno


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## beemanlee

*Good feeling when tyhings work!*



WVbeekeeper said:


> Well, I had a 78% take on the queen cells. They capped 21 out of 27. I figure the ones that didn't get capped were either mangled when I grafted the larvae and I also think that maybe I accidentally put two larvae in the same cups. I checked the cell bar Wednesday evening and there were a few cells capped, I guess these were grafted from slightly older larvae. The rest were capped yesterday when I checked, which was five days after I grafted so I think this might be a good sign that the larvae I selected were the right age.
> http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u76/ccohenour1/100_0323.jpg
> I'd like to thank everyone who replied to the post and thank you for all your help.
> 
> There is a beekeeper from NC who will be in the area and visiting me tomorrow to give me a good hands-on lesson. I can't wait to learn firsthand from someone who has a lot of experience in queen rearing.


Well you'er on your way to making some of your own. You can improv on some of your mistakes in the next round of cell production, when you feel the need. You did say you were expanding this year, didn't you Cass?
Well get that eqpt. ready for the next bunch of Queens and you will be making progress on those ideas....
Lee...


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## WVbeekeeper

Mike Singleton (BEESURV) of Cold Mountain Queens stopped by yesterday. We grafted 33 more queens. He had some of those Chinese grafting tools. I really liked they way they work so I ordered 10. I can see why so many people like them now. 
I made up three supers with four compartments of two frames each. I filled those up with 12 of the capped cells. Just got through making 12 four frame deep nucs (for expanding the apiary) to hold the rest of the capped queen cells, so that takes care of my first successful graft of the season. Just in case anyone is interested, I will be selling 12 of the feral queens after they are are mated and laying. I'll have to move them so I have a place to put some of the queens we grafted yesterday. I'll be preparing more equipment this week to hold the new batch of queens. I'm going to try to get at least 25 of the supers going so I can run about 100 queens a month. It's going to take a little while for my resources to build up but I should be able to do it by the end of May or first of June.


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## Brandy

I guess I missed the part of your evaluation process before you start selling your queen's. I would think you would want to know yourself the quality that you are raising before you would sell anything. Setting up your nuc's for expansion, honey production, and then overwintering would be something that I would have thought a beekeeper going into queen production would want to know. How did those newly grafted queen's do. Were they superceded the first season? Did they make it through the winter?? I surely wouldn't encourage anyone to buy one of your first grafted queen's or anyone's for that matter. Not that you won't get better the more you do because it's a number's game. But I would have thought you would have included some kind of quality control in your planning process other than selling after mating and laying. Just my 2 cent's.


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## WVbeekeeper

I have some nice overwintered nucs from this queen. I started some queens last year. I didn't graft them, they were produced by making a nuc and allowing them to rear a queen themselves. I have lost no queens from those nucs. After the queens started laying good I transferred the nucs into deeps. I started late with the nucs so I gave them each a super of honey to overwinter on. They are all still alive and doing very well right now. Does that count? Or do I have to graft them first before it counts?


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## WVbeekeeper

Here's a post about the hive from which the queens were grafted. I posted this last October 1rst.

http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=213790

There's three beekeepers who think it would be alright to raise queens from this colony, and one who wants some.  I've already made one nuc from it two weeks ago and will need to make another before too much longer or I'll have to start adding honey supers.


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## WVbeekeeper

Since I knew last fall that I wanted to raise some queens this year, I took it upon myself to submit samples of bees from my colonies.

