# Nicot 101



## aunt betty

Have ordered a Nicot queen rearing kit and would like some lessons. The book store don't have the book here. Library? Struck out there too.
Are the directions that come with the kit sufficient? 
Have experience with queen rearing but not a lot of grafting and for sure I've never used Nicot.

Suppose I could order the book online. I'm just to cheap. Got the kit ordered real cheap. Probably a Chinese knockoff. 
Help? 

It's not supposed to get here by around 3-15 so I got time to get some instruction if y'all don't mind. 
Have queen rearing essentials so I do have something to reference.


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## Andrew Dewey

Grant Gillard, who used to post here, has a couple of books you might be interested in on Amazon. NICOT Queen Rearing: The Non-Grafting Method for Raising Local Queens is available for Kindle @ $6.00.


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## ruthiesbees

couple of youtube videos out there


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## wvbeeguy

agree that Grant Gillard has good book on it. as with all methods of queen rearing the devil is in the details. Still need a very good cell starter / finisher. Some queens dont like to/ or wont lay in it. Have to keep watch on it, difficult to see day old larvae if you dont have full sun and realize that queen may lay slowly in box, sometimes only 8-10 a day


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## J.Lee

Some beekeepers have told me that there is a high rate of superseding the queen after using the Nicot method of queen rearing. Has anyone else seen that occur in their bees.


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## wvbeeguy

I have had queens in box before that colony started making supersedure cells- just starting. So yes you need to check in hive ; if queen hasnt started laying in 4-5 days chances are she wont. I have noticed Italians seemed to lay more readily that Carniolans, for me


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## Juhani Lunden

wvbeeguy said:


> So yes you need to check in hive ; if queen hasnt started laying in 4-5 days chances are she wont.


Yep, some queens lay right away, some just won´t do it.


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## dudelt

The instructions that come with the kit are definitely NOT sufficient. I am planning to try the kit this year for the first time too and have read Gillard's book several times this winter. I like knowing what I am doing. He has a lot of good advice in the book and I would advise getting a copy. I believe it will save a lot of headaches. He does mention the supercedure issue in the book.


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## Juhani Lunden

aunt betty said:


> so I got time to get some instruction if y'all don't mind.
> Have queen rearing essentials so I do have something to reference.


What is what you don´t understand?

there are several parts in Nicot system:

- Cell Cups, for the eggs to be layed, these come to
- Cell Bar Cups, which come to
- Cell Bar Blocks. 

http://www.beckysbeesonlineshop.co.uk/nicot-cupkit-queen-rearing-set-3689-p.asp

Fasten 15 Cell Bar Blocks, no space between, into a wooden bar with tiny tiny nails. 
Fasten this wooden bar into a frame, best way is to make it easily removable from the frame.

When making larvae transfer (with needle) to Cell Cups, place a wet towel on top of the transfered larvae. They are NOT sensitive to cold, but they easily dry out to death.

To use the laying cage:
fasten it into a drawn frame with white wax. Cut out a piece of comb, same size as the box, fasten the box with just some wires around it for the first time, bees will fasten it with wax later on in the hive.

Let the box be in the hive for couple of days or a week, before trying to make the queen lay, but be sure to keep the excluder side on!

Put the queen in the box (Cell Cups in place on the other side), wait couple of days and check for the result. If she has layed in the box release her by taking the excluder (=front of the cage) away and wait until the larvae have hatched and are well fed before transfering them to Cell Bar Cups.


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## Juhani Lunden

After this point when the 1-2 day old larvae are in the Cell Cups, which are in the Cell Bar Cups, which are in Cell Bar Blocks, in the wooden bar, in the empty frame... now you need a cell builder colony.

There are many instructions in bee books, but my advise is as follows:

Take the strongest hive in the yard.

Place a queens excluder in between the brood area, so that the queen in the lower part.

Wait 4 days (This is to make all eggs to hatch in the upper part so that bees will get to the mood that there is something wrong with their dear queen because there are no eggs, the poor ones don´t get it that the reason in the excluder below).

Arrange the top box above excluder so that there is in the middle of the box: frame with lots of open brood, *empty space*, frame with lots of pollen.

Get the frame with larvae in Nicot cups and place it into this empty space.


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## Juhani Lunden

Now you wait for 5 days for the cells to be built.

Then you can either place the Roller Queen Cages by gently pushing and twisting/rolling at the same time (to avoid damage to the queen cells, sometimes they are FAT) on the ready made cells, or you can use the queencells by placing them into whatsoever queensless hive, just between the frames.


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## aunt betty

Juhani Lunden said:


> When making larvae transfer (with needle) to Cell Cups, place a wet towel on top of the transfered larvae. They are NOT sensitive to cold, but they easily dry out to death.


#huh!?!


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## Juhani Lunden

aunt betty said:


> #huh!?!


Should I say moist.


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## aunt betty

With all due respect sir what kind of grafting tool do you use when you yourself personally graft into a Nicot cassette?


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## AstroBee

J.Lee said:


> Some beekeepers have told me that there is a high rate of superseding the queen after using the Nicot method of queen rearing. Has anyone else seen that occur in their bees.


I think this is the biggest potential issue with these systems. I really like the fact that you can move larvae without disturbing it, but it does require more intervention than grafting. I haven't used my Jenter system in several years, but it worked very well and I always got nice cells. I did lose a queen once, and I never figured out why. This makes me somewhat hesitant to put an extremely valuable breeder into the unit.


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## Juhani Lunden

aunt betty said:


> With all due respect sir what kind of grafting tool do you use when you yourself personally graft into a Nicot cassette?


Sir, wow...


Graft into a Nicot cassette??? I don´t understand.

Queen lays eggs into the "cassette" or cage, but if grafting is done by hand straight to the Cell Cups, I prefer the sc. Chineese grafting needle.


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## Juhani Lunden

AstroBee said:


> I think this is the biggest potential issue with these systems. I really like the fact that you can move larvae without disturbing it, but it does require more intervention than grafting. I haven't used my Jenter system in several years, but it worked very well and I always got nice cells. I did lose a queen once, and I never figured out why. This makes me somewhat hesitant to put an extremely valuable breeder into the unit.



I agree. The laying cage or "cassette" or whatever it is called does not work for a professional or any other beekeeper than hobbyist, and even then, it is not so handy. It takes away the most scaring part of queen rearing, grafting, and maybe there is some advantage of the larvae being very much the same age, but these are minor plusses compared to how glumsy it is compared to using a needle.


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## aunt betty

See post #12 and you'll understand why you got asked such a dumb question.


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## Bob Anderson

When making larvae transfer (with needle) to Cell Cups, place a wet towel on top of the transfered larvae. They are NOT sensitive to cold, but they easily dry out to death.



aunt betty said:


> #huh!?!


I believe that Juhani is referring to using a specific tool (needle?) that comes with the Nicot kit for removing the egg laying cell cup plastic piece from the frame and inserting that piece into the cell cup holder. He isn't doing any direct grafting of larvae, he's just moving the plastic piece using the tool.


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## Juhani Lunden

Bob Anderson said:


> When making larvae transfer (with needle) to Cell Cups, place a wet towel on top of the transfered larvae. They are NOT sensitive to cold, but they easily dry out to death.
> 
> I believe that Juhani is referring to using a specific tool (needle?) that comes with the Nicot kit for removing the egg laying cell cup plastic piece from the frame and inserting that piece into the cell cup holder. He isn't doing any direct grafting of larvae, he's just moving the plastic piece using the tool.


Needle was a wrong word, I suppose, we call it in Finnish language a "grafting needle". Should it be grafting tool?


There are two ways using the Nicot system:
1. With the queen cage ("cassette")
2. Without the queen cage

The second way is WAY WAY more common, therefore I was writing about it.


I suppose the Cell Cups can be a bit tricky to remove from the back of the laying cage, but all you need is some sort of sharp ended little stick. 20 years I used the cage last time... Nicot Cell Cups I use every summer.


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## dudelt

Juhani, The entire purpose of the Nicot system is to avoid grafting. That is why the original poster is confused by your answers. If you are going to graft into the Nicot cell cups, why bother with the kit at all? You would just be doing a graft into cell cups. The OP is not a professional beekeeper. Yes, grafting is way more common but the Nicot system is another option for those who wish to try something new and different.


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## aunt betty

Now that I have a kit in hand I can explain the needle confusion. 
To remove the cups from the cassette you use the cup holder. They call it a tool. The cream colored things. 
Must be a translation error from French to Chinese to English. 
https://www.mannlakeltd.com/complete-queen-rearing-kit
Got mine shipped from Great Britain for $36.99.
Once I master this thing I'll make a report. 
I plan on putting the cassette in asap and let it be for about two or three weeks so it can get cleaned and get the smell.


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## Juhani Lunden

aunt betty said:


> Now that I have a kit in hand I can explain the needle confusion.
> To remove the cups from the cassette you use the cup holder. They call it a tool. The cream colored things.
> Must be a translation error from French to Chinese to English.
> https://www.mannlakeltd.com/complete-queen-rearing-kit
> Got mine shipped from Great Britain for $36.99.
> Once I master this thing I'll make a report.
> I plan on putting the cassette in asap and let it be for about two or three weeks so it can get cleaned and get the smell.


Language barrier, we don´t even need walls...

The Mannlake picture must have an error. As you can see from the instructions (on Mannlake site, below the picture of the kit) the little black item, most numrous one, in the picture, does not include to Nicot system. 

In the link I posted before you can see the right stuff:
http://www.beckysbeesonlineshop.co.uk/nicot-cupkit-queen-rearing-set-3689-p.asp


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## Juhani Lunden

dudelt said:


> Juhani, The entire purpose of the Nicot system is to avoid grafting. That is why the original poster is confused by your answers. If you are going to graft into the Nicot cell cups, why bother with the kit at all? You would just be doing a graft into cell cups. The OP is not a professional beekeeper. Yes, grafting is way more common but the Nicot system is another option for those who wish to try something new and different.


As I said Nicot system is THE most popular queen rearing set in Europe and surely today is is not understood to avoid grafting, but to produce queens. (99% without the laying cage, which is not practical.)

OP did not say what kind of kit it was. It did not say what items there were. Kit is something I understand is a collection of items which belong together in order to accomplish some task.
OP says she has experience in queen rearing but "not a lot of grafting". From that you can be understood two things: 1. She wants to learn more of grafting(beesource is about learning) 2. She wants to avoid doing it.


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## DavidZ

Juhani Lunden said:


> As I said Nicot system is THE most popular queen rearing set in Europe and surely today is is not understood to avoid grafting, but to produce queens. (99% without the laying cage, which is not practical.)
> 
> OP did not say what kind of kit it was. It did not say what items there were. Kit is something I understand is a collection of items which belong together in order to accomplish some task.
> OP says she has experience in queen rearing but "not a lot of grafting". From that you can be understood two things: 1. She wants to learn more of grafting(beesource is about learning) 2. She wants to avoid doing it.


no. you are wrong
what the op said was that they want instructions advice to learn how to use the Nicot system.
reread the op post below

the first paragraph lays out their experience, second is a statement sentence. 3rd is asking for help, a question posed as a statement sentence.




aunt betty said:


> Have ordered a Nicot queen rearing kit and would like some lessons. The book store don't have the book here. Library? Struck out there too.
> Are the directions that come with the kit sufficient?
> Have experience with queen rearing but not a lot of grafting and for sure I've never used Nicot.
> 
> Suppose I could order the book online. I'm just to cheap. Got the kit ordered real cheap. Probably a Chinese knockoff.
> Help?
> 
> It's not supposed to get here by around 3-15 so *I got time to get some instruction if y'all don't mind. *
> Have queen rearing essentials so I do have something to reference.


