# Cloake Board vs. Double Screen Board



## crofter (May 5, 2011)

A Cloake board is simpler to build than a full function Snelgrove board. If using a Snelgrove and you felt you needed to remove it and substitute with an excluder to re establish a queen right finisher atmosphere you could alter it to a Horsley board. You dont have to get near as fancy to make an art form of it. Same philosophy for a Cloake board. Form follows function. 

I dont know how much real advantage to the resulting queen by the presence of all the queen pheremones as in an excluder separation vs what you would get with a double screen. Had not even thought about it before you hinted at it.


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## mtnmyke (Apr 27, 2017)

Oh interesting. I didn't even know what a Horsley board was until you mentioned it, and google filled in the rest. It's almost like a hybrid between a double screen and a cloake board.

The only cloake boards I've seen are the fancy ones at Mann Lake. I may have to research some plans if they are just as easy to build as a Snelgrove, which is basically a bottom board with holes drilled in it and screen on both sides.

And I'm not sure if there is any advantage, other than keeping the combined heat, in regards to pheromones. Apparently if you divide a hive with a Snelgrove it will begin drawing queen cells, even if you don't add them?

I found Bob Binnie's method intriguing. If I used a similar method I'd be able to do all my queens in 2 rounds, maybe one if I can up my grafting game:


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

I met a guy who raises maybe 100-150 queens a year. If I remember right he said he moves some brood up in the second box, in a few days throws on an excluder between the boxes with a political sign on top of the excluder (I’m assuming a top entrance). In 2-3 days he removes the political sign. He might put a newspaper in its place but I don’t remember. He said they look up and say “we started this, I guess we should finish it”. Said they finish 26-30.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

You do not get dependable cell starting unless you also put two supers in between. Varies a bit between different bee breeds. Another division board but fancier yet is the Morris board. You could make a functional Cloake board in a few minutes. Lots of plastic sheets or a piece of hardboard. The slide does not have to have a recess. I think if you do a google on simple cloake board you will find something.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

joebeewhisperer said:


> I met a guy who raises maybe 100-150 queens a year. If I remember right he said he moves some brood up in the second box, in a few days throws on an excluder between the boxes with a political sign on top of the excluder (I’m assuming a top entrance). In 2-3 days he removes the political sign. He might put a newspaper in its place but I don’t remember. He said they look up and say “we started this, I guess we should finish it”. Said they finish 26-30.


Yes you nailed it while I was typing


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Don’t worry Frank, when they start flying I’ll be outside instead of here with my trigger finger. 😜


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## mtnmyke (Apr 27, 2017)

Sign board is easy enough!

I did look up some plans. Looks like with a wood bound excluder and a few minutes with the table saw, I could have a perfectly good cloake board. Sounds like that's the way to go.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

For the upper entrance a pair of tapered wedges 20" long; taper from nothing to half inch. Puts an entrance wherever you want it between boxes. Another pair of them can quickly create the rear lower entrance as well instead of swinging the lower box 180 deg. for the classical Sue Cobey Cloake board method. After you block the lower front entrance put a few dabs of Vics Vapor rub on the blocked lower front entrance and they will quickly move up to the new entrance created in the upper box.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

many ways to crack this nut
this is similar to bob's.. 



 (always loved bobs videos)

The main advantage I see to the cloak board is less lifting, and the fact you don't have to gear up in many cases to put in or pull the slide board, witch is handy if that's the only task you came to the the bee yard to do that day..


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## mtnmyke (Apr 27, 2017)

In that video they just use another bottom board. I guess anything will work as long as it divides the colonies long enough for one to feel queenless and want to raise queens.

In the past I had problems with my starters drawing queen cells. I'd just knock them down when I inspected, before adding grafts. I don't notice a lot of the commercial guys going through to do this. I'm obviously avoiding brood with eggs, but some always slip through. Anything I'm missing?