*Registering Your Apiary and Submitting Samples for Testing*


I used all of my overwintered colonies for making nucs last year. One of these colonies, a swarm I picked up in Carbo, VA in '06, came back positive for tracheal mites. No colonies tested positive for nosema. Less than half of the samples had varroa. Included in the samples were bees from the nucs which I started with the feral daughters. Both of these nucs came back negative for tracheal mites though they were started from a colony which tested positive. Could this indicate that the feral queens I am raising are resistant to tracheal mites? Since I don't want to breed with drones from that colony and another colony which is a little ill tempered (can't work it without gloves) I moved them into a raspberry patch before any drones hatched out and got left behind.

http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u76/ccohenour1/80696-R1-18-7A_019.jpg

I took that picture of those two colonies mentioned above a few weeks ago. If you could read the writing on the back of the colonies you would see that I wrote "tracheal mites" on one and "hot" on the other. I will be breaking those two colonies down into nucs after the raspberry bloom dries up and will give them some of the queens I am raising. After a sufficient amount of time has passed I'll send more samples of the nucs which come from the one with the tracheal mites for testing. If no tracheal mites show up in the samples it will confirm the test results which I received back from Beltsville last fall. As a small time (very small) beekeeper, I do have the luxury to submit samples and quarantine unwanted colonies to other locations in the late winter before rearing queens. I'm not bashing anyone, but I wonder how many of the big time commercial breeders test their colonies and what steps they take if they have a problem to keep the ill drones and nurse bees (don't want to stock minis with infected bees) away from the young virgin queens.


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## WVbeekeeper

Brandy said:


> But I would have thought you would have included some kind of quality control in your planning process other than selling after mating and laying. Just my 2 cent's.


I hope my last three posts helps to ease your mind.


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## Brandy

"Does that count? Or do I have to graft them first before it counts?"

I guess that's up to you. Compare the pictures of your grafted queen cells to the "monster" swarm cells the bee's raised in your other post. How did they compare?? Appeared to me there was quite a difference which I would have expected if they were the first cells I tried to raise. Next year you will be able to compare the result's of your grafted queen's nuc's to the nuc's with queen's raised on there own. Which did better?? I would think most buyers would be interested to know whether you're using your own queen's for production or not. 
As I said earlier, my two cents. Just thought you might have wanted to try out your extra 12 queen's before you offered them for sale.


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## WVbeekeeper

>Compare the pictures of your grafted queen cells to the "monster" swarm cells the bee's raised in your other post.

FYI, the four cells I took out of that colony were the biggest out of about 30. The one I took a picture of was the biggest. I know you are a lady and it may be hard to understand, but bigger is not always better. Also, the "monster" cells look bigger because they don't have a 1/2" plastic JZBZ queen cup on the end and also have more than additional 1/2" of wax where I cut above the cell into the comb. That makes them appear to be bigger. It is an illusion. If you would open your eyes and quit being jealous of someone else's efforts and you'd realize that. 

>I would think most buyers would be interested to know whether you're using your own queen's for production or not.

Yep, I'm using them. I quadrupled the number of colonies I have last year, I went from five to twenty, and only ordered two queens. I have eleven cells that I grafted that I will be placing in in some deep nucs tomorrow. 

> As I said earlier, my two cents.

Out of the 1.25 average weekly posts that you post, it probably would be spent more wisely elsewhere.

>Just thought you might have wanted to try out your extra 12 queen's before you offered them for sale.

Do you mean "thought" or "assumed". I will be using some so you assumed correctly. As I said, these are "extra". If you have "extra" that typically means that you do not need them. If no one wants them I'll have to kill them. I'd rather offer them out than to kill them. Not everyone needs every queen they raise and they usually raise more so they can have some "extra". I shouldn't feel like I need to defend myself or my actions to you but I do. I feel like you have personally attacked me. I don't care to answer any questions you have, but when you "think" and "assume" and "imagine" things please keep it to yourself in the future. You don't know me or anything about me. If you did I doubt that you would be "thinking" anything other than I do the best I can for my bees.


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## Angi_H

Cass Would you try shipping any extra queens? If so I would be interested in one you have done enoug studying of this offspring to know they are from great feral stock. And all daughters of hers are performing well and could be resilant certain diseases. Shoot me a pm. If you need queen cages to ship I have some I could send you just let me know.

aNGI


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## Brandy

Yeesh!! Guess I'l take my 1.25 cent's with me. Good luck. 

"I" just had a problem with the priming of queen cell's cup's with honey one day to selling "extra" queen's 13 day's later. My fault, what was I thinking??