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## Juhani Lunden

DavidZ said:


> no. you are wrong
> what the op said was that they want instructions advice to learn how to use the Nicot system.
> reread the op post below
> 
> the first paragraph lays out their experience, second is a statement sentence. 3rd is asking for help, a question posed as a statement sentence.


Do you really think I did not give any useful advise or help in my posts number 9, 10 and 11?

If so, I resign. In fact you made me feel so bad that I began to think what on earth I´m doing here writing these (in my mind helpful) posts for nothing. Just getting attacks. 

Oh boy.


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## aunt betty

Don't take it hard Juhani. Blame it on me. I'm ok. 
Here is where I am at in the process. Someone is sending me the Nicot Queen Rearing book. They saw this thread and offered. 
The only combs I have without plasticell are in top bars. Twas easy to hack a hole in the comb.
It'll fit in the Lang that it's headed for. 
Thanks
















Am planning on taking the queen exluder (front) off. Will spray it with syrup and let the bees clean it up and then give it a whirl in about three or four weeks. Need to see some drones before I get too hasty. 

Now I've seen a video where a guy used a "laying frame" and had the Nicot cups in that frame. 
Where do you get a laying frame? Is that just a sheet of plasticell or what?
Looked sort of easy to use that frame.


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## Bob Anderson

Juhani - don't get upset, I think language and misunderstanding are at fault.

Why is grafting into the Nicot cells so popular? JZ BZ queen cells are a lot cheaper since one does not have to buy two more 'cell holder' parts to attach the actual cell cup to a frame. My guess is that it is because the Nicot queen cage is available and it fits nicely on the Nicot cell holder...?


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## Bob Anderson

double post - deleted


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## aunt betty

If you look at my pictures the grafting frame has two rows of jzbz queen cups attached. I tried grafting with awful results two summers ago. Cost me a colony of bees that absconded on me. Was trying cloake boarding. My timing was real bad. Tried it in July. Bad Betty, bad. 

It looked really good for two days. Then I looked in the bottom. Was an SHB failure. Got slimed pretty good. 
If you look closely you can see the bent piece of aluminum I used to separate the queen downstairs.


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## Jayoung21

One quick tip I'll add that i got from M. Bush. Put the cassette frame in the middle of the brood nest and let the bees draw out the empty space around the cassette. When there are eggs in that comb you are ready to put the queen in the cassette. I had a problem when i first started using my nicot system in that the queen would lay then the workers would just discard the eggs. Queen would lay again, discard... over and over. They never let the eggs hatch. After letting them start to raise brood in the empty spaces i put the queen back in and boom, they started letting the eggs hatch and feeding the neonates. Ended up making some pretty good queens with this system and i just started the process to raise more this year. Grant's "simplified queen rearing" is free to download and gives a very detailed step by step instruction.


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## beepro

http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...-queen-laying-cage&highlight=graft+queen+cage


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## aunt betty

Got that book now. It's pretty clear on the whens and whys. Has jumbo sized print.
Could skip the first 146 pages because it's sort of wordy and is all about why the author wanted to raise his own queens and why the reader would want to. 
Thanks dlbrightjr ! 
Really appreciate having something to read on the days when it's not bee time yet.


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## aunt betty

Day -5) make up cell builder(s)
Day -2) put Nicot into mother hive so bees can clean it
Day 0) install queen into Nicot
Day 4) put Nicot cups into the cell builder (s) Day 4 is flexible. You're in limbo until you see just hatched egg or the 3-day larva 
Day 10) count cells 
Day 11) make up mating nucs on day 10 or 11 install roller covers
Gets wishy-washy about what day to transfer cells to mating nucs. 
I'm guessing day 11-14 because they might start emerging on day 15. 


The author of the book seems to think we're reading it for humor and entertainment. He gets all caught up on telling all about the dumb mistakes he's made and it gets sort of hard to follow at this point. Out of the blue he mentions an incubator.
I have no plans of purchasing or building an incubator. 

I'll have to re-read it some more. Author turns a page of text into a 318-page book. 
If someone does not mind could you refine what I've posted into the day calendar. I have some other resources and can figure it out
but not everyone does. This is a public website and many of the people using Nicot for the first time could benefit from it.
Thanks.


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## wdale

I have used the NICOT system for the pas 3 years and have had great success with. I have made up a EXCEL sheet to go with system but you would have to e-mail me at [email protected] as the site will not allow me to post the full macro hidden attributes here. I guess loss in computer language?? So e-mail if you want and I'll send in return


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## soarwitheagles

I used the Nicot queen rearing system last summer for the first time. I like the system very much but made some terrible mistakes that affected my success. Now I am preparing to utilize the Nicot system again, but this time avoid the mistakes I made the first time.

BTW, I read the book too and I hated it. The large majority of the book is about the author's own personal thoughts and feelings on queen raising, and all sorts of other unnecessary trains of thoughts. Dang, he could have written the pertinent and required info and done it with 75% less pages! Worst part for me, it was unedited and had so many typos that I wanted to throw it out. 

I sure would like a nice Excel/Calendar for helping me to be dead on with the timing...

Please help me if ya can!

Thank you!


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## beepro

Today is my first time using the Nicot system. Tested it last winter and refined some processes for better laying. Basically I just
jump to day zero to put the queen inside to lay skipping the other unnecessary steps. This is because the queen will take some time
to get used to the cage environment. I already got her somewhat trained the last winter on a test run. In the meantime the bees can clean out the cells a bit too. The next step is to find a booming hive to consolidate the bees for a cell builder/finisher. Already got my eyes on one booming hive. I will be concentrating all my effort to these cells as a homemade QC incubator already been made. So the cell builder set up will consist of 5 full pollen frames with the cell frame right in the middle of the 5 frame nuc box. From last year found out that just using the full pollen frames without the cap broods or any open larvae will make bigger cells and better laying queens. All effort are on these cells now. Spring days will be here in full swing another week or so. Now is the time!


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## soarwitheagles

Thanks to Wdale for the excel worksheet! Nice job Dale!

I just finished building a Cloake board to use in conjunction with the Nicot system. It was super easy! Hope to begin the process this week.

As mentioned earlier, we tried the Nucot method last year, but we made a number of mistakes. Hope some can learn from our mistakes:

1. Used a smaller, weaker hive when beginning the process [only got 25-30 queens instead of the full 110].
2. Did not carefully keep track of the time [lost some queens in the process].
3. Did not have enough bees, eggs, larvae for the nearly 30 queens we hatched [threw away 20 queens].
4. Installed robbing screens on the nucs, causing many of the returning freshly mated queens to not be able to return to their nuc [lost over half our nucs].
5. Started the process way to late in the season [August heat wave killed a number of our queens].

New Plan:

1. Use a super strong hive when beginning the process [we should have 100+ queens instead of the meager 20-30].
2. Keep careful track of the time [keep a daily journal].
3. Wait until we have several strong 20+ frame hives, then be able to set queens in healthy nucs.
4. Do NOT install robbing screens on the nucs. AND, make certain to set nucs all around the property, each nuc a minimum of 25 ft. apart. 
5. Start the Nicot process in March or April, not in August heat wave.


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## beepro

By April we should be in the mid-80s or so. Nightly low is in the mid-50s here. This is an ideal time to start
test grafting. I saw the purple eyes drones already. That means it is time to make some new Spring queens. Spacing out
the mating nuc is a good idea. Also don't forget to feed the small nucs patty subs and syrup too. Have a good feeling that this is
going to be a great bee year with all the rains in the past. I will be refining my Nicot cage to see how many eggs I can get without
resort to grafting first. All system go now!


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## aunt betty

I'm looking at starting around March 23rd as day -5. Put the queen into the cage on Day zero. Long-range forecast says I better wait so we'll see.

The thing I noticed in the book is that the author recommended setting up FOUR cell builders because some things like having a second queen that you missed can really screw things up if you end up with a queen in the cell builder. If you only set up one so he says do four. I can do four cell builders but...in the process of setting up the cell builders they'll for sure build queen cells which I will harvest and use. That'd sort of make it so I don't need the Nicot because I'm not wanting 100 queens but am shooting for 20-30. Anything over that will stretch my resources a bit thin. At this point I'm running a trial.

Having four cell builders won't be a bad thing as I can break them up into the mating nucs when I get the cells built. 
Not going to mess around with starters and finishers. Just let the cell builders build and finish. 

Might be making some big mistakes but I'll be ok. Have a lot of experience with queen rearing already. Just not grafting or Nicot.
The whole idea is to have fun and requeen my own hives from a certain pair of awesome honey producers from last year.
The university of Illinois gave me a couple queens two seasons ago and the splits I've made from them are really strong and produce lots of honey. 

I'll try and remember to post some pics and report but no guarantees because once season starts I'm super busy with mowing, gardening, and bees. It's great to have tasks lined up but also a bit stressful at times.


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## Hoot Owl Lane Bees

I have been reading and rereading this thread.
I am going to give this a try this year with 2 cassette's.
I started by picking 2 fully drawn deep frames and cutting the space needed for the cassette.
After mounting each in a frame, I put a coat of wax over the entire surface were the queen will be caged.
I then painted the top bars RED and numbered 1 & 2.
I installed them March 1st in the hives I would like to raise queens from.
We were very warm, some 80% days.
Then it got COLD and some snow.
Today I had time to check the strongest hive and the comb around the nicot cassette was full of caped to fresh laid eggs.
We are going to have a stretch of good weather so I thought why not.
I found the Queen on the next frame over so I placed her in the nicot cassette with the cover installed.
I will leave her alone till Sunday evening.
I will check the other hive tomorrow.


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## frogpondwarrior

aunt betty said:


> Day -5) make up cell builder(s)
> Day -2) put Nicot into mother hive so bees can clean it
> Day 0) install queen into Nicot
> Day 4) put Nicot cups into the cell builder (s) Day 4 is flexible. You're in limbo until you see just hatched egg or the 3-day larva
> Day 10) count cells
> Day 11) make up mating nucs on day 10 or 11 install roller covers
> Gets wishy-washy about what day to transfer cells to mating nucs.
> I'm guessing day 11-14 because they might start emerging on day 15.
> 
> 
> The author of the book seems to think we're reading it for humor and entertainment. He gets all caught up on telling all about the dumb mistakes he's made and it gets sort of hard to follow at this point. Out of the blue he mentions an incubator.
> I have no plans of purchasing or building an incubator.
> 
> I'll have to re-read it some more. Author turns a page of text into a 318-page book.
> If someone does not mind could you refine what I've posted into the day calendar. I have some other resources and can figure it out
> but not everyone does. This is a public website and many of the people using Nicot for the first time could benefit from it.
> Thanks.


