# Queen Rearing Question



## MJC417 (Jul 26, 2008)

Yes, it works. I do it the hobbyist way and skip the diagram on the right of the page you linked to. I just place a few grafted cells in the center of the honey super above the queen excluder just as swarm season begins. A few days before emerging I pull the old queen, remove the queen excluder and put cages on the cells. After emerging, I take what queens I need for nucs or mini mating nucs and let the rest loose to hash it out.


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## Virgil (Jan 14, 2018)

It's probably worth trying more than one graft at a time, you can always cull the ones you don't want.

I use the BH method it works well.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

It's a kind of cut down method of the normal commercial method. Instead of boosting the hive and having it super strong, you put in blanks and crowd the fewer bees into a smaller area.

To me, this means the bees will raise fewer cells, to a lower standard. The only pic I've seen of cells raised the Ben Harden way, they were indeed fairly miserable specimens. But if you only want one queen cell they should do that well. Take my advise, if you just want one, graft 5.


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## Virgil (Jan 14, 2018)

Oldtimer said:


> It's a kind of cut down method of the normal commercial method. Instead of boosting the hive and having it super strong, you put in blanks and crowd the fewer bees into a smaller area.
> 
> To me, this means the bees will raise fewer cells, to a lower standard. The only pic I've seen of cells raised the Ben Harden way, they were indeed fairly miserable specimens. But if you only want one queen cell they should do that well. Take my advise, if you just want one, graft 5.


I graft 20 at a time and get a good take, although I've been reading the queenless nuc method on the forum and will be giving that a go.

The national bee unit in the UK uses the BH method - http://www.nationalbeeunit.com/index.cfm?sectionid=80.

I run double brood and always just move all the broad above a QE - it works okay.

The NBU has a good download here - http://www.nationalbeeunit.com/index.cfm?sectionid=80


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## Scott Gough (Dec 10, 2015)

Virgil said:


> The national bee unit in the UK uses the BH method - http://www.nationalbeeunit.com/index.cfm?sectionid=80.
> 
> The NBU has a good download here - http://www.nationalbeeunit.com/index.cfm?sectionid=80


Virgil, Thanks for the links. The links you provided are the same and go to the NBU page. Is there a separate link that you meant to provide that has other information. I am interested because I would also like to rear a few queens as a hobbyist this year. I have looked at the Cloake Board Method and the Snelgrove Board but have not built those yet. This method looks very simple if it yields acceptable small numbers of cells.


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## Bush_84 (Jan 9, 2011)

Ya it’s probabky not a bad idea to graft a few assuming they won’t all take. I could even stagger this between a couple of hives so that if I have a queen that doesn’t emerge or return from mating flights I’d have an extra queen cell close to ready. I would have to keep good records to know what was ready and when. Worth a try anyways. I don’t really lose anything with this system if it doesn’t work.


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## Buzz-kill (Aug 23, 2017)

Bush_84 said:


> Ya it’s probabky not a bad idea to graft a few assuming they won’t all take. I could even stagger this between a couple of hives so that if I have a queen that doesn’t emerge or return from mating flights I’d have an extra queen cell close to ready. I would have to keep good records to know what was ready and when. Worth a try anyways. I don’t really lose anything with this system if it doesn’t work.


If you only want a cell or two why mess with grafting. Put an empty foundation less frame in the brood nest about 5 or 6 days before you want to start so you get fresh wax drawn and eggs laid. Then move that above the queen excluder and you will get nice cells drawn.


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## Virgil (Jan 14, 2018)

Buzz-kill said:


> If you only want a cell or two why mess with grafting. Put an empty foundation less frame in the brood nest about 5 or 6 days before you want to start so you get fresh wax drawn and eggs laid. Then move that above the queen excluder and you will get nice cells drawn.


I wish there was a like button.


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## Bush_84 (Jan 9, 2011)

Buzz-kill said:


> If you only want a cell or two why mess with grafting. Put an empty foundation less frame in the brood nest about 5 or 6 days before you want to start so you get fresh wax drawn and eggs laid. Then move that above the queen excluder and you will get nice cells drawn.


I want to get comfortable with grafting. I grafted a couple of times last year. The first time did not go well. I adjusted my technique and the second round went well. So I want to continue to improve. It also allows me to have better control of how many cells are made and better ability to move individual cells. 

