# royal jelly not removed



## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

Wow, that's amazing. I've never primed with more than a small drop of watered-down royal jelly. I'm thinking my next batch, I'll double-graft --> graft a bar of cells with my usual amount of priming R. J. --> then remove those larva and replace with fresh young larva into the full cup of R. J. That should produce a bar of cells with nearer the quantity of R. J. that appears in your photos.


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

I'm so glad you had too much time on your hands, and so tested this matter of bees removing RJ primer. I've only heard the argument of bees removing the jelly this last year or so, and have been wondering about the truth of it.


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## Broke-T (Jul 9, 2008)

I noticed in pic you are using JZBZ plastic cell bar. Do you like them?

Johnny


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## muskratcreekhoney (Mar 30, 2010)

Joseph Clemens- I haven't been grafting very long so take my experiences for what they are worth: I find that if I fill the cup half full my acceptance rate is around 90%++. I tried the watered down R.J. along with these cells and the take looked around 50%. I had the feeling that with the watered down R.J. the larvae were sinking down into it too far, they were very small larvae. Thanks for the positive comments Joseph I was a little nervous that I would get grilled by the more experienced beeks for conducting this little experiment.

Broke-T- I love the plastic cell bars, they are so much better than the stupid grooved bottom bar that has to be waxed or you lose 10% of your graft. I'm still a little slow at grafting so when they drop on the ground it is maddening. I haven't dropped a cell yet with the JZBZ's cell bar, but I don't graft but a few hundred a year.


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## muskratcreekhoney (Mar 30, 2010)

Joseph- I was a bit surprised myself when I saw how much R.J. was in this cup. I have filled them about half full before but they didn't fill them to the rim before, however this time I used a queenless double deep hive instead of a starter finisher. I grafted 90 cells but only the one experimental bar(15 cells) had been primed with the pure R.J.. I would guess that I will only get about 30 cells, 27 more than I can use. The rest will be emerged as virgins and hopefully sold.

Anyway does anyone know how much R.J. that they can possibly use? Is a full cell cup only getting half eaten?


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

Starting this season, I too have taken to using the JZsBZs plastic cell bars, they hold 15 JZsBZs wide base plastic cell cups. I can fit two JZsBZs plastic cell bars in a medium wooden frame, or one attached to my former single cell bars.

I would have to harvest royal jelly from lots of queen cells in order to have such a large quantity to prime cell cups with. It should be easier to do a double-graft. This would be similar to my very first attempt to raise my own queens. As my first attempt at queen rearing I removed the queen from a strong colony, then after they started emergency queen cells, I removed the larvae and replaced them with <24 hour old larvae from my chosen mother queen. It worked perfectly -- I soon had my first half-dozen cultured queens.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

Very cool. What did you use for the tint? Food coloring? That would be very useful for the purpose of instructional pictures.


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## muskratcreekhoney (Mar 30, 2010)

Yes, blue food coloring. I just dipped the tip of a toothpick into the coloring and mixed a little in a bowl, then I use a syringe that comes with children's ibuprofen to pipe it into the cells.


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

Where did you get that much royal jelly?


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## AmericasBeekeeper (Jan 24, 2010)

Glorybee sells royal jelly.


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Not "grilling" you, I swear... but keep in mind that the condition and overall quality of the queens will be ultimately dependant upon the nutrition that they receive during development... at each stage of development (every 6 hours) we have pulled grafts from starters and builders to examine just what the bees are truly doing and when... a proper starter will have cleaned out all of the priming jelly and given a fresh food source to the larvae within a few hours of placing in the starter... this is just their way of returning to a natural process from a manipulation... man has yet to produce a form of royal jelly that bees will deem suitable, even stored jelly... this is why David (and most of the rest of us) uses pure jelly for priming (when the temps require it)... in your pic it appears that the tinted jelly was left, yes... but there also appears to be a new pool of fresh jelly that was added creating an excess of jelly... the most probable reason is that the bees were not willing to eat the tinted jelly, and so they made the top of the tinted jelly into the new cell floor... much like they do when floating a larvae up for an emergency cell... about half of a cup is what a good strong starter will produce... when priming, a tiny dab (like Joe described) is plenty... it would be interesting to see if what happens to the old jelly when queens emerge while caged or even in nucs or hives... mainly to see if the queens would be as picky about not consuming the tinted jelly as the bees were, and also to see if the bees would clean it out after she has emerged...