Aunt Betty I'm having a hard time to attaching this interactive excel file. I can just add the date on the upper right and all the dates adjust. 
When I figure it out maybe I can post for all.

Queen Rearing Time Table 
Enter start date:-Queen to Nicot MM/DD/YR 5/1/2017	

Day	Date	Weekday	Queen Stage	Description	
-1	30-Apr	Sunday Place nicot or cell bars in Mother colony for cleaning	
0	1-May	Monday	Start	Queen to nicot cage	
1	2-May	Tuesday	Eggs laid	Remove Queen from nicot cage	
2	3-May	Wednesday	Eggs 24-42 hours	Make up cell builder	
3	4-May	Thursday	Eggs 48-66 hours	Transfer larvae to cell builder colony	
4	5-May	Friday	Larvae 0-18 hours 
5	6-May	Saturday	Larvae 
6	7-May	Sunday	Larvae 
7	8-May	Monday	Larvae 
8	9-May	Tuesday	Larvae Gorging	
9	10-May	Wednesday	Cells sealed	Cells Sealed	
10	11-May	Thursday	Pre pupae	Pre pupae	
11	12-May	Friday	Pupae	Pupae	
12	13-May	Saturday	Pupae	Pupae	
13	14-May	Sunday	Pupae	Pupae	
14	15-May	Monday	Pupae	Make up nucs to receive Queen cells	
15	16-May	Tuesday	Pupae	Nucs confined	
16	17-May	Wednesday	Queens Emerge	Nucs confined	
17	18-May	Thursday Nucs to mating site/release at dusk	
18	19-May	Friday Check nucs for failed cells	
19	20-May	Saturday 
20	21-May	Sunday 
21	22-May	Monday	Queen Mature 
28	29-May	Monday	Q mating complete	Check nucs for laying


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## wdale

frogpondwarrior 

Send me an email and will send you the excel program that would work............ interactive excel files DO NOT work through this site........ you would have go through private e-mail my email [email protected]

Thanks
Dale


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## aunt betty

Am going to have mating nucs in the production yards. It worked great last year on a small scale.
Have not had any desire to move mating nucs to distant locations because the area I'm in is rich with bee hives and drones. There are around 50 colonies in a circle of 0.75 mile diameter. If I expand the circle the numbers of colonies get large. 
Not too worried about genetics. Local survivor bees mating with local survivors seems like it's a half-way decent idea. 
My theory on genetics is to work with locals that survived. 
It's getting close to the time to get chugging.
Tomorrow looks like a good day for inspecting and making the beginnings of a plan on which hives will be the cell builders.

Have hives in duplex 4/4/4 configuration. Those will be needing to go into full-size boxes so I can use the "nucs" when I need them for mating. Have lots of empty deeps with drawn combs. Five of them are full of honey frames. That'll be helpful when setting up the mating nucs etc.
Losing colonies isn't such a bad thing if you can rescue the boxes and comb. I'm rich with that sort of thing right now.
Starting to get anxious and excited.

The numbers of drones I see tomorrow will determine my schedule. 
This season is going to be a lot of fun trying something new.

Have two more Q.C.s in the garage. Sorry about the rotating thing but my cheap chrome-book fights me on it.


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## Hoot Owl Lane Bees

I checked my yards around were I am going to place most of my mating nucs.
I was surprised how many drowns were in the hives.


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## frogpondwarrior

wdale said:


> frogpondwarrior
> 
> Send me an email and will send you the excel program that would work............ interactive excel files DO NOT work through this site........ you would have go through private e-mail my email [email protected]
> 
> Thanks
> Dale


Sent it and hope it works well for you. Didn't know they would not work. thanks....save me some time and effort. 
Ron


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## soarwitheagles

We placed our Nicot box in the hive yesterday. Today, we opened up the hive again to mark the queen...this specific hive is thriving more than any other hive we have ever raised by a leaps and bounds...and the queen is the largest, healthiest, and scariest queen bee we have ever seen.

BUT, I am a little concerned...nearly all the bees are super large compared to our other colonies...AND, they appear to be radically more upset when we try to work with them. Most of our other hives have bees that are incredibly docile and super easy to work with...BUT, this specific hive that is thriving appears to have a major anger issue. Today, they kept attacking me repeatedly during the Cloake board installation, wax cell clean up, hive reversal process, and the painting/marking of the queen. I kinda prefer the more gentle bees, but this hive went from somewhat small cluster to over 40,000 bees in less than a month. As I mentioned earlier, I have never seen anything like this before. Upper supers are dripping with honey.

We plan on placing the queen in the laying box tomorrow for three to four days. We also plan on closing the door on the Cloake board, making the upper super queenless for next three to four days too.

We are totally open to suggestions and ideas.

Kinda new to all this...

Thanks!


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## beepro

What make you think that placing the mating nucs next to the production hives will not cause a robbing during the
summer dearth? Unless you have very strong mating nucs there is a chance that the stronger hives will rob them out.
Are the local drones all treatment free also?


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## aunt betty

beepro said:


> What make you think that placing the mating nucs next to the production hives will not cause a robbing during the
> summer dearth? Unless you have very strong mating nucs there is a chance that the stronger hives will rob them out.
> Are the local drones all treatment free also?


My queen rearing will be done by dearth. I'm making a round or two for me and that's it. Our flow ends in early July. 
Robbing is not exactly a big issue here unless a hive is dying or dead.
Where I live it is not legal to be commercial. Am an urban beekeeper.
Sure I'd like to produce queens and sells nucs but that would attract unwanted attention from the city council. 
It is what it is and it's not California. 

Went thru 13 in one of the yards this morning. Not enough drones here yet to start in on the nicot thing.
Eighteen in the back yard still wrapped. I'll work on those after lunch.
It was around 25 degrees this morning but it warmed up to 50 degrees by 10:30.

I am not treatment free.


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## beepro

Thinking outside the box a bit. It is not illegal to be commercial or a side liner outside of your state. What is
the closest state or county that is legal to do it. Think big and grow your operation should you want to partner up 
with someone else who can do it.


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## Hoot Owl Lane Bees

Up date
I placed the Queen in the nicot cassette on 3/17/17.
I had planed on transferring larva yesterday after dinner.
BUT the phone rang and I had a swarm call to go on. (5-6+lbs in hive now)
Today we had some sever thunder storms but I didn't want to leave the Queen in the cassette any longer.
I made up my starter hive with 2 full frames of caped honey and 2 full frames of pollen rubbed in to old brood frames.
I shook in 10 frames of bees from another hive.
Not as many as I was hopping for.
I let them sit while I had dinner.
I removed the nicot frame and released the Queen and brushed most of the workers off the caped brood on the rest of the frame.
When I got in my wood shop with better light all I could see was eggs.
One in every cell. WOW
I placed 26 cups on bars and placed the cell frame in the starter hive.
All the cups I used had a ring of wax at the bottom of the cup, like they were starting to draw them out.

Did I do right in just using eggs or would they have dun better if they were larva?
Remember this is my first time using the nicot system.


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## ruthiesbees

Hoot Owl, I have read that the bees will just eat the eggs in a queen cup, although I don't know that first hand. I won't use my Nicot system until early next month. If the queen started laying on the 17th, you should have had some eggs that were hatched already.


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## Hoot Owl Lane Bees

ruthiesbees
I had heard that also about eating the eggs.
I don,t think she started to lay until yesterday as Sunday evening I did not see anything but wax in the cups.
I went ahead and tried as I did not want to leave her confined any longer this early in the spring.
I may be learning the hard way?


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## beepro

Don't be too harsh on yourself. Or blame everything on you.
In desperate time when the bees need a queen they will allow the
eggs to turn into larvae inside the cups. A hive with only these
eggs will not clean them out completely. Even if they do some eggs will be
left alone. It all depends on how desperate the bees are for a new queen. Feed
them well so that they will not be hungry and go after the eggs. Do you have some
pics for us on the nicot cage frame and set up? How are the cell cups placed on the nicot frame?


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## Hoot Owl Lane Bees

Sorry beepro
This is one of my biggest problems, camera is an after thought when I have something to do.
I will be opening the starter Friday evening and will do my best to take some pictures.
As I was removing the cup I was wondering about them only having eggs.
I was only going to try for about 10 cells this first time but thought maby with more cup they may start some Queens.
I will report my findings ether way Friday evening.


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## aunt betty

If you follow the chart...see day 4.
That's where you should be first spotting the newly hatched larva that in theory hatch on day 3.5.
Fresh laid eggs stand up. When they start laying down that means they're about to pop.
You want to install freshly hatched larva stage into the cell-builder(s).

I'm still deciding when I want day -5 to be. Looks like soon. Ideally I'd be using my new mated queens by the end of April.
Starting to see some drones now. In about a week I'll choose my mother colony and cell builders. 
One in particular looks like it's about to need splitting so am leaning towards using it as both a mother colony and a cell builder too. It's a really strong hive.

Going to have to hurry to beat the dandelion bloom.


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## dlbrightjr

aunt betty said:


> Got that book now. It's pretty clear on the whens and whys. Has jumbo sized print.
> Could skip the first 146 pages because it's sort of wordy and is all about why the author wanted to raise his own queens and why the reader would want to.
> Thanks dlbrightjr !
> Really appreciate having something to read on the days when it's not bee time yet.


Your very welcome. I hope you have good success. I hope to follow your progress.


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## Hoot Owl Lane Bees

The weather is preventing me from doing anything with the hives.
We are supposed to get some breaks tomorrow.

aunt betty
I had not thought about the eggs standing until they hatch.
In all the cups they were laying down.
I may end up with a lot more than I planed on.
I will know better tomorrow when the rain stops.


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## Hoot Owl Lane Bees

I have my first NICOT Queen cells.
We have had rain most of the day and I didn't want to leave them in the starter another night/day. 
Today is 5 days in the starter.

It is 56% and no more rain on the radar coming my way.
I removed 5 frames from my cell finisher and placed the cell frame, 1 pollen & replaced 3 of the frames that had caped brood back in the cell finisher.
I had a total of 10 cells that had larvae in them, one was drawn out all most to the point of being capped.
I will have to check tomorrow to see if it is caped and install a cage over it.


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## Wilsonvillebeekeeper

We started March 6th following the guidelines that Grant Gillard had posted on line. Preparing cell builder, warming the laying box, placing the queen in the laying box, cutting down the cell builder, removing laying box and attaching cups to cup holder. First time using the system and we got 18+ queen cells. Lots of bees in cell builder.
We had to adjust some of the schedule due to weather. When placing queen in laying box our temperature at night went down to around 28 for 2 day. It took 6 day to get 1 day old larva in the laying box.
Time consuming but worth the effort.


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## Hoot Owl Lane Bees

Well I was able to check the Queen cells in the finisher today as the weather has been against me.
Sorry to report my first attempt at nicot Queens was a flop.
The hive I used for a finisher tore them all down.
This may have been do to several things.:scratch:

The cells were in the starter to long.
The starter may not have been strong enough to feed them properly.
They may have gotten chilled with the cool temps when I transferred the cell frame.
The Mother Queen in the finisher may have to good of a pheromone transfer in the hive.
The weather roller coaster we have been having may have something to do with it?

Any thing else I should be thinking about?