I do however use foundationless frames. So it would be pretty easy to take a new frame of eggs and move it up above an excluder.


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## COAL REAPER (Jun 24, 2014)

Buzz-kill said:


> If you only want a cell or two why mess with grafting. Put an empty foundation less frame in the brood nest about 5 or 6 days before you want to start so you get fresh wax drawn and eggs laid. Then move that above the queen excluder and you will get nice cells drawn.


this is what I used to do. but at some point you want to cross over into grafting. and the graft itself really is the easy part. a strong, densely populated cell builder is vital. the hardest part for me with such few hives is making up nucs to place the virgins. it is true, you cant grow bees and put up honey at the same time. I never listened and still struggle with marginal harvests.
read through this thread: http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...ing-using-the-Joseph-Clemens-Starter-Finisher
that's basically what I did the past season. I would graft 12 cells, 11 or 12 would take, i would cull half or so, and still place two in each nuc. i just didn't have the resources to place more than that IF i wanted to continue to graft multiple times throughout the year. without completely breaking up honey producing hives that is. using a nuc as a start for just a few cells only requires a weak hive that you ten condense. then for nucs i would start taking frames of brood from colonies that were not the best honey producers i had. produced some really nice queens last year.
one other note. you don't have much breeder stock to chose from with such few colonies. what can you do but default to the oldest queens that have produced well?


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## Clayton Huestis (Jan 6, 2013)

I found the BH method to give OK to rather runtish cells. I gave it 3 rounds. Wasn't impressed with cell quality. Had better luck using OTS method with a cut down recombined into a queen right finisher over an excluder. Now leaning towards UoG cloak board queen rearing method combined with Michael Palmers method of adding brood to the cell builder.


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## Cuttingedgelandinc (Mar 3, 2015)

Clayton Huestis said:


> I found the BH method to give OK to rather runtish cells. I gave it 3 rounds. Wasn't impressed with cell quality. Had better luck using OTS method with a cut down recombined into a queen right finisher over an excluder. Now leaning towards UoG cloak board queen rearing method combined with Michael Palmers method of adding brood to the cell builder.


I have had good success with both methods. My preferred method is the Cloake Board.
I did two grafts with separate starter finisher hives last season and to me, it seemed more complicated and my results were not as good.


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## Buzz-kill (Aug 23, 2017)

Bush_84 said:


> I want to get comfortable with grafting. I grafted a couple of times last year. The first time did not go well. I adjusted my technique and the second round went well. So I want to continue to improve. It also allows me to have better control of how many cells are made and better ability to move individual cells.
> 
> I do however use foundationless frames. So it would be pretty easy to take a new frame of eggs and move it up above an excluder.


Understand if you want to learn grafting. But as far as moving individual cells I cut them out so they are individual. True about numbers but if I get more than I want I put more than one in each mating nuc.


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## Virgil (Jan 14, 2018)

Clayton Huestis said:


> I found the BH method to give OK to rather runtish cells. I gave it 3 rounds. Wasn't impressed with cell quality. Had better luck using OTS method with a cut down recombined into a queen right finisher over an excluder. Now leaning towards UoG cloak board queen rearing method combined with Michael Palmers method of adding brood to the cell builder.


Would you be kind enough to link it for me? I'm looking for a new method this year just to play with it.


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## Clayton Huestis (Jan 6, 2013)

Can't link on my cell atm but search youtube university of guelph beekeeping. They have many videos that are excellent.


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## MJC417 (Jul 26, 2008)

Yikes!..... I must have fairly miserable runtish queens.


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## Buzz-kill (Aug 23, 2017)

Virgil said:


> Would you be kind enough to link it for me? I'm looking for a new method this year just to play with it.


The link is in the first post.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

I think he's looking for a link to OTS method. Or maybe Cloak Board, or Michael Palmer techniques, it's not clear.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Bush, Perhaps you should start with your goals..I assume its to expand and fill woodwear sitting idel
With 3 hives you could probly make better use of time/resources then learning to graft.
The limiting factor tends to be resources for mating nucs 
I would argue pulling 2 frames of brood a month will have a strong inpact on your production hives 
its said a bee makes 1/12 a teaspoon of honey, it is also said it takes a cell of honey, cell of pollen and a cell ofwater per bee(cant find any think to back that up tho..)... 
So talking deep frames and spit ball numbers
takes 6 pounds of honey to make a deep frame of brood, that deep frame makes 11+ pounds(ish) of honey (or so ).. 

