# Time is on my side?



## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

I never did picking to create queens but it's time to take this step.

In another post Michael Bush identified this incubator http://www.honeyrunapiaries.com/beekeeping/articles/queen-cell-incubator/ that pleased me a lot for its versatility .

With an incubator of its kind I can carry a frame with larvae to my house, do the picking in better conditions and again take the frame and the "cupules" (is this the word??) to the apiary .

My question is: if I in the two coming travel and return I take about 1hour and more 1hour to do the picking (never did the picking ; this is an estimate that may err on the side or default) this means that future queen larvae are about two hours without being fed and cared for by the nurse bees. This is important to the quality of the queens?

Cupules = https://www.flickr.com/photos/rucher_orgeval/3298016712


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

Sorry for the bad English. When I said picking I mean grafting and when I said cupules I mean JBZ plastic cups.

Tank you Julián aka Snowhitsky.:thumbsup:


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

a very good question eduardo and something that i have been pondering myself. transporting larvae from and queen cells to distant outyards would open up some really good options.

you may have seen on another thread that i have just purchased the reptipro 6000 incubator. i wasn't aware when i purchased it that it could operate on 12 volts and comes with a cigarette lighter adapter.

after reading your post i checked to see if a frame would fit in the reptipro and found that neither a standard langstroth deep or medium frame would fit. so it would not be useful for bringing larvae home.

i suppose if i were to bring a frame of larvae home from a distant outyard i would use a regular nuc box, leave the nurse bees on the frame, shake off the nurse bees into a hive at the home yard, take the grafts, and donate the remaining brood to a hive at the home yard.

while this incubator might be helpful for transporting queen cells ready for placement to the outyards (making use of the 12v feature), i think because of its size and weight it would be easier to use a smaller box with a hand warmer or something for heat.

when i looked at the honey run apiaries product i didn't see that it ran off of 12v for use while transporting, but i may have missed it. disclaimer: i have no experience with transporting brood or queen cells long distances, just offering some food for thought.


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## My-smokepole (Apr 14, 2008)

I have. Couple of tim's Controllers And use them for lots of things. From moveing queen cell, warming box, with my wax melter to recover homey before I melt the wax down.


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## mcon672 (Mar 5, 2015)

I've thought about using hand warmers before (after i got chalk from transporting a frame of brood and chilling it) but then I read that some folks use them to remove oxygen from containers that they are storing goods in. They claim that don't do as good as regular o2 absorbers but still worried me. Not sure if they would have an effect on brood in a cooler or not. I'm thinking hot water bottle or something similar.


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

If it was me, I think I'd graft in the front seat of my car or truck on location at the remote yard. If the lighting was bad, I'd get a LED Headband light, and I'd wear strong reading glasses to be able to see the small larva. That way it's on location and the larva will not be without attention and feeding by nurse bees for an hour or two. I graft using a headband light and reading glasses anyway, so doing it on location in the seat of my car would not be much different than at my kitchen table.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

Thank you all.

squarepeg I don't have a home yard. If I had I'll do as you say. Yes i didn't see also if honey run apiaries product that it ran off of 12v for use while transporting. 

My-smokepole what is a "Couple of tim's Controllers"?

Ray given the fractious nature of my bees I would like to graft away from the apiary, at home preferably, with a table to work without gloves on hands with a magnifying lens and with a good light ... as long as it does not affect the quality of future queens. I suppose my question remains open: larvae of future queens two hours without the care of nurse bees can give quality queens?


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## Sunday Farmer (Nov 13, 2013)

Eduardo Gomes said:


> Ray given the fractious nature of my bees I would like to graft away from the apiary,


How ornery are your bees in Portugal?


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

Square peg leaving nurse bees on to tend to brood in a small box is exactly how I transport brood to trapouts works great


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## Terry C (Sep 6, 2013)

Eduardo Gomes said:


> Thank you all.
> 
> squarepeg I don't have a home yard. If I had I'll do as you say. Yes i didn't see also if honey run apiaries product that it ran off of 12v for use while transporting.
> 
> ...


 Eduardo , have you considered using a tent-style screen "room" ? I'm not sure what they call it , but it's built like and about the size of a 4 man tent . The walls are screen rather than canvas or nylon . That would at least isolate you from those "fractious" bees !


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

@ Sunday Farmer
Our Iberian Bee is a natural hybrid with the black bee genes from the center of Europe , and genes of African lines. It's a very bubbly bee in the frames when we do the inspection and becomes defensive. It is very difficult to work without gloves in the apiary . It is not a clearly a bad bee, do not hound us for a long time when we left the apiary and does not carry out mass attacks as one hears about the AHB.