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## aunt betty

Built my cell builder last week. 
Put the open cassette in the queen-right part on Wednesday. 
Saturday after lunch I went and caught the queen and put her into the cassette with both covers on.
That means 4-1 is day zero (April fools day).

Wednesday I'll look and see what I got. 
Will look close with a loop for larva. If I have larva I'll put them into the builder.
Would like to put in 30 and see what takes. 

If no larva wait another day.
Not supposed to be nice weather this week but there will be a window where it's not raining.


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## beepro

My findings with using a queen right hive for the finisher will not work that well especially during the
early Spring time. If you want better success then use a strong open hive made queen less. Compress 3 deep into one
nuc hive full of bees with only pollen frames for the finisher hive. You will have bigger cells than what you know to do
with them. If you want much better queens then feed them honey water and high protein patty subs too. 
Make them queen less and feed them well. Last year I have good success with using minimal hive resources with pollen and nectar frames. 
This year I will use more bee resources along with the pollen and nectar frames also. After this I can compare which method will make better queens.


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## aunt betty

This is awkward.

Due to my pitifully poor mastery of English language and usage I mis-titled the thread and made it appear as if I were professor Nicot when in fact I was asking for lessons. 

Have reached the point in this adventure that I'm going to name the "laugh and point" part.
Have jumped in with both feet.


Title should be edited to say, "April Fool's Bees".


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## aunt betty

The bad and the good news.

The bad news is that so far no eggs have been laid. The pattern she'd been laying before is so good I figured she'd have it laid in a couple hours. Wrong.

The good news is my cell builder made cells. Had to face the crumby decision of what to do with them. They are from the target queen so I got out a duplex hive and took the two frames that had cells on them and made two little nucs. Shook another frame of bees into each along with whatever was on the frames with cells. Gave them frames of honey and pollen to finish the cells. They each had three frames covered with bees when I closed them up. Wish I had remembered the phone to take a picture. 
Still a ton of bees in the cell builder with more frames of capped brood. They bearded up from me messin with em. 
If I can only get that queen to lay some eggs.

The queen in the Nicot had a huge retinue. The cassette was over half-filled with bees.
Wish she'd get her act together and lay that thing full-o-eggs.


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## Hoot Owl Lane Bees

We are all learning this system.
My Queen took 5 days before she laid any eggs in the nicot cells.
If I have time tonight i'm going to place her in it again.


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## aunt betty

Thanks Hoot.
I'm not giving up. Have a second and third prospect hive to breed from. (all from same mother)
Have several really strong hives and could make a couple more cell-builders.
I know the cells I took today are "emergency" variety and probably won't be anything to brag about.
Never know. They look really well-fed.

If the queen that's in the Nicot don't lay anything by Friday I'm switching. Will put Nicot in another hive with another queen.


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## Hoot Owl Lane Bees

Well I went in to the hive were I had placed the Queen in the nicot cassette several weeks ago. (3/17/17)
They were very upset. NO BROOD at all.
I was hopping to remove several frames to start 2 nucs with Queen cells I removed from a hive in another yard.
I ended up just giving them one of the Queen cells in a cage till I see what is going on in there.:scratch:

I'm thinking they must have balled the Queen after I let her out of the Nicot cage.
There was several ss cells started but nothing in them.
I think after having her in the nicot cage for 5 days all the eggs laid prier to install were to old to start Queen cells.

*I'm glad it is early spring so I have time to work this out.*

The hive I used for the finisher had 15 of 20 frames in all stages of brood so I was still able to start 3 - 2 frame nucs.:thumbsup:


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## frogpondwarrior

I have a Nicot but will have to wait for warmer weather. Bought it last year and it came with a video. Think I have a decent idea but it's the queen that''s the issue. Thinking we need brood to build fast. Placing here in the Nicot takes here out of production causing maybe the loss of 1200 or more eggs per day. 
Built my own excel file to show me what happens and when but WDALE sent me a copy of his and it has more detail and funnier than mine. So will use his file and a peek at mine to work through the cycle. 
Still though I have to pick a good time so not to affect buildup and honey production.
I have vac in early June so it may be mid to late June before I try, then again maybe end of April. God this is terrible. If I don't when know.....then who does...:scratch:


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## beepro

I do! We do things according to the bee weather not ours. If we missed this window of opportunity, especially in a
shorter season environment then we have to wait for another year. So somehow you have to take the time off your busy daily schedule
for this queen rearing adventure. If you cannot take a few hives out of honey production then might as well go buy a few good queens with your honey money for faster expansion. Later on when you can afford the time then make some new queens.


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## aunt betty

Have the time but the weather isn't playing nice. 
The two colonies I picked to fiddle with were/are woppers. 
Had to do something because I could see that they both had around 15 deep frames of brood each or more. 
One has way more. They were both starting to smell swarmy to me. Tons-o-bees. 

They both have really good laying queens that lay solid patterns. Something has to give and I'm getting a little old for climbing up ladders to lop off a branch. Figured I'd either split or use them for cell-starting and finishing. 
Have two cell starters built now. Yesterday I spent a lot of time running the big one thru a queen excluder because the first time thru I could not see her. SOOO many bees. 
After I shook nearly two deeps full of bees into the starter I finally found her on a frame. Found two frames with cells on them so made up two slot in a queen castle for them. So far have harvested 4 separate frames with cells. I bet there will be a couple more from the new cell starter. At this point a queen is a queen. Sort em out later.


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## aunt betty

Have days where I can see eggs and days where I can't.
Been kind of gloomy lately but today had some little breaks in the clouds enough to where for the first time in a while I spotted some.
Got me thinking maybe I better look in the Nicot and by golly there are eggs in it now. Some laying down so I must have been looking right at them yesterday. 

Anyhow...I got eggs in the basket. (right on schedule too!) 
Tomorrow I'll release the queen and take Nicot inside for a real close look under a loop with good lighting. 
Yahoo..I think.


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## Hoot Owl Lane Bees

That is exciting. 
Good Luck


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## aunt betty

Weather has not been being friendly. Have been either working in cloud-covered skies, windy, rainy, or too cold.
The other beeks think I'm nuts. 

Am dying to run over and dig around in that Nicot and get a really good close look but the way that the furnace keeps running tells me I better wait. Timing on doing all the manipulating has been rough and have not even tried to take a picture. 
I just run out when the sky looks right. 
It looks right now but it's too cold. 
After it hits the high for today (50) I'll go.
Looks like I'll be working the Nicot in the front seat of the pickup.

After going part-way thru the Nicot adventure I'm beginning to see why it's not as popular as you would think.
Once you put a queen into the cage you're chained to it metaphorically for a few days. 
Grafting seems like it'd be so much easier and faster. Less impact on the colony. 
I wish I could see better or at least had perfect conditions to see whenever I needed it. Poor lighting and I'm pretty much blind to seeing eggs and fresh-hatched larva. 

Have all the stuff to graft and that's plan B.Try that after this Nicot stuff plays out or not.


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## ruthiesbees

Eggs in the nicot sure are hard to see unless you can bring them inside and blow up the photo. My eggs should be larvae by Sat/Sun.


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## aunt betty

I looked with bright sunlight and all I could see were a couple eggs laying down. 
Had the queen in a separate cage and decided to just let her loose back into the hive. 
Five days of no eggs production is not very cool. 
Left the cassette in and will still take a look to see if something hatches but it's not looking too good.
Think maybe I saw around ten eggs. Using the loop was sort of worthless. Something about the design of the cassette makes viewing into it difficult. One of the things I loathe about the NIcot is that the brown cell cups have a little dot in the center. (casting mark)
In a couple days if I still got nothing I'll put the other target queen in the cage in her own hive. Still have the two cell builders and found another queen frame cell this morning in one of them so I do have 5 frames with cells going each in their own nuc or queen castle slot. One way or another I'm going to make some queens.

After looking at Ruthies picture I'm sure I have at least ten eggs. They looked exactly like that. Hard to even tell that they are eggs. 
Have seen tons of honeybee eggs and they just don't stand out very good in them Nicot cups.
Maybe it isn't over yet.


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## aunt betty

Ruthies if you have a picture of larva in your Nicot post it if you could please.


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## ruthiesbees

aunt betty said:


> Ruthies if you have a picture of larva in your Nicot post it if you could please.


I did in post #75, with eggs. You may need to be sitting at a computer screen to see them. Mine won't be larvae until Sat/Sun. I'd say the word "hatched" but someone on FB took me to task in my video when I used that word, saying that bee eggs don't hatch...then proceeded to share my video on his page. Some folks...


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## Hoot Owl Lane Bees

I was talking about this (eggs so small) and she has a magnifying glass that hangs around her neck she uses for fine lace work.
I am going to give it a try tonight and see how if it helps.


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## ruthiesbees

resolution of the photo might be better on the FB post. https://www.facebook.com/topbarbeehive/posts/1702201039806419


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## aunt betty

Ashamed to admit it that I got impatient and well...errr....uh... I got out the grafting tools. 
About the third frame I pulled out on inspecting the mother of the two that I'm using for Nicot and cell builders...well it was a beautiful frame of eggs and brood like a grafter would dream of. Took it as a sign.
Ruined a few larva but finally it dawned on me that I could tear down the walls around a larva I wanted. 
Got the hang of cell wall demo and had rows of easy to harvest larva to work with. 
Up until the epiphany of destruction hit I thought it was getting pretty hopeless. 
Only had to "destroy" a small patch of comb to get the 19 I wanted. 

Will go back for more tomorrow. Plucking the little worms was getting fun.
This is how I could see so well to do the grafts.
Seems like a lot of videos I see of grafting is ether on a tailgate of a pickup or on a table saw.


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## aunt betty

Been saving broken frames and parts of frames. 
Got bored yesterday and look what happened.


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## Juhani Lunden

aunt betty said:


> Ashamed to admit it that I got impatient and well...errr....uh... I got out the grafting tools.
> About the third frame I pulled out on inspecting the mother of the two that I'm using for Nicot and cell builders...well it was a beautiful frame of eggs and brood like a grafter would dream of. Took it as a sign.
> Ruined a few larva but finally it dawned on me that I could tear down the walls around a larva I wanted.
> Got the hang of cell wall demo and had rows of easy to harvest larva to work with.
> Up until the epiphany of destruction hit I thought it was getting pretty hopeless.
> Only had to "destroy" a small patch of comb to get the 19 I wanted.
> 
> Will go back for more tomorrow. Plucking the little worms was getting fun.
> This is how I could see so well to do the grafts.
> Seems like a lot of videos I see of grafting is ether on a tailgate of a pickup or on a table saw.
> 
> View attachment 32033


Can you get a closer picture of the cups (the grey ones on the right in your picture) you are making the grafting to?

Seems to me they are not original Nicot. If they are what I think they are they do not fit into the Nicot Cell Bar Cups, the yellow ones fitted in the frame, not to speak of fitting into Nicot laying cage.

Update:
UPS, read the other thread (Nicot 201) and realised that you are well aware of the differensies, JZBZ /Nicot...


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## aunt betty

Juhani I can see why you'd be confused.
The frame is set up for Nicot and the cups are charcoal colored base-mount JZBZ. The ones with little posts you can stick into a frame channel. https://www.mannlakeltd.com/base-mount-cell-cups-100-pack
Sorry for the confusion. My bad.
I have some push-in cell cups too but haven't made a frame for them. I sort of like both the JZBZ and the Nicot cup system.
Can see why people would just skip the cassette and graft into the Nicot cups. 