As the old saying says you can make bees or you can make honey. 
There is another way, more queens make more brood. 
The better plan may be to bring more queens on line, early as you can and feed. The nucs pay back the sugar fed brood to the honey production hive(s), then use them for resources for nucs and cell builders 

Run a nuc starter finisher (or a single) 

http://doorgarden.com/2011/11/07/simple-honey-bee-queen-rearing-for-beg

http://www.beeculture.com/net-gain-cell-building-system/


Think of the amount of work you will save not having to un stack/restack supers. If you don’t have nucs just use singles.. it’s not the box, It’s how you manage the box


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## Bush_84 (Jan 9, 2011)

My goals are to first off increase my colony count and secondary goal is to get enough honey to cover costs. I understand that it is believed that you can make honey or bees, but last year I was able to find a middle ground. I actually used that queen rearing method you linked. I’ve read it over until cross eyed. I came out of last winter with one huge hive and two small hives. I bought two packages and two queens in may. I made two nucs off of my large hive and setup my packages. I was able to get ~8-10 eight frame mediums of honey out of the packages and overwintered hives. When all was said and done I went into winter with four production hives and seven nucs. Three were nucs I made up from the weakest package that I made in August. That was a huge mistake as it was to late in the season and they were the first to die this winter. After a miserable winter I am left with a nuc and two of my overwintered production hives from last spring. 

So after knowing my life history...I am hoping to do something similar but smarter this year. I am hoping my three remaining hives are strong in spring. I want to make spring splits (if strength allows) to prevent swarming. Then I’m thinking I may perform cut down splits in July when the honey flow here is historically at its peak. I’ll take old queen out and install cells. All my queens at this point need to be replaced anyways. Might as well make up a few nucs while I’m at it. I also plan to source some nucs in may. If I can get a little honey out of it from my hives it’ll be nice but I’m not in this for income, but it’s nice to be able to reinvest into this hobby rather than convincing my wife that we need stuff for my bees lol.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Dan, I too am going to learn how to graft queens this year. My plan is to use a Cloake board as the number of queens on each attempt will be less than 20. Everything I've read and watched indicates you can get really good queen cells this way. Cell builder colonies packed with nurse bees are for the more advanced queen breeders as a cell builder colony can support about 100 queen cells on one week intervals for about three rounds. Next year, right?


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## BlueRidgeBee (Jun 12, 2013)

This Scottish blog has good descriptions and pics of the Harden method as well as a vertical split using what he calls a swarm board (I have snelgeove board) I find helpful when raising a few queens early in the season when night temps can still be chilly at times. Also using cloake board. Very enjoyable site. 

http://theapiarist.org/ben-harden-queen-rearing-intro/


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

BlueRidgeBee said:


> Very enjoyable site.
> 
> http://theapiarist.org/ben-harden-queen-rearing-intro/


Yes, one of the best IMO. The author is a member of BS.


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## shannonswyatt (May 7, 2012)

Dan, you may want to see if you can take a quick queen rearing course. I was able to take one a few years ago and I had several "ah ha!" moments in the class. I was able to graft up some cells a month later totally confident I knew what I was doing. At least a little anyway.


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## Bush_84 (Jan 9, 2011)

I did some queen rearing last year using the “Joseph Clemens” system, which utilized a nuc. My first attempt was a trial by fire in regards to grafting. I changed my technique and got mor cells than I could handle!

My biggest issue last year was extra bees. I started the spring with three hives and bought/split my way to 11 going into winter. Unfortunately I currently again sit at three hives. Sigh. I was hoping to set aside three hives as honey producers and use the rest for queens/splits. Unfortunately that is not the case. So I am back to trying to find a way to raise a minimum amount of queens in a staggered fashion. Last year I found that by making multiple queens at once I didn’t have enough bees to adequately mate them all at once. If I can manage to make one queen per week I will be better able to manage this pace of increase. 

I also am in a bee desert. What I mean by that is the closest association is 1.5 hours away. I have also found associations to be more about business and I have limited time. I have young children and multiple home projects. So extra time for these things is limited. What I do have is time for is a few YouTube videos or forum chats (you can pump those out between bath time and bed time). So this forum and in general the internet has been my class/mentor. 