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## WVbeekeeper

Brandy said:


> Yeesh!! Guess I'l take my 1.25 cent's with me. Good luck.
> 
> "I" just had a problem with the priming of queen cell's cup's with honey one day to selling "extra" queen's 13 day's later. My fault, what was I thinking??


You need to read the entire thread instead of picking bits and pieces.  That (using honey as primer) didn't work at all though I was told by some that it would. The second time I grafted I primed the cups with one day old royal jelly. I had a 78% take.  Unfortunately I put half of the cells into nursery frames and it got too cold over the weekend and all but one got chilled and did not develop. The one which survived the cold snap emerged and appeared healthy and is now heading up a nuc. The ten which I put in the minis will be also heading up some nucs after I can verify that they have mated and a few will be mailed out. Needless to say, I don't have the extra queens I anticipated on having. Mike Singleton from Coal Mountain Queens was here last Saturday and we grafted some larvae from my feral hive. I checked today and most have been capped. These will not be put into a nursery frame but will be put into some mini nucs and some will be used for some five framers. The other half of the cells went into mini in the nucs before the cold snap and emerged and look nice (I just checked them today, the virgins are a little hard to spot but I managed to locate them). Also, I was not planning on selling queens upon emergence ("13 days later"). They must first mate and I would not release them for sell until I see capped brood. The queens which were put into the mini nucs will be used for more nucs which I plan on building (I'll send a few out). It's never appropriate to make assumptions about what someone else is doing unless you can see first hand or ask appropriate questions (instead of assuming). This was a pretty nice thread until you (Brandy) got on here making your assumptions and doing your best to discredit me. Though I am just learning about the grafting, I can and am learning quick (it's easy to learn about anything when your IQ is 148). The next time you suggest that people not buy my queens you should try some yourself, that way you actually have something to base your opinions on. Try reading this entire thread and you will see the progress I am making (you talk about priming with honey but make no mention of using royal jelly the second time). I would never sell someone an inferior product. I don't want to lose future potential customers. In the future, in regards to handing out advice, give first hand advice instead of conjecturing about the possibilities that may or may not exist. First hand experience speaks best instead of just sitting back and imagining the worst about someone else. Also, as far as qualifying freshly raised queens by keeping them for a year before selling them, be sure to do that yourself if you should ever buy an AI queen. I've been on the phone with some of the people who produce AI queens and once they AI the queens they will wait to see if they lay eggs then sell them as "breeder queens". Some people who sell breeder queens go through a more stringent process but most I spoke with will sell their AI queens when they start laying. That's a pretty big investment for someone to have to wait an entire year to fool around with the offspring (and possibly have ther AI queen superceded). You also spoke of supercedure. Do you even know what the rate of supercedure is for commercially bought queens? From some of the posts I've read on here it is quite high, higher than I would have expected. (Try doing a search). I really don't feel that I should explain myself to you, because all you want to do is criticize, but I do feel that is necessary to explain the facts to those who are interested. Like I said, the next time you want to recommend that no one should by my product you should try it first. This way you can actually have some first hand facts instead of making a bunch of assumptions. I can just as easily do my best to discredit any post you make in the future, without having any first hand evidence (but I won't). I will not be selling any queens from first successful graft due to the fact I put some in nursery frames and they got too cold and quit developing last weekend. However, I do have about 25 queen cells now, which Mike and I grafted last Saturday, which will end up in some mini nucs, or some big nucs for myself, and I do plan on selling some of these. These are from my third graft this year. First graft did not do anything, my second graft had a 78% take, but I killed 10 of them by putting them into a nursery frame where the bees could not keep them warm enough when it got down to freezing Sunday and Monday. My third round will not be put into nursery frames but some minis, and some nucs, but their will be extra after they have mated. I'm currently preparing a colony in three deeps for my next graft. I'll try to see if I can get the cells bigger even though the ones that emerged from my second round of grafting look just fine. I also have a two deep colony which I made queenless for a short time which I will be harvesting some royal jelly from tomorrow to prime my cell cups with for my next graft.