Last Saturday I used them JZBZ cups and I don't have any more right this second BUT Fedex is bringing me some from Mann Lake.
Got a few things coming. Splurged and got 5 mini-mating nucs. 

This queen rearing stuff is the most exciting and fun part of beekeeping imo. It's magical.
Been pacing around like an expecting father since I did the first grafts.
Today is capping day on the first round of grafts.

The whole project has taken a name. I'm calling it "Project Next Year's Bees".


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## aunt betty

Will be at the setting up the mating nucs stage this saturday and/or sunday.
Emergence day on round one is tuesday the 18th. 
Plan to use temp queen strips in mini mating nucs on seven cells and have never done that.
The others will get put into a queen castle with some frames of bees. 

How long do you keep the 1.5 cups of bees in the mini nuc with the cell before you open the door?
Overnight is what I thought I saw that guy from U of G do in this video. 
Once I saw the mini nucs I had to have some.


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## Juhani Lunden

aunt betty said:


> How long do you keep the 1.5 cups of bees in the mini nuc with the cell before you open the door?


I keep them in dark cold (+10 C) cellar over two nights. The bees, to fill the mini mating nucs, must be collected from a diffrent yard (min 3 km, bee flying distance), otherwise almost all bees will fly back to their mother colonies, and it will end up near total failure.

1,5 cups is near the absolute minimum of a bee colony, therefore this is unlike other nuc making, where nucs can be made in the same yard (when made strong enough) and where often there is emerging bees in the nucs frames, which came to help when major part of bees is flying back to their mother colonies.


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## beepro

While it is still cooler during the night time, it is better to make stronger nuc hives using standard frames. In the warmer
temp. you can use the mini nucs otherwise there will be some chilled cells and broods if not time it right. Using the standard frames while it is still cold outside will not affect the cells placed in the center of the frame. With an incubator you can put the virgin inside the mini without any
issue with the chilled cells. Since this is an experiment and still too early in the season you will have plenty of time to take the kinks out. Happy queen rearing!


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## Juhani Lunden

aunt betty said:


> this video.


They are feeding sugar syrap to these mini mating nucs. That is major mistake for several reasons:
-promotes robbery more than candy
-spills when moved
-bees drowning in it


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## aunt betty

Will use the "put in three times what I think I need" rule.
Focus on getting young nurse bees. I know the field bees will fly back home. 
My nucs will be in the same yard but it's a really big yard.
Have done a few queens every season and it's been working well for me so far.
Last year I bred quite a few queens in the tiny back-yard at the house I'm in.
Had over a dozen full-size hives in the same back yard. It's a bit crowded. 
For some reason I've not had a lot of robbing unless I wanted it robbed.


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## dlbrightjr

How many did you have take? Did you use your nicot or end up grafting?

I'm getting mine set up for my first attempt at grafting on Friday. Last Saturday I collected 20 frames of sealed brood with bees and put 10 apiece on top of my 2 starter/finishers. This morning I added my cloake board sealed my regular entrances and reduced them back down to 2 deeps. Tonight and/or in the morning I'm going to pull some frames of open brood above the queen excluder and make sure the queen is below it. Thursday night I am going to slide the divider in the cloak board to make my queenless starter, and reverse and re-open the regular entrance. Friday afternoon/evening I'm going to graft.

I hope mine as well as yours is successful. Good luck!!!!


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## bevy's honeybees

wvbeeguy said:


> Have to keep watch on it, difficult to see day old larvae if you dont have full sun and realize that queen may lay slowly in box, sometimes only 8-10 a day


I agree--very difficult to see. I just ordered the book for my kindle apps. I'd like to be sucessful at this kind of queen rearing. Especially now that I invested in all the stuff. 

I just moved the nicot system frame with queen into a 4 frame nuc with a couple other frames and I'm going to use that hive as a starter finisher. I wanted to put the cells in a differnt starter/finisher but that didn't work out due to my timing. I put all the cups in it and I have seen a couple larvae and I think I saw eggs. I sure hope I did. 

Sam Laverty has a couple you tube videos on Nicot.


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## aunt betty

Got the mini nucs. 
First thing you have to do is hot-glue the screen and queen excluder in. Watched a few mini nuc videos and it's common to see the QE missing. They fall right out. 
Have a couple foundationless TF top bar hives that died out last winter so I cut up some comb for the nucs.
Am so ready for Sunday. (transfer the cells day) 

After two rounds of grafting I've written off the Nicot. It's a bottleneck unless the queen starts laying right away. I'll try it again but not until mid-June.














Sorry about the randomness of this thread. It is just me being me sharing the adventure. My bee plans always morph and change as they go along. I think that's just part of beekeeping? The beautiful thing is that the bees kind of steer me along and we end up at a good place with sweet stuff.


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## dlbrightjr

How was your acceptance with the grafting?


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## bevy's honeybees

I watched the you tube video on the mini nucs (which I need to get started!) and I planned to use lemongrass q tip with queen juice on the opposite end instead of the strips. 

What do you all use in mating nucs to keep the bees in before you place cell? the queen pheremone strip or lgo?


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## BroncoVol74

Following. 
Took my queen a couple days to start laying in the Nicot and got about 50 or so larvae into frames. Have 4 rearing frames in cell builders right now. Not all were ideal cell builders and I know all won't be successful but this is mainly a learning experiment and first attempt a queen rearing. Only have resources for about 10 mating nucs but will see if I even get that many queens. 
This is a queen from a feral hive I cut out last year that was in a dead tree the owner was going cut down and let me cut it down so I could save the hive. He said the hive had been there for at least a couple years. So I really want to try to keep this gene pool alive.
Should be capped around Saturday or Sunday.


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## dlbrightjr

Good luck BroncoVol74. My first try too so I'm following with the same interest. Please update on your progress too.

I switched my hive bodies last night moving the open brood up and putting the 10 extra capped brood I added on Saturday on the bottom underneath the cloake boards. The influx of extra workers had caused them to plug all the space in the original brood nest. It was a good lesson in what a large foraging population can bring in compared to the mediocre populations I have in most of my hives this year. Both queens had already crawled up into the added capped brood looking for a space to lay. I was not as happy with the amount of bees as I thought I would be after adding 10 frames of bees and brood. Full, but, not overflowing. I'm contemplating adding some more bees shaken out of brood nests Friday morning. 

Good luck to all.


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## aunt betty

My acceptance with grafting was poor on the first go and good on the second.
Today I got nine cells on one bar and I forget on the other. 
The second shot was better but some of the cells look really puny. Some look grand but others look like wimps.
Today is capping day on the second bunch. 

Looks like I better work on making up good cell-builders and the timing.
Next time I think I will make up the cell builder the afternoon before grafting.

Up until now I've used brood to anchor mating nucs because I was using random swarm cells as they appeared. This year I'm working harder on avoiding the swarm cells in the first place. I suppose a little lemon-grass oil would help some. The temp-queen strips smell a lot like lemongrass to me. I bet it's not quite the same but close.


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## dlbrightjr

That's pretty well what I'm expecting. I figure I'll blow it on the first round despite all the preparation. It helps to temper my expectations to see how it is going for everyone else. Thanks.


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## RayMarler

aunt betty said:


> This queen rearing stuff is the most exciting and fun part of beekeeping imo. It's magical.


Same for me too, still.


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## aunt betty

dlbrightjr said:


> That's pretty well what I'm expecting. I figure I'll blow it on the first round despite all the preparation. It helps to temper my expectations to see how it is going for everyone else. Thanks.


Was all ready to take pictures of the great success but when I started counting and measuring thought again.  
There are some real good looking cells, some that look like second grade bees did them, some that look "haha", and the ones that did not take. 

Today while inspecting I found a colony that has solid and I mean SOLID brood pattern.
It's the last of the "Florida Bees" I got thru swarms and splits off another person's apiary that I was managing or trying to manage.
The queen has a bright yellow butt. Have no clue exactly the source but the genetics in that hive are super. I'll make some grafts off that line next. They're honey-making bees but don't winter that well.
Something else I noticed is that they seem a bit small. Have noticed that before too. 
They sure are pretty bees though. I get caught up in looking at the light colored ones.

Some of my hives are dark, some are light, and some are mixed.
They're all mutts.


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## theriverhawk

I have used the Mann Lake version of the NICOT system for a while. No problems Email me and I will send you a great Excel calendar for dates and I think I have some very detailed instructions that I got a few years ago. Very helpful. [email protected]


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## BroncoVol74

So I peeked in on my cell builders last night and found 3 capped cells in the weakest one, 4 in another and 6 in another. Out of all the capped so far I saw about 4-6 that looked like quality cells. But I did find swarm cells in the cell builder that I used the queen from for the Nicot, which could be a good thing since that is the feral hive I want to breed from. I am just a little overwhelmed with what I should do about the swarm cells and the hive, should I split that hive and just leave the swarm cells?

Side Note: All other cell builders were in swarm mode or queenless except the one that I used for the Nicot. I only put those queen cups in that queen right hive because I had more than what I needed and figured I'd just give it a try.


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## aunt betty

Am not sure but am starting to think that commercial queen producers use two strong colonies to make up one cell builder then use what's left of the original two as queen-right finishers. Watched a video or read something about a big outfit running 16 cell-builders and 32 queen right finishers. That's where I got the 2:1 idea.
Have seen the pics where the hive is covered, inside and out, with a layer of bees. To get really good professional results it's going to take something like that. 
At this point am just going thru the motions learning the timing and steps. It's not as easy as it seemed when I was just plucking swarm cell frames and making nucs. 

Andy it sounds like you're having about the same kind of results as me. I think our starters are weak.


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## dlbrightjr

You guys have convinced me to beef my starters up some more. I think I'll shake out some nurse bees tomorrow and stuff them in on top of everything else. 

We did a practice run on grafting last night. I was really glad I did. It was impossible to start with, but, after a while I started to get the hang of it. The 10 year old who thinks she can do anything didn't help! She kept saying "how am I supposed to try this when your in the way". I never told her I wasn't the one in the way. After awhile I got a Chinese grafting tool sanded down where it would slip in my foundationless comb and take out a small larva pretty well. It was a while before I wasn't trying to tear down the sides and just poking at them. I'm pretty confident now that I can find a newly hatched larva and move it to a cup. The practice was invaluable. 

It did not seem like the larva were sitting in a lot of jelly. I'm going to move the larva from my donor hives into my cell builders for a couple of hours prior to grafting as squarepeg suggested on another thread to see if I can get them better fed. I'll pick up the 10 year old terror at 2 tomorrow and we will try grafting after that. She is going to get her own frame of larva and 1 bar of jzbz cups. She thinks she can do anything. Dig a post hole and she's asking if she can try. Pull a engine and she is asking if she can try. I'll bet that does not continue into the teen years.


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## Hoot Owl Lane Bees

jr

(She thinks she can do anything. Dig a post hole and she's asking if she can try. Pull a engine and she is asking if she can try. I'll bet that does not continue into the teen years.)