Again, not knocking you... please understand that as a scientist, I accept all possibilities, but feel that the best way to teach others is to be forward. While I sincerely want to encourage you to keep those wheels turning and experiment with every aspect of bee keeping, I just want to help you along the way with explanations for what you find that I and others have learned throughout our careers. Hope that makes sense...


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Joe, we have been harvesting fresh jelly in surplus, if you would like a syringe full, just send me a pm with the address that you want it sent to and I will have some mailed to you.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

You should try priming some cups with both tinted and non tinted jelly - but don't graft into them. Then check back to see if they clean out the non tinted but are reluctant to take the tinted jelly. Whatever happens it wouldn't be "proof" just by itself, but it sure would be evidence. Very cool experiment anyway.


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

Once in awhile when the only forage available to the bees has been prickly pear fruit juice, the royal jelly has turned pink and the larva turn pink too, then unfortunately they fail to mature properly, sometimes the bees just keep extending these cells until they're about 1-1/2 inches long, but they still don't cap them -- finally they tear them down. I've taken to always being ready to feed the cell builders so this doesn't happen again.

I wonder if the royal jelly could be man-modified to affect queen development in a positive way? I mean, other than keeping good feed on the bees so they can produce lots of it and that it has proper nourishment for the developing queens.


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## muskratcreekhoney (Mar 30, 2010)

Joseph- I bought 2 ounces from ginco international, probably about $30.00. I can't vouch for it's purity, it states 100% Royal Jelly and it is meant for human consumption ( made in USA), but is it as nutritious as fresh that is minutes or hours old? Doubtful, but a real scientist would have to prove/disprove that one.

Russell- thanks for your input. How much R.J. do you consider to be enough to provide the necessary nutrition for the queen, i.e. when would you cull a cell because of low feeding? 1/4 full? Care to give us an idea of how much you will be selling the R.J. for? P.S. I would love to have been grafting from my breeder queen. Could you P.M me on order status?


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## muskratcreekhoney (Mar 30, 2010)

David LaFerney said:


> You should try priming some cups with both tinted and non tinted jelly - but don't graft into them. Then check back to see if they clean out the non tinted but are reluctant to take the tinted jelly. Whatever happens it wouldn't be "proof" just by itself, but it sure would be evidence. Very cool experiment anyway.


 I might see that today when I pull the cells.


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## Mbeck (Apr 27, 2011)

Very interesting thread!
Looks like there is still a fair amount unknown.


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## muskratcreekhoney (Mar 30, 2010)

Well, I pulled the cells tonight. I am very disappointed with the amount of R.J. feeding with the grafts that were primed with a small amount of R.J./water mix. This was my first time using a queenless double deep cell builder. Anyway I put the best fed cells in a JZBZ cell holder with the bottoms drilled out and slid in the cage neck.


















second pic is the sealed experimental bar, these were fed well.


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## muskratcreekhoney (Mar 30, 2010)

Now I need some advice on how to return the cell builder to normal. I inspected both deeps and two supers to make sure that there were no started queen cells. I put a new caged queen into the bottom deep, then queen excluder, second deep with caged cells and two supers. The problem is both deeps are plugged with nectar with the exception of 4 frames of sealed brood. Will they move this nectar up to the supers or will I have to do something else?