Well first you want to ask about raising queens and monitoring for a year. After I responded about doing just that, you want to talk about "small" cells as opposed to "monster" cells. Just in case you haven't done your homework, bee of different strains will not be equal. The link below is of natural swarm cells which were in the colony I extracted from a wall from which the mother queen derived. You can see that they do not appear to be nearly as large as the cells in the other post.

http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u76/ccohenour1/IMG_1341.jpg

When allowed to make natural comb, these bees make their cells smaller than what is typically average for my area. A lot of people like small cell. Wouldn't it be nice to have bees who want to make it themselves without having to be regressed? One of the nucs I made with a daughter from the feral mother swarmed on me yesterday. I've been trying to keep them from swarming but you can never be 100% successful at that. I mad a four frame nuc with here last June. She built up enough between then and now and cast a swarm. I was surprised when it happened as I was in the yard making a split to keep just that thing from happening. The swarm now occupies three medium nucs. Oh well, but Brandy, you might not want to keep bees who seem to resistant to tracheal mites, are inclined to make small cell, build up nicely, and can overwinter successfully without the use of chemicals or treatment. But that's up to you.

> Cass Would you try shipping any extra queens? If so I would be interested in one you have done enough studying of this offspring to know they are from great feral stock. And all daughters of hers are performing well and could be resilient certain diseases. Shoot me a pm. If you need queen cages to ship I have some I could send you just let me know.

aNGI

Angi, I ordered a few hundred cages when I got my queen supplies last month. When they are mated and laying and have capped brood I would be more than happy to send you some. I really like the bees that the queens produce. They are gentle, the mother produced well last year, I did two hygienic tests on her last year and they cleaned the frozen brood within 24 hrs, and they also seem resistant to TM. I do want to send out about a dozen to some beekeepers to get some feedback from people who have tried the FIRST HAND and don't make assumptions. For the first dozen or so I send out I will not be charging anything other than shipping. This way I can get the feedback which I believe will all be positive to discredit the naysayers. If you want a few I will send them to you and after you receive them you can send me what it cost to ship them. My next batch will be hatching out next Thursday, but I do have a few in the minis that you could get about a week earlier if you want them. Angi, just shoot me a PM when you are ready for a few. I'll be making up 32 more minis this week so I should have a few extra for those who want to try them.


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## WVbeekeeper

Brandy said:


> "I" just had a problem with the priming of queen cell's cup's with honey one day to selling "extra" queen's 13 day's later. My fault, what was I thinking??


What was you thinking? You was thinking that you would pick bits and pieces of the thread to use to discredit me instead of reading everything and following the progress. Obviously you did not read about the second round where I used royal jelly to prime with and had a 78% take. The second graft took place 6 days after the first, which after another 5 days the cells were capped. Don't be so lazy and try reading the whole story next time.


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## beemanlee

*Queens and grafting*

An open letter to all reading this thresd,
There are some that have a mind set that their way is the best because it worked so well for them....Others want to do research on the Queen and cut up her parts to see how well the drones did their job.... Some take the Queen and hive to some remote place and see just what kind of prodigy that could be found to brag about for marketing her.....
I like to look at it in the "keep it simple" type of product that people keep asking for and pay me for.... 
Pumping out the queens is important for a beekeeper to focus on because with out a laying Queen you are out of the loop with bees! The "easiest" way that this job can be done is the "best" way for me! That's No 1....
As beekeepers we need to find out the best queen for our operation, one that is there in the spring with enought bees to get the job done, what ever that may be for you.... One that is raised in your area/microclimate...
All the little things that make the job harder are lost with my type way of operating...
So you make the decision, up front, what bees to use and why and leave the fun stuff till later when you know what works for you.
Most Queens last more than one season and if they don't then there was a problem with matting, you need more drones in that case.....
If my memory is correct, Steve Tabor said that someone had a Queen that was still laying fertile eggs after 7 years.... This was not a Queen that was just in a marked hive but one that was kept just for breeding queens from in a confined place...
The second most important quality is her patern of laying eggs.... That is all of the same age or very close to the same on one side if a standerd size brood frame.... 
My next quality check would be for aggression... Sometimes they work better....
Well that's it for me, hope all you young bee breeders keep up on the new ways of doing cells and nucs...
Lee...