Anyways my goal for this season is again to increase my hive count while maintaining some honey production to cover costs. I figure that this year I’ll try purchasing 2-3 Nucs. I’ll maybe keep two of my biggest hives as my honey producers (I don’t need much just enough to cover next years projects and not disappoint my family/coworkers) and use the rest for increase. 

So I I have three hive come through winter and buy three Nucs that’ll be four that I can use for increase. These hives won’t need to get any bigger than two stories whether it’s 5 frame or 8 frame. I have lots of unused comb. So I should be in good position to make a steady increase in hives. I could take a single comb from each hive every couple weeks (depending on their strength) and make up a nuc. Hopefully in this fashion I can increase my colony count back to 10-12 or more! I also have a mini mating nuc system that I have been dying to get going, but that’s a whole other subject.


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## minz (Jan 15, 2011)

Michael Palmer is the man for doing queen rearing and it is exactly what you are looking for.
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?244271-My-Cell-Building-Methods
Queen Rearing in the Sustainable Apiary(about 30 minutes in starts queen picket)35 min cell builder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7tinVIuBJ8

Cliff notes:
You take a hive and give it a frame of bees, check it 9 days later for queen cells day 10 break it in half, rotate the QR side 180 degrees, drop a couple of grafted cells in it.
Day 15 put the hive back together.
Day 20, 10 days after graft take a couple of cells to a mating nuc or queen castle.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

If you use the mini mating nucs early enough in the flow, it is my understanding that you hardly need more than a cup of bees per nuc. However, this is not true if you are making walkaway splits in the mini nuc as I found out sadly last year.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

bush
I know you said you wanted to practice grafting but just for the heck of it, I had wondered if you had seen this. If nothing else, it has a lot of nice picktures.
http://beesource.com/resources/elem...queen-cells-without-grafting-cut-cell-method/
Cheers
gww


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## Bush_84 (Jan 9, 2011)

I like all the pictures, but the problem I’m trying to solve isn’t grafting. I feel like I got comfortable doing that last year. My issue is lack of extra bees to dedicate to rearing queens for splits. The problem with Michael palmer’s method is that it requires me to give a hive a full deep of capped brood, which again requires taking resources from my hives. If running a queenright starter/finisher won’t work out well maybe I should just buy a few queens this year and make queens next year when I have more bees to pull from. Or maybe I’ll just try it and see how it goes and purchase queens as a fallback.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

bush 
The guy I bought my hive from removes as much space from his hives as he can around feb and then just inspect often enough to catch the first one that gets swarm fever. Then he uses all the extra cells they make and makes spits with them. The last hive I had swarm on me had eight cells in it that I moved around.
Cheers
gww


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Getting enough bees is always the problem for early spring queen raising. What a lot of guys do is start trickle feeding some hives pretty early, to stimulate them and get them building up earlier than normal, and when you are going to raise queens they will be ready. The other side of the coin with that is those strong hives will want to swarm when it's swarming time. But you beat them to it and split them up for nucs to put the queen cells in, before they swarm.

But also, you are talking about raising only 2 queen cells? Even a much weaker hive can do a good job of that, long as the cells are centre brood nest and the hive is being fed.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Oldtimer
I would like to abuse bush's thread and ask a personal question. I saw on your picturial that you mention you only put the queen cells with a single frame of brood cause strong hives may tear down the cell but weak hives will accept them. I had planned to pull a queen from one hive with the expectation that the bees would probly make more then one queen cell. I was then going to use those queen cells to make cut down splits from my strongest hives that I was worried might get to swarm mode. When I pull the queen and a couple of frames of brood from a bigger hive and replace it with a brood frame with a queen cell on it. Will those bees tear down the queen cell and just build thier own with the brood in thier hive?
I have timeing questions too but they don't matter if the bees are going to tear down the cells.
Thanks
gww


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

You can never say the bees will never destroy a queen cell in stronger units, but there are ways to reduce it.

If your splits are queenless and you leave them 24 hours before putting in the brood frame with the queen cell on it, acceptance will be close to 100%.