My daughter is in her 20s and she will change her oil and repairs equipment at work all the time.
Her co workers ask were did you learn how to do that?
MY DAD!
I sent her on her first solo swarm call but she was to late, she was disappointed.

They learn more than we think some times.


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## BroncoVol74

Betty,
I'm sure you're correct. I only had plans for 2 cell builders as both were booming with bees and already making swarm cells. So I did some swarm control and now those hives are booming again. But when the donor queen laid all those cells like she did, I figured I would experiment further and see what happens with 'not ideal' builders. Pretty sure I will dispatch most of them but it's been a learning venture. This initial go at queen rearing is really more for the practice/experience and if I get one or maybe two good mated queens out of this whole thing I will consider it a success. 

The next go around maybe I can avoid some of the same mistakes and understand a little better about what it takes and what my limitations are. I also have some of the Chinese grafting tools and will take a stab at that as I believe the Nicot is disruptive to the queen's normal laying cycle in the hive.


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## aunt betty

The thing that screwed me up on the cell builders is that darn Nicot Queen Rearing Book. 
The man says to make up your builders NINE days prior to "grafting" or taking the larva from the Nicot cassette. The author seems to think the builder has to be "hopelessly queenless". 

I believe that a little bee math would show that half your nurse bees or more graduated on day 3...the day before you graft.


I'm making up cell builder the afternoon before I graft next time.


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## BroncoVol74

I think I will get a half dozen quality queens from this go around even without having "commercial quality" builders. How many I can get mated is an entirely different story. I plan on trying the mini mating nuc route.

I will try to get some good pics of the queen cells.


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## dlbrightjr

aunt betty said:


> The thing that screwed me up on the cell builders is that darn Nicot Queen Rearing Book.
> .


 It's probably cursed!!!! Why do you think I wanted rid of it. Actually after reading it the nicot system seemed like more work and more trouble than grafting in my situation. 

Don't you guys figure the problem is a lack of nurse bees and bee concentration? From what I've seen the most important thing is having a very large population of nurse bees in a relatively small space. As far as being queenless; what I've seen says 24 to a couple of hours before. Anyone heard anything different? I'm sliding the boards in my cloak boards tonight and they will be around 20 hours queenless when I graft.


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## BeeOne

Cell builders only need to be made up 24 hours prior to adding cell bar. Also, it's not about the number of bees in a cell starter, it's the density of bees. That's why it is popular to use a 5 frame nuc (swarm box, loaded with young nurse bees) as a cell starter. A properly made 5 frames nuc cell starter/finisher can produce 30 queen cells without a problem.


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## aunt betty

dlbrightjr said:


> It's probably cursed!!!! Why do you think I wanted rid of it. Actually after reading it the nicot system seemed like more work and more trouble than grafting in my situation.
> 
> Don't you guys figure the problem is a lack of nurse bees and bee concentration? From what I've seen the most important thing is having a very large population of nurse bees in a relatively small space. As far as being queenless; what I've seen says 24 to a couple of hours before. Anyone heard anything different? I'm sliding the boards in my cloak boards tonight and they will be around 20 hours queenless when I graft.


What is lacking is experience enough to know it all and do it right. Today I got out my other book. lol
Queen Rearing Essentials. I should have been reading it a few more times. 
The chapter on cell starter and the one on cell finisher...all I had to do was glance and I saw exactly what I did wrong. (twice)
Supposed to put the queen and capped brood on the bottom. Open brood and cells go up top. 
I got it all messed up. D'oh.

Bee One...I have seen videos where people made up a nuc as the starter. Might give that a shot myself.


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## dlbrightjr

I just got back from collecting my frames for grafting and an additional 5 frames of bees shaken off brood. I finally have enough bees in the builders to beard outside. Forgot to put my slides in the Cloake board last night so I did it this morning. I hope it is long enough by 5 tonight when we graft. It will be around 10 hours. I removed all my uncapped brood and placed the frames to be grafted in the hive. No queen cells started, but, alot of noise from the hive. It has taken alot of resources. I wish I would have gone with nucs.


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## BroncoVol74

Checked out my cells from my cell builders and this a pic from one of them. I think three of them look pretty good.


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## dlbrightjr

We did a 24 hour check yesterday and pulled our board to return the hives to queen right. At just a very quick glance I saw alot accepted and did not see any that were not. There are 45 in each. We are hoping for 35. I guess we will find out for sure next week!


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## aunt betty

Having all sorts of adventures. One starter made cells I did not see. One already emerged so I put everything in cages.
The other starter was building burr combs. Here's the bottom bar of one frame. The top...is all one piece. lol


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## aunt betty

This link is worth looking at. http://scientificbeekeeping.com/small-scale-queenrearing/
The graphics on the cell-starter and finisher are helpful.
Wish I'd seen it a few weeks ago.
One of the things I noticed is "you don't have to have ten frames in a box".


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## bevy's honeybees

aunt betty said:


> Having all sorts of adventures. One starter made cells I did not see. One already emerged so I put everything in cages.
> The other starter was building burr combs. Here's the bottom bar of one frame. The top...is all one piece. lol
> View attachment 32311


That was my day yesterday! First starter/finisher where I had 2 grafts "take", they made more queens from the brood frame that was almost all capped brood. According to the caledar, the one you posted the link is the one I use too, I should have had til Monday for emerging. I went into the hive to collect my 2 cells and saw a queen, then another and another. One of the grafted queens had not emerged and I took out the whole frame. The other capped queen cell was capped and a great size, but no queen inside. I checked the tip, it was closed but I wonder if somehow it got resealed because it looked like it had been open. I left one queen, took a frame with another and put it in a 4 frame nuc with empty comb (I need to put a feed jar on that one). The third I put in a queen catcher to take to one of my out yards. The capped cell I put in a tunnel of soft cloth, in a bowl. The queen catcher virgin got released into a split I had made 30 minutes before. I spritzed her good with syrup and into the frames where I was releasing her. We shall see what happens there. I went to get the grafted queen and she had emerged! sitting on the cloth. So I put her in a mesh cylinder bug thing with about 20 workers and she's in my laundry room. I work today and can't do anything with her til tomorrow. 
It was a very cool experience. 

I'm checking Nicot starter tomorrow. I don't hold out much hope because of all those eggs I put in, 2 cups might be larvae, I'm just not sure.


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## aunt betty

The weather was so nice when I was grafting. Never would imagine that it'd be all gloomy when I was supposed to make up the mating nucs. It's been either windy, cloudy, or raining the past few days.

Paid heavily for them queen cells in stings. Guess you have to learn how to do it all wrong before you can do it all right and have nice weather too. Kept hitting my elbows? About that...the bees seem to sting me where I've been having arthritis pains. If my hands hurt they bomb my hands. As long as my nose never gets sore I'll be fine. 
 

Weather forecaster has obviously been predicting average weather for the past two weeks. 
It's "spring with a chance of rain every day" and basically that's been the forecast. 
Frustrated with the weather.


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## BroncoVol74

I got 6 good capped queen cells from this Nicot venture and put them in mini mating nucs last night. If I get 2 mated queens from all this it will be a success. If not, I've learned a lot and will try it again. 

Now for the waiting game. Tick... tock... tick... tock...


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## dlbrightjr

It sounds like everyone is having some success and gaining a lot of knowledge. Congrats. It's going to be a long week for us waiting and wondering. I hope we have some queen cells since I've already started selling our old queens as over-wintered nucs. If not I guess they will just have to raise their own.


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## aunt betty

So far have ended up with 11 mating nucs in progress. 
Between the intended cells and the unintended ones am heading towards making easy increases. 
Betty ain't got $2k to buy packages to replace all the deadouts. (nor would I even if I had the cash) 
Nuh uh. 

Give me two more seasons of this stuff and I'll start selling queens. Have already sold a couple last year and the guy wants more. 
Got blessed and caught some bees that have queens that lay pretty much every single available cell. 
Been starting to see a pattern of them taking over the yard so I'm helping it along.

Have a few cells banked but they're the ones that had comb build all around them. I cut them out best as I could and "shoved" them into hair roller cages. I kind of doubt they're worth messing with but if they emerge I'll give it a shot. They're from good lines. 
Plotting on doing a third round of grafts. Could always use a few more good queens in the yard.
If there is a third round I'm betting it goes well. 

Mistakes I've made.
1) arranged the starter/finisher wrong.
2) Not checking the brood frames in the starter/finisher. Got so focused on being super careful and not messing with stuff too much that I completely ignored the brood frame on my starter/finisher. Had a rouge queen emerge days ahead of when the grafts would. 
3) Faled to put a frame with an undrawn foundation in. They built burr comb on some cells. 
I'm sure there are more. 

Did a lot of stuff right though or it'd be a worse mess.


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## dlbrightjr

Congrats on your success!!!!


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## aunt betty

Don't speak too soon. No queens mated yet. 

This is what happens when you make a few lil mistakes.








Today's observation:
A couple of the "splits" I did were just one frame of bees and brood with a cell or two on the frame. It's what I did last season too.
When a frame of brood in a 3-frame queen castle hatch out you've got one heck of a strong little nuc going. 
Couple that with a frame of honey and a pollen frame ---> any queen who gets mated in there is "sitting in tall cotton".
After seeing this again today I decided to put a frame of brood in each of the "mating nucs" I'd made up in queen castles.
Most of the bees had jetted back home and my mating nucs were pitiful. ;( 

Putting a frame of capped brood in each will have them in good shape quick.


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## dlbrightjr

I got excited and had to take one more peek. Had 42 of 45 on one and 38 of 45 on the other. We'll have to hope no major catastrophe befalls them between now and Sunday. The poorer take corresponds with the new drawn foundation less comb that was difficult to remove brood from. So far I am pleased. Time will tell.


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## beepro

Happy for you folks having success this early. At this time last year our daily high was in the 70-80s. This year with the rains our
daily high is only around 60 below. No queen will fly in these weather. I'm delaying my nicot set up until it gets warmer hopefully soon.
The first round of nicot attempt killed one of my breeder queens. So have to resort to the other 2 backup queens. 
Going to order more queens to perfect my nicot set up later in the season. I've turn an old dark comb frame into a nicot holding frame. 
Aunt betty, isn't this too early to make some new queens? Our weather pattern is not the same compare to last year. We're 3 weeks behind this year. Good luck!


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## Hoot Owl Lane Bees

beepro
If Ante Betty's weather is any thing like ours it is great for making Queens.
I would be making another attempt at nicot Queens but my hives are making Queen cells as fast as I go through them.
I had a small swarm from a hive that I removed the Queen and a frame with 9 caped cells from 2 weeks ago?
I don't have the extra resources to try again at this time. (caped frames)
21 nucs in the last 2 1/2 weeks + swarm calls!!!


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## aunt betty

The past couple days have had good weather but any virgins I have are a few days from flying. Close.
It's supposed to cool down a little next week. Ugh. 
The brite side is that all it takes is about 20 minutes for a queen's mating flight.


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## aunt betty

Not my first virgin queen but it's the first one with deformed wings. 
Cripes. Put her back into the roller cage and she's trying to crawl back into her cell.