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

mtnmyke said:


> In that video they just use another bottom board. I guess anything will work as long as it divides the colonies long enough for one to feel queenless and want to raise queens.
> 
> In the past I had problems with my starters drawing queen cells. I'd just knock them down when I inspected, before adding grafts. I don't notice a lot of the commercial guys going through to do this. I'm obviously avoiding brood with eggs, but some always slip through. Anything I'm missing?


They must be doing something in their methods as any wild cells started could prevent accepting your grafts outright or reducing the numbers accepted. If a hidden cell is more advanced they may tear down yours or worst of all emerge a virgin that destroys all of yours. 

If you put the excluder between brood boxes a full week ahead you have time to check for cells started. A cell a few days old on a brood frame can easily be missed. It is ok to allow them to start feeding cells on one frame that you mark and which you will pull out before putting in your cell bar. Condition them to be feeding cells but in a known, verified location which you will remove and handle appropriately. I am not good at finding my dark queens so I take other measures to know where they are and check that I did not get fooled by there having been more than one queen in the colony. Dont take anything for granted; I know all too well how easy it is to get too anxious to get the show on the road and then be jerked up by a failure.
I know that doing something stupid is a famous way of getting smart but it is painful!


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## mtnmyke (Apr 27, 2017)

I usually give them 48 hours queenless and then go through and tear down any queen cells before introducing my grafts. It's been working, just curious why in the commercial videos, they don't go through the builder.

And no kidding, lessons are rough. I just lost one of my prized queens who overwintered in a nuc. I moved her to a full size hive last week and when I want to mark her, my pen blew up on her, getting on her antenna and eyes. I primed the pen, as always before hand, but it must have had a clog that came out when I touched her. Checked her today and nothing but queen cells...ugh! I always think I need to mark my queens but have had more than one bad experience and as I have no issues finding them, am kind of over it. It's nice to know the year of your queens, but also nicer to not kill them with paint.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

mtnmyke said:


> I usually give them 48 hours queenless and then go through and tear down any queen cells before introducing my grafts. It's been working, just curious why in the commercial videos, they don't go through the builder.
> 
> And no kidding, lessons are rough. I just lost one of my prized queens who overwintered in a nuc. I moved her to a full size hive last week and when I want to mark her, my pen blew up on her, getting on her antenna and eyes. I primed the pen, as always before hand, but it must have had a clog that came out when I touched her. Checked her today and nothing but queen cells...ugh! I always think I need to mark my queens but have had more than one bad experience and as I have no issues finding them, am kind of over it. It's nice to know the year of your queens, but also nicer to not kill them with paint.


At 48 hrs you just got lucky. They can build cells for at least 6 days. Just laid eggs at separation time take 3+ days to hatch and can be raised as a queen for 3 more days. Some procedures take capped brood and put in the cell builder several weeks before. Something in their procedure is precluding the possibility of there being eggs or viable larvae present. Still you can be smacked down by an errant queen returning to the wrong hive; namely your queen rearing hive!

I am only rearing 5 or ten at a time and do not have other events happening that I have to mesh with. Not a big deal if a batch gets lost, but say if your graft of 50 cells from an II breeder queen got knackered and you had customers signed up for them, it would be a major gaffe.

I killed a queen when opening the slide on a one handed queen catcher. Had been very careful not to guillotine her when closing but didnt dawn on me that she could have her butt out the side and be caught when it was slid open. Half full of worker bees it is hard to see exactly where mama is. Sure makes you feel rotten!

It is safer to make a blot on a hive cover or your hive tool and pick up and apply the paint with a timothy stem or the head of a finishing nail. You are not the first one to have a paint pen burp.


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## mtnmyke (Apr 27, 2017)

crofter said:


> At 48 hrs you just got lucky. They can build cells for at least 6 days.
> 
> It is safer to make a blot on a hive cover or your hive tool and pick up and apply the paint with a timothy stem or the head of a finishing nail. You are not the first one to have a paint pen burp.