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## shannonswyatt (May 7, 2012)

What about just using a cloake board and only grafting a few cells. If you goal is to just raise a queen or two at once you could put a shim above the top box. You could do this with a 5 over 5 if you wanted to. You could put a bar across the top of the shim just over the top bars, preferably spacing a gap between the frames below the bar so there is plenty of room to draw the cells down. Graft a half dozen or so cells. This doesn't have to be anything complicated, just a piece of scrap 3/4 wood that you could space over top of the top bars. When it is time to move the ones that you want to keep you can put them in a mini-mating nuc with a cup of bees and lock up the box with some feed for a few days in the basement. Preferable you would move the cell into the mating nuc just prior to emerging, and then when you move the mating nuc back outside the queen would be closer to her mating flights. With the Cloake board you could do this repeatedly throughout the season. You may want to find another beekeeper in the area that is interested in local queens and do some kind of deal for mature cells.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Oldtimer
Thanks for the responce, I was thinking of moving the queen and using the queen cell in the hive that was left. Bush, sorry for the side track. I will leave it alone for now. 

bush
I do know that doolittle would remove most of the brood from a hive and put it over another hive over a queen excluder and have heard of people saying it works even better if you put a super between the hive brood and added brood. Mel dieslkoen covers this on his mad splitter page and adds notching to help the bees decide where to build cells.
Cheers
gww


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## Knisely (Oct 26, 2013)

follow


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## Bush_84 (Jan 9, 2011)

I’ve already built this bar. It’s essentially just a piece of scrap wood that is shaved down to the width of the spike(?the pointy part of the cup that gets insetered into the cell frame). I drilled holes in it to put the cups into. I drilled the holes so the cups perfectly between the frames. I have a few that can take four and a few that can take 8. I already have some hive top feeders that I made that I can use as a spacer. 

I tried to make a cloake board once and it didn’t work out. Maybe I should try again. I do have a table saw that can use a dado blade now. 



shannonswyatt said:


> What about just using a cloake board and only grafting a few cells. If you goal is to just raise a queen or two at once you could put a shim above the top box. You could do this with a 5 over 5 if you wanted to. You could put a bar across the top of the shim just over the top bars, preferably spacing a gap between the frames below the bar so there is plenty of room to draw the cells down. Graft a half dozen or so cells. This doesn't have to be anything complicated, just a piece of scrap 3/4 wood that you could space over top of the top bars. When it is time to move the ones that you want to keep you can put them in a mini-mating nuc with a cup of bees and lock up the box with some feed for a few days in the basement. Preferable you would move the cell into the mating nuc just prior to emerging, and then when you move the mating nuc back outside the queen would be closer to her mating flights. With the Cloake board you could do this repeatedly throughout the season. You may want to find another beekeeper in the area that is interested in local queens and do some kind of deal for mature cells.


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## Richinbama (Jan 15, 2018)

1 1/2 cups bees to 1 mini mating nucs. Univ. Of gulpth.


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## shannonswyatt (May 7, 2012)

Cloake board is pretty easy. It is just a queen excluder with a rim on top that you can slide a piece of coroplast or some other flat sheet into. I wouldn't bother with a dado, you can make the groove with two passes, it would take longer to put it on the table saw than to make the cut.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

I use the two frame deep mating nucs, ala David at Barnyard Bees et al. They need more bees because there is more real estate to cover. But yes, I think it was the UofG info I was remembering regarding the minimum number of bees in the nuc.They use the tiny mating nucs which are about the equivalent of one deep frame. Point is, your hive does not need to be busting at the seams with bees to make splits.

As far as making a Cloake board, you don't need a dado blade. Wood framed QE and a few strips of 3/4 × 3/4 with a small rabbet for a piece of coroplast or metal to slide into. I bought mine but only paid $5, it is well used but in good shape. With the Cloake method, the hive does not get broken apart, just reoriented. Seems to me to be the best method for producing my goal of around 40 grafted queens this season. I am also going to try the fly back split method to hopefully keep the hives from swarming. 

Shannon beat me to it posting about the Cloake board. Great minds think alike!


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## Bush_84 (Jan 9, 2011)

I have a 10 frame wood bound metal excluder (I use 8 frame equipment). I’m thinking that I could cut that in half and turn it into two five frame excluders. I could make two! I already use 7/8” holes with discs for my nuc entrances. I could put an extra entrance on the bottom boxes so I wouldn’t even have to turn any boxes. Just turn a disc or two. If I do that I wouldnt put an entrance in the Cloake Board.