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## beemanlee

*Quality Queens*

Cass,
The quality of your Queens can be found as soon as the new workers start to forage, that's older than 10 days from emerging... Brood size patterns and other production qualities come later, after they are in a standerd size hive with a honey flow..... Most of the things your looked for in your choice of bees is in the bloodline you already grafted from.... The next is from the drones that will breed with your new Queens... A laying Queen is only the first sign, that is, she is a gyne, the second is did she mate well.... As her ovariolees produce the egg and the final fertilizing with a sperm in her ovipositioner... All this checking is value added to the price of the Queen you sell $$$$. So... How much time you spend on your checking makes you more money in the end... That's what you sell her for...
I like to sell the nuc with the new Queen, you make even more that way, and less loss of Queens...
Lee...


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## ME Beekeeper

Thanks HVH,

I've been following along with the discussion here. Great info. I have the inexpensive Jenter look-a-like and it worked okay, but I ended up trying to do some grafting to fill the vacant cells that didn't get filled in the 24 hour span. So with that, I might as well get into grafting right from the start. I had 17 of 21 take. I have everything but the experience. I like the details HVH. Thanks 

Larry


----------



## HVH

MSBA Webmaster said:


> Thanks HVH,
> 
> I've been following along with the discussion here. Great info. I have the inexpensive Jenter look-a-like and it worked okay, but I ended up trying to do some grafting to fill the vacant cells that didn't get filled in the 24 hour span. So with that, I might as well get into grafting right from the start. I had 17 of 21 take. I have everything but the experience. I like the details HVH. Thanks
> 
> Larry


Larry,

Thanks for the kind words. Sometimes I think that I graft so I can replace all the bees that swarm. Swarming started really early here this year and I keep calculating in my head the number of queens times 1000 eggs per day to try and figure out how many queens are needed before I recover my swarm losses. I graphed an Excel sheet of swarms two years ago and completely stopped the swarming last year with the Snelgrove method (timed it right). Since swarms were three weeks early this year, my losses were more than usual. I figure one new queen laying about 1000 eggs per day will take about 12 days to replace a three pound swarm. So I will need about 12 queens laying 12 days each to replace the 12 swarms that I know about. I shed a lot less tears knowing I can graft back my losses and then some. The other hundred or so queens will be overwintered in nucs this year which means it will be unusually cold this coming winter (Murphy's law).

Best of Luck,
Chris


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## beemanlee

*What thread? was it 1rst Round Reply to Thread*



MSBA Webmaster said:


> Thanks HVH... I've been following along with the discussion here... Great info... I had 17 of 21 take... I have everything but the experience... I like the details HVH. Thanks Larry


Larry,
I received the e-mail on your post 316752 but didn't see the other posts which you were refering to the details by HVH...Was it a different thread post or 1rst Round Reply to Thread as it came to me as?
Give me a shot back on this thread if I missed something that needs discussion as to the desired question or statement...
Sometimes I don't log on till late at night and my brain stops on me, and I nod off....
Lee...


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## tecumseh

so the priming with honey idea did not work? didn't think it would considering the source.

there is a classifaction (seems like there is a total of four classification???) for various queens and the length of time they have layed and been observed. the more certain a person is of a queens brood patter, disposition of offspring, etc. the more time that is invested in the output and the higher the price the product should bring. some people will of course desire to get a cadallic for the price of a chevy.

a naturally mated field run queen that has barely begun to lay in the box should not bring the price of a tested queen.


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## beemanlee

*That honey thing is for cleaning and polising*

>137039:tecumseh; so the priming with honey idea did not work? didn't think it would considering the source.<
tecumseh,
The thing that Cass did is a way of getting the cups polished by the bees. He just took it one step more and did some grafting in to the cups. He made statements about it if you go back to post #62... That should help you here to know what was doing in the trying to learn processes of Queen rearing...