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## beepro

If this virgin is from your breeder queen then I would not use her anymore. Rarely my queens show
any deformed wings. Could it be genetic or it cannot resist the virus infection while inside the cell. I'm not
sure though all queens should be normal and healthy after they emerged. Even an underfed queen larva will be a
smaller queen not a deformed wings virgin queen. If it is genetics then it is harder to get rid of them once all your
hives got requeened. I will pass for sure!


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## bevy's honeybees

I have 4 very good queen cells from my nicot hive. Which means, at least 2 of the egg cups I put in were used to make queens. 

I only moved 10 cups to the queen bar and into the starter/finisher hive on April 11th. Out of the 100 nicot cups, I could only find 2 brand new larvae and I wasn't even sure that's what I was looking at. I thought the eggs were easy to see using my headset. There must have been at least 30 eggs in the nicot. I placed 10 cups on the queen bar. When I checked them Monday afternoon I was pleased as punch to see 4 lovely queen cells with bees hanging all over them. The remaining 6, 3 cups had fallen out. 

Tomorrow I'm putting roller cages over those 4 cells and getting my new mini nucs ready. This is the first I'm using the small styrofoam mini nucs. I think that's the way I want to go in the future. I got 15 of them when they were on sale at Mann Lake.


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## bevy's honeybees

aunt betty said:


> Got the mini nucs.
> First thing you have to do is hot-glue the screen and queen excluder in. Watched a few mini nuc videos and it's common to see the QE missing. They fall right out.
> Have a couple foundationless TF top bar hives that died out last winter so I cut up some comb for the nucs.
> Am so ready for Sunday. (transfer the cells day)
> 
> After two rounds of grafting I've written off the Nicot. It's a bottleneck unless the queen starts laying right away. I'll try it again but not until mid-June.
> View attachment 32208
> View attachment 32209
> 
> 
> Sorry about the randomness of this thread. It is just me being me sharing the adventure. My bee plans always morph and change as they go along. I think that's just part of beekeeping? The beautiful thing is that the bees kind of steer me along and we end up at a good place with sweet stuff.


Do I see a queen pheromone strip on one of those frames? I'm cutting empty brood comb for my mini nucs also, and I don't have the strips to help retain the bees. I'm going to use queen juice and lemongrass q tip taped to inside of nuc and hope that works. 

For feeding, I plan to put feed bag in a sandwich ziplock and poke small holes in top. I don't want the bees to drown.


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## aunt betty

beepro said:


> If this virgin is from your breeder queen then I would not use her anymore. Rarely my queens show
> any deformed wings. Could it be genetic or it cannot resist the virus infection while inside the cell. I'm not
> sure though all queens should be normal and healthy after they emerged. Even an underfed queen larva will be a
> smaller queen not a deformed wings virgin queen. If it is genetics then it is harder to get rid of them once all your
> hives got requeened. I will pass for sure!


Captain Obvious on youtube told me the same thing.


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## aunt betty

bevy's honeybees said:


> Do I see a queen pheromone strip on one of those frames? I'm cutting empty brood comb for my mini nucs also, and I don't have the strips to help retain the bees. I'm going to use queen juice and lemongrass q tip taped to inside of nuc and hope that works.
> 
> For feeding, I plan to put feed bag in a sandwich ziplock and poke small holes in top. I don't want the bees to drown.


Really have no clue what I'm doing. Make mistakes and learn. (hopefully) 
The University of Guelph guy uses those queen pheromone strips. 
Didn't have enough faith in them mini-nucs to actually use one yet. 
One of the videos I watched on mini-nucs showed a guy putting wadded up grass into the feeder to provide a ladder for the bees.

One of the things I'm finding hard is that there are so many different methods. Have accidentally combined portions of two different methods which of course led to mistakes. If beekeepers wrote books on how to fry an egg there would be at least 28 methods.


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## aunt betty

Here's one that emerged with wings. Emereged a day late. It has been sort of cool at night.
Too bad her sister is already out and roaming inside that slot of the QC. 
Had to put her back in and hope for the best.









It's sort of hard to believe it but she came out of one of the burr combed up ones. Never give up.


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## beepro

Got my cut out frame made with a nicot cage almost in the middle. I'm a bit hesitant to use it afraid that it might cause the
bees to ball on the new queen again. So this little cage experiment has to wait until mid summer when I have more queens. Right now I'm resorting to the graft method. Had a frame filled with eggs since last Friday. Look into the cells today and the eggs have not turn into 
larvae yet. Wonder why it takes them so long to incubate these new eggs? Manage to make a strong cell finisher today.


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## bevy's honeybees

Beautiful!

I messed up on my Nicot queens. Typical, some unexpected interruptions in my schedule and I did not go into the Nicot finisher hive until yesterday. Plus I did it all backwards. Had I checked it before starting all my other work I could have saved myself several hours. In the morning I set up 4 mini nucs with half frames of empty comb. Then I went to out yard to collect bees for the nucs. That all went well. Got home and went to put the Nicot cages over the cells. I calculated wrong with the calendar. I based emerge time on the eggs I saw, not on the 2 cells that I thought might be larvae but I wasn't sure. Well, they must have been larvae. I went into Nicot finisher and all the cells tore down. I saw one queen well accepted. I'm assuming virgin but as my timing was so off I'm not sure. 

I'm reading that book on Nicot, and he spends a lot of time encouraging reader to not give up. 
Today I got an unexpected day off from my "real" job and I'm going to try some grafting. 
Practice, practice, practice.


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## aunt betty

Learning that once you set it all up to do grafting successfully you're tied to them. Have to have a dedicated calendar for queen rearing.
Thinking I'm going to just do it the old fashioned way by forcing cells with division boards. 
I ended up with a lot of good queens last season that way. 

What started me wanting to make multiple queens was the fact that I noticed that nearly every queen I had with a blue dot died last winter. Something clicked and I realized that this means all the white ones in the yard that I have now probably will not make it until next spring. Need to get busy and make some new ones by winter for sure.

Will feel a lot better if most of my queens have yellow dots on them by this fall.


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## soarwitheagles

After two years of trying the Nicot system, I have closed the book on this chapter of beekeeping in my life and labeled it, "Nicot: Not worth the time, effort, or money."

I have decided to move on to grafting and continue with simple splits. Nicot sucks!


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## Juhani Lunden

soarwitheagles said:


> After two years of trying the Nicot system, I have closed the book on this chapter of beekeeping in my life and labeled it, "Nicot: Not worth the time, effort, or money."
> 
> I have decided to move on to grafting and continue with simple splits. Nicot sucks!


Thats what I tried to say in the first place.



Juhani Lunden said:


> As I said Nicot system is THE most popular queen rearing set in Europe and surely today is is not understood to avoid grafting, but to produce queens. (99% without the laying cage, which is not practical.)


----------



## beepro

Either the person invented the nicot system has not give us the full secret of using it or I'm not learning it well yet.
For the queen calendar someone posted here that he can send you one. So it already exist. Maybe do a search for that.


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## ruthiesbees

After 2 rounds with the Nicot, I think I also prefer my process of "planned emergency replacement cells". I make sure the bees have soft comb in there and that the queen has had a few days to lay it all up, then I pull her over to a nuc and let them make queen cells. In the natural wax topbar hive, it's a piece of cake to carve them out and place them in queenless nucs.

For this last round of Nicot, I had young larvae in 25 cups that I put in the vertical position on the bar. Left it alone for 7 days and only had 4 drawn into capped cells. In the same nuc, I also let them rear the natural cells. Ended up with 10 of them, and no work on my part. One of those fat virgins hatched a day early and went to work on the rest of the queen cells. Hope I salvaged a few of them in roller cages.


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## aunt betty

Something I learned in this process:
Recall how that row of cells got all burr combed up. I whittled them out and got them into nucs.
Had very little faith in them cells so I put 5 cell in one nuc. Two emerged and three did not.
The bees actually helped the two that emerged to get out. No way they could have done it on their own. 
They cleared off the ends and got the two cells where the cocoons were showing. 
Also noteworthy is that they cleared off the live ones and did not mess with the ones that were dead. 

Somehow they can sense a live queen in a cell and also can tell when it's dead.


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## Hoot Owl Lane Bees

After my failed attempt and following what is posted and reading more I am thinking of giving it another try. 
Instead of using the plastic cover I am going to use a home made #8 wire cover over the side were the Queen goes.
My nicot frames have been in the hives for over a month uncovered and the bees have drawn comb right up to the plastic and the Queens are still laying all around them.
I have been holding off because of all this rain we are getting and the fact most of my nuc box's are full of QC starts and swarms.
I will be transferring most of them in the next week or two.


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## frogpondwarrior

Nicot ready to go but weather not co-operating. Rain last 4 days. Showers Sat. Sunday ok. Cold Monday with rain and light rain on Tue. Chance of shower on Wed, cloudy on Thru and 70% rain on Friday, Sat, and Sunday..................


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## aunt betty

Good luck frog. Someone has to get lucky. Y not you? 
Read up on cell builders because that's probably the most important part. You want very well-fed queen larva.
That's one of the places I was weak on. (cell builder) 
Timing is pretty important as well.


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## frogpondwarrior

Thanks.
Going to use a strong nearby hive as cell builder and finisher. Using a cloake board and just experiment and see what I get. The whole thing is a trial run as I hope take a full run at it when I get back from vac mid June. But right now if we get 6 now the this time and at least 4 mated we will be ecstatic and have gained a wealth of experience and knowledge. if nothing else we are still more advanced for our June adventure.


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## jcase

My Nicot experience....

Put nicot frame into hive, to polish cells, 2 days later return and... 110 cups of nectar.

Gave up, grafted (I wont ever do this in my truck again btw, need to build a hut), 18 out of 20 cups had a pool of jelly and had the cups built up today.

I think grafting might be easier/less time consuming.


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## soarwitheagles

jcase said:


> My Nicot experience....
> 
> Put nicot frame into hive, to polish cells, 2 days later return and... 110 cups of nectar.
> 
> Gave up, grafted (I wont ever do this in my truck again btw, need to build a hut), 18 out of 20 cups had a pool of jelly and had the cups built up today.
> 
> I think grafting might be easier/less time consuming.


jcase,

I totally agree!


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## jcase

soarwitheagles said:


> jcase,
> 
> I totally agree!


Really not sure what to do if even half of those 18 make it, I dont think I have enough bees to make 9 splits. I was expecting most not to be accepted.


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## dlbrightjr

I've been really busy, but, wanted to update on our first graft. We had checked them at 24 hours and thought we had a great take. Some time between then and the day we pulled them they took down about half. That left us with around 50 good cells. That was still twice what we needed so it worked out. After all the long hard work setting up the cell builders I decided not to feed pollen substitute. I had put in a lot of time and left the pollen substitute 20 miles away. I decided since they had tons of pollen and it was coming in the front I could skip that step. I'm thinking that might be what caused them to tear down half of the cells. We are going to try again in July. We are still have a couple of weeks till we check for eggs. I did open a couple of nucs to confirm the queens had hatched and was able to spot a dark Carniolan queen virgin in a box of Cordovan bees. Very exciting.

In retrospect I found the actual grafting to be easy. The hardest part for us seems to be getting strong cell builders.