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## Bush_84 (Jan 9, 2011)

Hello all. Got a few things done today in this regards. Got my queen excluder cut in half and put a new piece of wood in. It fits a five frame nuc perfectly. First pic is my solution to getting bees and brood in my mating nucs. 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/iFEJILmG52E2BqVz1

Second picture is my cloake board without board in. After is with it in. 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/KG2ilC6CpLQX4NyN2

https://photos.app.goo.gl/4GClj3UQuHIjGc4C3

https://photos.app.goo.gl/2JeqMWdXloxGQrDP2

As you can see I cut to put a piece of wood in front but realized I would be without an entrance if I put it in. I use discs over my entrance holes so may end up putting that piece in anyways. It’s there off kilter a bit to make it easier to see. 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/EnIZMQXtbJxyxNMF2

Last pictures are of my queen cell “bar”. It’s just a really thin piece of wood with holes drilled in. Still trying to perfect that one. How much space between top bars would they need? If I put frames tight together the cups touch each top bar of the adjacent frames. 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/GcdcLus60NaDBccH3


https://photos.app.goo.gl/CUJmP6rc2l606Ja33


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## JoshuaW (Feb 2, 2015)

> My issue is lack of extra bees to dedicate to rearing queens for splits. The problem with Michael palmer’s method is that it requires me to give a hive a full deep of capped brood, which again requires taking resources from my hives.


Good observation. MP uses nucs to supply the brood, if I remember right...



> If running a queenright starter/finisher won’t work out well


GM Doolittle used to raise queens that way; he pointed out that that's how the bees do it when superceding. 



> maybe I should just buy a few queens this year and make queens next year when I have more bees to pull from.


That's what I did my first big expansion year. I even used commercial stock queens  But I made increase fast and was able to use those colonies to raise my own queens from stock I really liked the following year.

Good luck!


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

If I was stuck with only 3 hives, I'd "boost" one of the colonies with 1 frame of capped brood from each of the other 2 ten days before cell building. I'd use the cut cell method, as it tends to render a higher % mated queens. I'd re-equalize the colonies ASAP after having spent considerable colony strength making the nuc's.


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## BlueRidgeBee (Jun 12, 2013)

Bush84 What a great idea to used the cut entrances and then disks to change the entrances front/back. So much better than turning hive entrances! I’m going to make up a couple of boxes like this just to use with the cloake board (which I’m trying out first time this year) Thanks!


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## BlueRidgeBee (Jun 12, 2013)

Bush84 What a great idea to used the cut holes and then disks to change the entrances front/back. So much better than turning hive entrances! I’m going to make up a couple of boxes like this just to use with the cloake board (which I’m trying out first time this year) Thanks!


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Right, I use "Nucs" as brood factories. Not really nucs. Three or four stories high for winter. Four to six high through flow.


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## Scott Gough (Dec 10, 2015)

Michael Palmer said:


> Right, I use "Nucs" as brood factories. Not really nucs. Three or four stories high for winter. Four to six high through flow.


I like the quotes around Nucs. What one person considers a nuc another will consider a hive once is grows to a certain amount of frames. Is it a nuc in your opinion because of the width and the ability to take it down to "nuc size" at anytime? Is there a certain number of frames where it becomes a hive or does it always stay a nuc because it is 4 frames wide? I realize it is just semantics and could vary by region or person also. 

What are the advantages of keeping the bees in the nuc and building up verses just using 8 or 10 frame boxes? I can think of several including taking advantage of the bees building up, shared center wall heat, and ease of box and frame manipulation to name a few.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Scott Gough said:


> What are the advantages of keeping the bees in the nuc and building up verses just using 8 or 10 frame boxes? I can think of several including taking advantage of the bees building up, shared center wall heat, and ease of box and frame manipulation to name a few.


Yes, and two queens laying in the footprint of one 10 frame hive.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

In the south, if you put a nuc's worth of bees (2-3 frames) in an 8 or 10 frame box, you would be over run with SHB in no time. Simply too much real estate to defend with so few bees. When the bees cover all five frames, then it is time to move them. My over-wintered medium over deep five frame nuc is ready now since bees fill both boxes. 

Note the description and how it is presented. No confusion as to exactly what type of nuc it is.


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