>137039:tecumseh: the more time... the higher the price the product should bring. some people will of course desire to get a cadallic for the price of a chevy.<

Yes, this is true, most people are of the honest type but some seem to want all they can get for nothing... Location is also part of the equation too...

The guy that is taking his time on the learning thing will come out with the practial experience that is needed to raise his Queens, not just head knoledge he picked up from reading.
Lee...


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## Morierty

[/quote]there is a classifaction (seems like there is a total of four classification???) for various queens and the length of time they have layed and been observed. the more certain a person is of a queens brood patter, disposition of offspring, etc. the more time that is invested in the output and the higher the price the product should bring. some people will of course desire to get a cadallic for the price of a chevy.

a naturally mated field run queen that has barely begun to lay in the box should not bring the price of a tested queen.[/quote]

It seems there should be greater value for these tested queens but I have purchased too many chevettes for the cadallac price. I too raise my own now.


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## tecumseh

well I don't know about in California beemanlee... but polishing cell cups is not the same as priming a cup.... at least it ain't here in Texas.

and yes I would agree that queen rearing like most everything with the bees is about doing it.... although a bit of reading and study and consideration will certainly make the doing go a bit smoother.


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## tecumseh

ps... I was not referring to this tread in any way shape or form when I made the comment in regards to honey as a way of priming cells being inadequate and likely an unworkable idea. I have seen this suggest on any number of threads and really suspected (tried it once myself) that it was not the best of ideas.

I can see where a bit of honey would make polishing the cells go a bit quicker. although for myself, I would rather (and do) just place wax cells into a robust hive with sufficient time where this has never been a real concern for me.... well it has never been a concerned since I learned that grafting into unpolished wax cells was never worth the time or effort (much less the 7 pounds of bees in the swarm box).


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## beemanlee

*Natural Queen cups made by the bees work the best*

tecumseh,
There is an easy way to graft a few Queens...
If the amount of cells you need is small and you have a hive that is doing real good on honey stores... White capped frames of honey viewed from the top off the hive... Tip up the honey super and you should find a large number of queen cups all ready made... This will not work as well with a hive that has a queen excluder... Check the brood frames for quality patterns of full brood... If all looks good and the bees are easy to work then you have found a good hive to raise Queens from...

This type of cell will always be made in the spring and during the first major honey flow... They work well for making a small amount of Queens from and you can graft into them and use this hive to start and finish them with only a small amount of effort on your part...The bees have already been working on the cups as the hive starts to fill with bees an honey... 

Put this grafted frame back in the center position of the brood box... While this hive is doing well in bring in the nector, the feeding is not going to be an issue to address... Even finishing the cells will be OK... Removing the Queen and two frames of capped brood with bees from this hive and put them in a nuc... From another hive not doing as well, take three empty honey frames, with out the bees and room for the Queen to lay in, into the nuc... Place the nuc behind the hive with the entrance in opposite direction of it's original hive entrance...

You can go back into the hive in a day and see if the grafts you did were excepted by the cell bilders... It's like anything else you do in beekeeping... Sometimes it doesn't work the first time... But if the bees that are doing the cell building start to do their job, then you are going to have some good honey producing Queens in a 15 day period from your graft of one day old larve, providing the grafted cup has a 1 day old larve...

Usually the bees start to remove the wax capping around the bottom outer edges of the Queen cells after the spinning of the cocoon, and exposing the fine threads... 

The bottom queen cups can be cut out as the times comes down to day 14 and placed in a stocked nuc with nurse bees, brood, honey and pollen... Commerical Queen producers will take and gather the cells 24 hours befor the new Queens emerg and place them in their nucs in the mating yard...
Lee...


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## beemanlee

*Queens, they are usually "not" everything you expected*

>317202: tested queens... but I have purchased too many chevettes...< 

Morierty,
That is usually the case on most Queens... You spend a lot of money with expections of seeing great things, but they end up being nothing above avarage...
Raising your own is the way to go...
Lee...


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