@Terry C
I had even thought seriously that option. Thank you for your reminder.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Eduardo Gomes said:


> I My question is: if I in the two coming travel and return I take about 1hour and more 1hour to do the picking (never did the picking ; this is an estimate that may err on the side or default) this means that future queen larvae are about two hours without being fed and cared for by the nurse bees. This is important to the quality of the queens?


2 hour travelling does not harm if you put the frame of brood into totally wet towel, so they don´t dry. I have travelled with larvae all day, brood frame for grafting in a wet towel on my truck bench, and did the grafting in the end of the working day, with good results.

Young larvae do not need exactly 35C , just make sure temperature in your truck is not OVER 35. Temperatures under 35 are no problem.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

Great!! Thank you Juhani. 

Under these conditions (graft at home) and a 30 to 45 minutes journey back to to the apiary with the plastic queen cups, what do you think: small larvae should be taken with a bit of royal jelly? Put a small drop of distilled water inside the queen cup prior to graft the larva is desirable?


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Dilute some royal jelly with water and put a droplet of that solution with a match (for instance) on the cell bottom.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

Yes, ok!

Your starter is queenless or queenright?


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

I use the sc. Cloake method. I used to use queen less 3kg starters and cell builders.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

Juhani why do you changed your method?


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Cloakes method is so simple. Starter and the finisher in same hive. It is a good method if you have a home yard at the back of your garden, and if your need for queens is max 50 or so a week.

If there is need for more I would rather make a starter, with nurse bees and pollen frames and some food, just to be absolutely sure that I would get the desired amount of cells at the right time. 

I used to collect the starter bees, 3-4 kg from hives which were the strongest, near getting swarming impulse, and the starter bees were shaken to cell builders. Nowadays I don´t want to do this equalizing, I would move quite a lot of mites too, would make bias to hive valuations.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

Juhani Lunden said:


> Cloakes method is so simple. Starter and the finisher in same hive. It is a good method if you have a home yard at the back of your garden, and if your need for queens is max 50 or so a week.
> ... Nowadays I don´t want to do this equalizing, I would move quite a lot of mites too, would make bias to hive valuations.


Yes about 50 queen per week is fine for me. Juhani I just have outyards. Do you think this could be a problem for the use of the Cloake border?

I can see your point about the bias from equalizing in your breed program and in your goals.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Eduardo Gomes said:


> Yes about 50 queen per week is fine for me. Juhani I just have outyards. Do you think this could be a problem for the use of the Cloake border?


No of course not, it is just so handy at home


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

the biggest drawback of using the cloake board method at an outyard, and if the outyard is long distance away, is the number of manipulations and the timing between them could result in a lot of travel time and expense.

there may be some variation on how the method is accomplished, but i've been following the one described here:

http://www.delta-business.com/Calga...od of Queen Rearing and Banking Sue Cobey.pdf

it involves a manipulation a few days before, the day before, the day of, and the day after grafting, plus the trip to collect the finished cells. five trips in all.

better if you can have your queenrearing hive at home or at least close to home.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Squarepeq, the point was if there is difference in time expenditure between Cloakes method and the usual old way. I see no bigger difference in travelling, if done on an outyard.

The starter /finisher method, trips numbered:
1. Preparing cell builders 4 days before(transfere young larvae above excluder)
2. Making the starter, this causes even some more travelling, because you don´t want to disturb/weaken the cell builders
3. Making the grafts the next day or at least 5-6 hours later 
4. Transferring the finished cells to cell builders the next day
5. Collecting the cells

In Cloakes method I don´t do anything the day before, I put the board between in the same morning as I get the frames for grafting and make the grafts, 4 steps.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

understood juhani. i guess the only way to have less trips is to forfeit having a queenright finisher.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Hi Eduardo! I recommend transporting an entire nucleus or full sized colony for grafting 12 days before grafting, but only if you MUST move them. It is far better NOT to move them, but to graft on site so that you disturb the colony as little as possible before, during, and after the graft. Grafting in a tent works great, your car or truck works too.

The key to the whole operation is continuous feeding of the young larvae selected to become queens. One study noted queen larvae receiving ~ 1,640 feedings a day. That's about 2 feedings per minute for the queens, versus one every 5 to 7 minutes for a worker bee as best I can recall - I might not have the numbers exactly right, but that is the "ballpark" approximation. So you can see that continuous feeding from a very early age really affects queen quality.