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## Juhani Lunden

dlbrightjr said:


> I've been really busy, but, wanted to update on our first graft. We had checked them at 24 hours and thought we had a great take. Some time between then and the day we pulled them they took down about half. That left us with around 50 good cells. That was still twice what we needed so it worked out. After all the long hard work setting up the cell builders I decided not to feed pollen substitute. I had put in a lot of time and left the pollen substitute 20 miles away. I decided since they had tons of pollen and it was coming in the front I could skip that step. I'm thinking that might be what caused them to tear down half of the cells. We are going to try again in July. We are still have a couple of weeks till we check for eggs. I did open a couple of nucs to confirm the queens had hatched and was able to spot a dark Carniolan queen virgin in a box of Cordovan bees. Very exciting.
> 
> In retrospect I found the actual grafting to be easy. The hardest part for us seems to be getting strong cell builders.


How many cellS did you give to one cell builder?


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## aunt betty

This thread answered my questions especially the "how come nobody is talking about Nicot?" one. 

Sorry guys but this thread is a great example of why you don't start dumb threads like this one. 
Made me look quite foolish but hey...I'm willing to share the good, bad, and the ugly of beekeeping. Not going to candy-coat anything ever. 

Thanks for tolerating me and my foolish ways.


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## dlbrightjr

We gave 45 to each. I put 10 frames of capped brood in each 7 days before grafting. The morning of grafting I also put around 5+ frames of bees off of open brood in each. I had enough bees in each 2 story hive to beard out front even though it was not warm. I used a cloake board to make the cell builder queenless and then removed the board after 24 hours.
It seems like I remember Mr Palmer writing that he waits 5 days to return his queen to the cell builder. Maybe I'll try that. Thanks for the response.


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## Juhani Lunden

dlbrightjr said:


> We gave 45 to each. I put 10 frames of capped brood in each 7 days before grafting. The morning of grafting I also put around 5+ frames of bees off of open brood in each.


It is widely established fact, that one cell builder is not capable to feed properly more than 15 cells. They try, but just like in your case they drop out most.

(Your cellbuilder was however very strong, so maybe it was a matter of inbalance: maybe enough emerging bees, but not enough pollen for all of them to grow up. Young bees feed big amounts of pollen when young. This is essential for their pharyngeal glands(=brood-food glands) to grow. )


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## Juhani Lunden

aunt betty said:


> This thread answered my questions especially the "how come nobody is talking about Nicot?" one.
> 
> Sorry guys but this thread is a great example of why you don't start dumb threads like this one.
> Made me look quite foolish but hey...I'm willing to share the good, bad, and the ugly of beekeeping. Not going to candy-coat anything ever.
> 
> Thanks for tolerating me and my foolish ways.


There are no foolish questions.


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## dlbrightjr

aunt betty said:


> This thread answered my questions especially the "how come nobody is talking about Nicot?" one.
> 
> Sorry guys but this thread is a great example of why you don't start dumb threads like this one.
> Made me look quite foolish but hey...I'm willing to share the good, bad, and the ugly of beekeeping. Not going to candy-coat anything ever.
> 
> Thanks for tolerating me and my foolish ways.


Sorry you feel that way. I enjoyed this thread and your posts. Not sure what you thought looked foolish, but, I missed it. Thanks for posting.


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## dlbrightjr

Juhani Lunden said:


> It is widely established fact, that one cell builder is not capable to feed properly more than 15 cells. QUOTE]
> 
> Are you sure? The frames that I bought are made to hold 3 bars with 15 cells on each. I'm pretty certain I have seen mention of starting 45 or more in one cell builder. As a matter of fact I've seen multiple pictures of frames with 45+ on a frame. I am using 2 deep hive bodies of bees. Top half as a cell builder combined with bottom half as queen right. I'm pretty sure that 15 is not an established number. For 5 frame maybe?


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## Juhani Lunden

dlbrightjr said:


> Juhani Lunden said:
> 
> 
> 
> It is widely established fact, that one cell builder is not capable to feed properly more than 15 cells. QUOTE]
> 
> Are you sure? The frames that I bought are made to hold 3 bars with 15 cells on each. I'm pretty certain I have seen mention of starting 45 or more in one cell builder. As a matter of fact I've seen multiple pictures of frames with 45+ on a frame. I am using 2 deep hive bodies of bees. Top half as a cell builder combined with bottom half as queen right. I'm pretty sure that 15 is not an established number. For 5 frame maybe?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Starting and finishing are two different things. One starter (3-4 kg of bees) can easily start 150 larvae. But they need just a tiny tiny amount of royal jelly in the first day.
> 
> After day one they are removed to the cell builder. In this phase the need for royal jelly is growing rapidly. A cell builder is usually just a normal strong 2-4 story hive. Queen in bottom, excluder on top of her. Each of these can handle 15 cell to finish them properly.
> 
> 
> (I´m not saying a finisher cannot in any circumstances finish 45 cells, but no need to try this extreme, when you need just 3 normal strong hives to do it well with no extra tricks; feeding, giving brood and pollen etc.)
Click to expand...


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## dlbrightjr

Ok. So I'm confusing starter and finisher. I can start 45 but can only finish 15. Maybe this was the foolishness Aunt Betty referred to. Thanks for the information. That explains a lot.


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## Juhani Lunden

dlbrightjr said:


> Ok. So I'm confusing starter and finisher. I can start 45 but can only finish 15. Maybe this was the foolishness Aunt Betty referred to. Thanks for the information. That explains a lot.


You are wellcome. Wonderfull if I could help. A finnish proverb: "A man asking does not get lost."


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## aunt betty

Will go thru some ideas I have. 
Correction is welcome.

My idea of a cell-builder for a small-scale queen grafting setup. 

First I think I'd select a colony with two deeps and a medium full of bees and brood.
Most of my hives are setup that way now. 

I'd tear the hive apart but locate and cage the queen. Have the frames all out so I could re-arrange them all. Sort of a beekeeping no-no. Next I'd sort capped brood frames from the open brood frames. Make a honey-frame pile and locate at least one pollen...hopefully a pollen and honey frame. 

I'd re-arrange it so I have open brood above the excluder. The idea is to lure all the nurses upstairs. 
Might leave it like that overnight. Queen and capped brood is downstairs. 

Next day build the starter from the same hive starting from the top. Have to add another box. Not an issue.
Put one frame of open brood along with pollen, honey, and every bee I can shake from the open brood. queen is downstairs so leave the bottom alone UNLESS I need more nurse bees. Should not have to. 

The starter goes above the rest of the hive on a divider board so they think they're queenless. 
Graft, put grafts in starter for 24 hours then put it all back as a queen right finisher. 
This means setting up the starter happens right before I graft. 

Forget which video but there is one of a guy doing exactly this. 

Could do separate starter and finisher. Last time I did that the starter turned into a split. 


Here is where I share a problem that I created. 
When I shook bees for the starter the starter was sitting on same pallet as a deadout. 
Some of the lost nurse bees went into that and made a laying worker nightmare. Sigh. Ruined a lot of drawn combs. All droned up. We're talking 4 mediums worth of mess. Yikes. When it quits raining and blowing I'll add some brood and try to straighten them out.

Moral: Don't leave deadouts in the yard.


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## dlbrightjr

I want to thank you again Juhani I think you correctly diagnosed my mistake. I was headed in the wrong direction and would have made the same mistake again. No doubt with the same results.

I did go reread Mr Palmers sticky and realized where I got the idea. He does 45 at a time it appears, but, uses the cell starter as the cell builder. He does not make his hive queenright until they are capped. That is what I was shooting for, but, missed that little detail. This gives him all those nurse bees to feed cells without feeding other larva. Live and learn.


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## aunt betty

There has been quite a bit of failure in my queen rearing. Weather and operator error. 
After what seemed like a week straight of rain I finally got to take a peek into all the mating nucs. 
Not a lot of success to report. (ashamed to admit it)

On the bright side there were a couple virgins running around that I spotted. There were two of what appear to be well-mated queens. 
This one has filled a 4-frame nuc where it has two soild frames of capped brood. She's a keeper anyway. Set another 4-frames on top of her nuc. 














One queen at a time I'll manage to get more of them with the yellow dots. 
The other one that I did not take pictures of was very black. Maybe next time.

Also took frames with started cells from one of the "florida-queened hives". Gave them to failed mating nucs. Hope I end up with more of those type queens. Italian for sure and they make tons of bees and honey. 
The genetics came from Long Lane Honey Bee Farm but he bought those queens from Florida.


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## aunt betty

Things are getting taller in the yard. 








Still trying to figure out how to get the cable hooked up so Discovery Channel can start getting the live-feed. 








Having fun anyway. lol


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## frogpondwarrior

Finally got a few days without rain or needing a winter coat. Put nicot cage in Sat for cleaning and sequestered the queen around supper time Sunday. Looked at her today at supper time and the cage was full of bees. seen a number of eggs in between bees so cut her loose on another frame and dropped the nicot frame back into hive. Tue expecting rain but need to make sure the queen in my starter/ finisher hive is below the cloak board and get it closed up. Lots of bees in both theses hives so game on. However, could not find the queen in this hive the other day but saw day old larva. So just have to look a bit harder. 
For our setup we have a front and back entrance bottom board, queen excluder, deep with queen, cloak board, queen excluder, second deep, queen excluder, shim with upper entrance and a hive top feeder plus cover. 
First time using the nicot so it will be a learning experience. 
On vacation the middle of June so will see what we have and what is learned by then and maybe give it anther shot after we get back.


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## frogpondwarrior

Found the queen and she is below the cloak board. All the capped brood below the board and all the open broad above. No rearranging to do so I closed up the board. Next up larva transfer. Would be much easier if I didn't have to go to work from 13:00 to 24:00 tomorrow. Will transfer those that have hatched at noon and will rely on wife when she get home to keep checking and moving larva to fill our frames. 
Thinking this would have been easier if we had placed queen in cage in the am not pm. But was tied up until 6ish that day. Some of those eggs may have been laid Monday and will not hatch until Thur. On the clock.


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## beepro

I often do grafting in the middle of the night when the temp. is cooler here. Been doing night beekeeping for a few
years already. Anywhere from inspecting virgin mating nucs to grafting when the time is a bit off.


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## frogpondwarrior

checked today 66 hours after queen placement. No larva and some of the eggs missing. Only royal jelly in 2 cells but could not see larva even under good light. Put frame back as there still are a good number of eggs. Will look in am. before I leave town and see what needs to be done. Don't mind working but need to reverse this process. Have her lay on my work days and have larva hatch on my days of rest when I can play with the clock to get desired results. Still may get something this time but it seems to be rush, rush....rush. No joy in mudville.


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## beepro

Nicot update:


Today I finally see my first batch of nicot eggs in the brown plastic cell cups. I order 600 of these. Updates on my post constant mite removal management. After 3 days inside the nicot cage the newly bought Cordovan queen had laid many eggs. Only 4 cups are empty I believe. My conclusion is that in order for this to work the cage must be embedded in the middle of an old dark drawn comb frame. This is as natural as can be leaving the queen thinking that this is the place to lay. The natural smell and familiarity on the comb makes it feel like home more so than just an empty hanging plastic cage alone.
So have I finally found a full proof method getting the queen to lay inside the nicot cage? After the eggs emerged in a few days the next batch of laying will be tested.


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