That explains why I've been 100% sure I don't have any eggs and still get queen cells. It may also be why I've gotten lucky as the cells they've drawn are 5 days old from laid and I've knocked them down. Guess I've just been one day lucky. I'll have to me a little more careful in the future.

And I read up on pens exploding and people just having a really colorful queen. I put her in right away hoping most of it would be cleaned off, apparently something went wrong. I had another queen in a queen castle and swapper her, with all her frames bees/egg/brood, with this now queenless hive. I the moved all the frames from the queenless hive and divided out the queen cells in the castle. Emergency cells aren't my favorite but these were pretty juicy. Maybe the best way for me to raise queens is to try and mark them lol


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

I think there can be a broad range of conditions present during the time an "emergency" queen is produced. Big difference in the amount of milk in cells when the colony is high on resources compared to when they are low on stores and nurse age bees. You can make entirely acceptable queens with a Snelgrove board which is often declared the emergency response but if you were in a contest to get maximum emergence weight and ovariole development in queens the ones where all the contributing variable were pegged to the top, the emergency response queens would not often be the winners.

To some extent the saying that, perfection is the enemy of practicality, is valid. Then you can say, Good enough for the girls I go out with, and you would be correct.

It is good though to know what the controlling factors are then you can decide how important each one is going to be to the girls you want to go with. 

Please know that I am only rattling your chain a little bit.


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## mtnmyke (Apr 27, 2017)

Haha, consider the chain rattled.

We just started our peak flow with tons of pollen and most my hives have 2-3 supers on already. That would probably explain the juicy cells. I'm hoping I can get a couple, that was a good queen we lost with some great traits.


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## Deens Bees (Feb 11, 2021)

mtnmyke said:


> I usually give them 48 hours queenless and then go through and tear down any queen cells before introducing my grafts. It's been working, just curious why in the commercial videos, they don't go through the builder.
> 
> And no kidding, lessons are rough. I just lost one of my prized queens who overwintered in a nuc. I moved her to a full size hive last week and when I want to mark her, my pen blew up on her, getting on her antenna and eyes. I primed the pen, as always before hand, but it must have had a clog that came out when I touched her. Checked her today and nothing but queen cells...ugh! I always think I need to mark my queens but have had more than one bad experience and as I have no issues finding them, am kind of over it. It's nice to know the year of your queens, but also nicer to not kill them with paint.


I feel your pain. I've started dabbing the pen on the hive stand and using a tooth pic to transfer paint to the queen. I guess the pens get warm in my pocket because it seems they are pressurized.


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## Jack Grimshaw (Feb 10, 2001)

Post revisited.

I tried Bob Binnies double screen method this season with very good results.
(just a few grafts so did not isolate the queen)
In the past,I had used a cloake board as per Paul Kelly's U of Guelph video and my results weren't the greatest.
Both methods are fine for just a few queens and allow for the colony to go right back into honey production.

Both methods involve multiple days and manipulations.Neither a Snelgrove board nor a Cloake board were difficult to build for any one who knows which end of a hammer to hold.

I use all meds so what made the difference this year was confining the queen to only a single box.This gave another box as a "spacer"(or as Crofter suggests using supers),between the grafts when switching to the queen excluder on day 2 after grafts.
Take note Deens Bees re your tear down issue.


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## Deens Bees (Feb 11, 2021)

Of course I read all this after my failure but I’ll know next year. It’s dragonfly season now so getting queens back is tough.


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## SeaCucumber (Jun 5, 2014)

Here's a process Sam Comfort tried.

Remove the queen from a mating nuc.
Shake bees in the nuc.
Don't harvest the QCs. Maybe he checked for QCs.
He sent queens to a lab. He said these emergency queens were superior and had the most sperm.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

they were walk away splits
then he later said they were hit or miss
results on the full scale study pending Progress report for ONE19-326 – SARE Grant Management System


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