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

For myself, when using the wide base JZsBZs cell cups, like you show in your photo, I only accept cells where the entire plastic base is full of royal jelly, or very nearly so, when they are sealed. A very few of the cells in this photo have slightly less than full plastic cell bases -->










Most batches of cells I raise are way more than I need, each round. So I use the very best looking cells first, and discard any cells that don't contain a large surplus of royal jelly once they're old enough to plant. I often have a few cells that probably would have produced some fairly nice queens -- but they weren't selected first, so they get discarded.

Cells that look like these are usually those that are selected and planted, first -->










The following cell bars were culled/discarded in their entirety, they just weren't grown well enough to meet my standards -->



















I hadn't thought of actually priming with large amounts of royal jelly -- I had sometimes sacrificed a cell to rob its royal jelly to mix with a little water and use that mixture to prime a bar of new cell grafts with a tiny drop in each.

Now this has got me thinking to try doing a double graft, by aborting a bar of larvae once the cells are nearly full of royal jelly, but before they're sealed, then removing those larvae and re-grafting with new larvae grafted into the full bed of royal jelly. I know that "double grafting" is mentioned in many of the literature about queen rearing, and is often tried by the authors of those books, but it is usually discarded as a method to produce superior queens. I'm thinking that, even if something were tried before, that it couldn't hurt to try it for myself -- maybe I might discover a nuance that could imbue a positive benefit, not before seen.

I'm definitely going to need to assemble a lot more four compartment, 3-frame mating nucs.


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## Broke-T (Jul 9, 2008)

Joseph, I agree with you to a point. I have two cell builders and have seen what you are talking about. 

But as long as there is any leftover RJ didn't the larva get all it wanted?

Johnny


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

It may be true that the larvae have had all the royal jelly they wanted, and that is indicated by having even a little royal jelly remaining in the cell bottoms, but what if they just couldn't reach it? And again as the queens continue to develop I like to think that the moisture stored in the copious jelly helps to maintain a more optimum moisture level inside the cell to facilitate the young queen's development (relative humidity inside the queen cell is a vital factor). If the cell cup holds only a small quantity of surplus royal jelly, it quite often will dry up before the queen emerges, but with the entire JZsBZs cell cup filled with surplus royal jelly, that hasn't happened yet. This hypothesis may or may not be copacetic, or it may be germane in my region, with high Summer temperatures and very low relative humidity, and not so relevant in regions with other climates. It may not even be significant in either case, but it isn't that much more effort to only use cells that have copious quantities of surplus royal jelly -- just in case that might be a relevant factor in optimal queen development.

For instance before these queens would emerge, the royal jelly in most, if not all of these cell cups will have dried up -->


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## muskratcreekhoney (Mar 30, 2010)

J.C. Do you have any pics of your queens? I know that one of the reasons for making sure they have all the food they could possibly need is to make a huge queen that has more ovaries. I would like to see how big a perfect queen is, for comparison. Your cells are awesome! Hopefully my next batch will look better. Do you feed pollen patties while in the builder?


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

I feed my cell builders, after the flow and before the flow with patties that are a combination of sucrose, trehalose, canola oil, brewers yeast, bee pro, hemp protein powder, and moistened with warm sugar water acidified with a little citric acid - sometimes I add some ascorbic acid, too. 

It has just started raining a little, I will take some fresh pics of some queens and post them here, as soon as the weather permits.

Here are some pics of queens I've taken earlier:


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## Broke-T (Jul 9, 2008)

You could have a point with the humidity where you are in AZ. Here in MS its hot and very very very humid. Did I mention its humid. So not much of a problem here.

Here are some cells I pulled last week.









Johnny


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## muskratcreekhoney (Mar 30, 2010)

That's a fat adomen! You are fast at posting pics. Do you think that is about the maximum size obtainable? I would like to see some pics from others as well. How about Russell? 

I wonder if this should be started under another thread, perhaps "queen perfection"?


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## muskratcreekhoney (Mar 30, 2010)

Broke-T Were those from a starter finisher setup? 1oo% not bad!!! One frame on that batch?