Grafting does interrupt this continuity, which does not help. We try to graft very quickly - less than 10 minutes - to reduce this effect. Transporting a frame of brood for an hour before it is replaced to a populous hive of well-fed nurse bees would likely make queens that perform poorly and are soon superceded. They just miss too many feedings at the critical growth stages.

The whole point of the Cloake Board is to make a queenless section of a strong colony while disturbing the hive as little as possible. This keeps the nurse bees stressed very little - only stressed in that they have just realized that they are queenless long enough to want to build queen cells - so they immediately begin feeding the grafts when introduced. 

The Cloake Board is removed 24 hours after adding the grafts, re-uniting them with their queen, thus changing the program from _emergency response_ to _supercedure response_ again, disturbing the hive very little, keeping the continuity of those critical feedings.

Perhaps the most important aspect is to have the hive *crowded* into swarming conditions to encourage _swarming impulse_, but not just with any bees - crowded with tons of well-fed nurse bees, about 5 to 10 days old. So import 8 to 10 frames of capped brood 10 days before grafting above the Cloake Board with the queen below it. 30,000 extra nurse bees with nothing to do but eat and feed queen cells is the idea.

*They will be starting their own queen cells during those 10 days, SO YOU MUST REMOVE EVERY QUEEN CELL at Day 5 and again on Day 10*. Day 11 at 7 AM the Cloake Board goes in and that afternoon at 3 pm is grafting hour. 10 days later you cut and plant queen cells into mating nuc's.

As you see, I'm combining Harry Cloake's method with Brother Adam's/Michael Palmer's method. Brother Adam's method is perhaps better overall, but you do have to swing the queenright box off the bottom and re-build the queenless Cell Builder Colony in the original position. It's just a little more work. 

Read Michael Palmer's thread, "My Cell Building Methods" in the "Sticky" section at the top of the queen rearing page. This should really help you make queens on schedule and they are much less likely to get superceded soon afterward. Good luck!


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

@Juhani. 
You helped me a lot to better define this context for me to make my first grafts. The learning curve will be demanding, but with your help and others I will make my way more easily and more comfortably.

@squarepeg
I not quite understand this statement "i guess the only way to have less trips is to forfeit having a queenright finisher." . Many gaps in my knowledge.

@kilocharlie
"The key to the whole operation is continuous feeding of the young larvae selected to become queens. One study noted queen larvae receiving ~ 1,640 feedings a day. That's about 2 feedings per minute for the queens, versus one every 5 to 7 minutes for a worker bee as best I can recall - I might not have the numbers exactly right, but that is the "ballpark" approximation. So you can see that continuous feeding from a very early age really affects queen quality."

I had this information hence my initial question .

I am thinking to create a outyard 15 minutes from home for this purpose of breeding queens. I have an apiary with 60 beehives about 3km away and a friend have another about a distance of 2 km with 20 hives. For drones will not have missed them.

It seems to me that the best option of all is to create this new outyard close to home. In Portugal the law does not allow us to have homeyards given the temper of our bees.


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

Experiments have been done shipping fresh grafted queen cells by UPS. Those cells were cool and unfed for over 24 hours and some of them still developed into fine queens anyone would wish to own. Actually, one of the biggest problems was a good % of the larva get knocked out of the JZBC grafting cup during shipping. A key to getting this to work is to keep the frame of larva you are grafting from damp and keep the grafts damp. If either brood in frames or grafted brood dry out they will die fast. I am not really sure what temperature limits are ok, but clearly quite a while at 80 deg F does not hurt them. It likely is important to knock the temp down from normal brood temp enough to slow the metabolism of the grafts way down or they would run out of food way before 24 hours was up. I have grafted many times with larva that had been out of the hive for at least a half hour or 45 minutes and held at room temperature and the grafts did just fine and made good queens and there was zero evidence of larva or pupa deaths in the remainder of the frame placed back in the parent hive.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

>>A key to getting this to work is to keep the frame of larva you are grafting from damp and keep the grafts damp. >> 

Ok, thank you. 
A wet towel to cover the donor frame of larvae and other wet towel to cover the frame with the grafts are securely stored on my list of procedures.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

A queenyard close to home is a good solution. Set up a tent the day before grafting. Put in a table, a chair, a light, a bucket for warm (95 degree F) water, a magnifyer loupe, your grafting tool, and 2 or 3 towels.

Don't forget to add warm water right before grafting.


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