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## Broke-T (Jul 9, 2008)

I use a Cloake board between two deeps. Close it to make a queenless starter for 24 to 36 hours then open for a queen right finisher.

I have two cell builders set up. One frame of 30 or 45 cells each. I pull the capped cells and put in incubator. That way I can start new frame every 7 days. I have tried 2 frames in one builder but 90 cells is just too many to get quality cells without a lot of extra work.

Johnny


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## muskratcreekhoney (Mar 30, 2010)

> but 90 cells is just too many


 Yes 90 is what I planted in this last batch, only the one bar was acceptable. Perhaps they would have done better with some added pollen patties and half as many cells.

Where do you keep your incubator? I'm guessing inside because I can't keep the temperature under control in this hot weather.


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## Broke-T (Jul 9, 2008)

Yes the incubator is inside house. It can increase heat but not lower it.

I find I get more good cells starting 45 than I do 90. With 90 they start less and cull rate goes up.

Johnny


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

As promised, here are some recent pics of some queens, I attempted to photograph six queens, but only three of them would hold still long enough for me to get some good pics. Here they are:




























They were all raised from the same Cordovan mother queen, but obviously are only half-Cordovan (hence do not exhibit the Cordovan color). Many of their workers are Cordovan, so they must have mated with some Cordovan drones.


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## valleyman (Nov 24, 2009)

JC
Without using anything but the shape which do you think is the best looking queen of the 3?


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

My choice would be the one in the middle. She's the largest one I've seen yet this season. She is one of the Mystery queens I mentioned in another thread. I just hope she doesn't turn out to be an AHB usurpation queen.


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## muskratcreekhoney (Mar 30, 2010)

That would be my choice also, she has the longest abdomen, however the first pics abdomen looks like it has a really large diameter. I read in one of Larry Connors books that you can count how many segments of abdomen are behind the wings. One plus tip- too small, two plus tip-average, three plus tip- huge(tiger). I don't know how useful it is because how do you account for girth like Joseph's?


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

I read that same book. So far I've never been able to produce cells that I would say were any better than "all right" - faint praise for sure, but most of the queens that I've produced have been fairly big and fat and lay good to excellent patterns. This one is pretty typical - not one of my biggest. Really just one segment + the tip past the wings. Maybe I should start clipping. I haven't even tried to select for size so far, just gentle, productive, and low swarming. Mostly I'm just trying to learn how to do it.










BTW, I've never before purchased cordovan queens, but most of my queens look like this one (with a darker tip usually) but every once in a while I get one that I would call "peach" colored - very pretty. What would you call that? Sorry I don't have a picture.


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## muskratcreekhoney (Mar 30, 2010)

Is it my imagination or are the dark races longer and the lighter colored ones fatter? Is that Cordovan? She looks really fat as well!!


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## Broke-T (Jul 9, 2008)

My dark queens tend to be long and skinny where the yellow queens seem to be shorter and fatter.

Johnny


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

I don't think so - her thorax is pretty much black like it looks like in the picture. I think it has to be reddish to be cordovan. But I've also notice that the carni queens that I've seen are much longer than the golden colored ones in general. But my experience is pretty limited.


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

This is what a Italian Cordovan queen looks like:


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## valleyman (Nov 24, 2009)

You guys have no idea what you are doing to me. After looking at my black queens for the last year (when I can find one), those sure beautys. Thanks for all the posts and pictures. 
JC, I would have got it wrong on which one of the queens looked best, I thought the third one was fatter thereby having more ovaries and sperm storage. That's why I asked.


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

I think we've wandered a little bit away from the original topic of this thread, so I'm going to start a new thread. I also think queen attributes deserves its own thread.

Queen Appearance thread

Of course many issues concerning queens can be related to "royal jelly", quite fascinating how it has such a pivotal and profound affect on the queens produced.


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