# First Graft of the Year



## Harley Craig

my question is why the varying age of intermixed larva those ages are all over the board?


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## jwcarlson

Patterned looked like garbage right out of the gate this winter (typical of this queen). Then she gets herself together and now it is nice and tight. Same thing happened last year right before she started this:


That pic was almost a year ago to the day. Early brood was a spotty mess. Then that.

I don't know if it's an inrush of mites in that first couple waves or what. I don't have an answer to why. I did crop in on that picture, those couple those few that are a day older or so are the only ones on the frame. The rest are within hours other than a bit of capped towards the top. I'm not sure I'd consider those larva ages "all over the board". 

This is all over the board:


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## BadBeeKeeper

> If you spotted the discolored larva, well done.


LOL, my eye jumped straight to it.

In hives I opened yesterday, I also noticed variability in the ages of adjacent brood cells.


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## cheryl1

Awesome!


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## jwcarlson

20 of them about like those four pictured closely. And one tiny little shrimpy one that I won't use. Very happy with how they turned out... now to get them mated...


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## cheryl1

Getting them mated is probably the hard part lol. I grew lots of cells last year with splits, but they didn't all return and lay


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## jwcarlson

*knock on wood* the return rate here is pretty good (80% or better usually, but I have a small sample size). But this is earlier than I've tried before. So we'll see. Setting up 8 or 10 mating nucs hoping to get about half of those back and laying and I'd consider it a success.


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## cheryl1

I had 80% last year too. I still need 19 queens to meet my expansion goal this year.


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## jwcarlson

cheryl1 said:


> I had 80% last year too. I still need 19 queens to meet my expansion goal this year.


Better raise 23.75 queens then. 

I say 80%+ only because I don't keep really good track... for most of last year it was 100%, but then I had a few failures. Probably for reasons related to yours truly. :-D
I may graft right on top of pulling the cells out. Pull them Saturday graft Sunday.


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## jim lyon

jwcarlson said:


> Better raise 23.75 queens then.
> 
> I say 80%+ only because I don't keep really good track... for most of last year it was 100%, but then I had a few failures. Probably for reasons related to yours truly. :-D
> I may graft right on top of pulling the cells out. Pull them Saturday graft Sunday.


No reason you can't put a second graft in there as long as the first ones are capped over.


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## jwcarlson

jim lyon said:


> No reason you can't put a second graft in there as long as the first ones are capped over.


Thanks, Jim.
It's about timing. That said, grafting mid-week might be the way to go. With how small I am (apiary-wise) I'm not sure I'll have the resources to back it up with another round of mating nucs. But now I'm tempted. Worst case I could sell the cells maybe, right?

You've got me noodling now. That's dangerous.


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## jim lyon

Now your talking....and make it no minimum order as long as you are at it and your phone will light up like a Christmas tree.


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## cheryl1

I'm leery of selling queens until I've had a season to evaluate how these turn out. I don't want to sell poor queens and stain my reputation before I even have one lol.


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## jwcarlson

All the daughters and granddaughters from this "breeder" queen survived last winter. She's going into year 3. I'm not too worried. People are coming to pick up the extra cells Saturday and they were happy with this queens granddaughters last year (also from cells) so... 

Jim no minimum order haha, I would have to consider a maximum order.


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## Brad Bee

That's one heck of a brood pattern. Good looking QC's too. Good job.

I think selling ripe Queen Cells is a good way to do it, if you've got the market. Making mated queens is a chore, making QC's not so much.

EDIT: I thought for sure you had some funky brood disease with the orange larvae.


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## beepro

Don't worry about the perfect laying queens over a season before
selling them. In a production environment you will have those from
time to time. Just offer a replacement queen when it happened. I check
on the status of the virgin until she is mated and laying in a good pattern.
That is good enough for me! The fast laying prolific queen will be a potential
breeder in the future.


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## David LaFerney

Great work! Mine always end up being fully encased in comb by the time they are ready to plant which bothered me to no end at first, but it turns out that it doesn't seem to matter at all. I do pick the wax off the tip though.


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## jwcarlson

I pulled the feed so hopefully they don't. Had started a little comb on a couple of them but nothing major.


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## lharder

jwcarlson said:


> *knock on wood* the return rate here is pretty good (80% or better usually, but I have a small sample size). But this is earlier than I've tried before. So we'll see. Setting up 8 or 10 mating nucs hoping to get about half of those back and laying and I'd consider it a success.


I was looking at the foliage in your photos and it looked early spring to me. 

Its only mid April here and am easing into raising some queens. But its so warm and we are way ahead of the game with flowering etc. I have a queenless nuc that I gave a frame of brood to see what they do. Have also set up a cell builder for 10 days from the weekend. Will take the best emergency cell and put it in a nuc box, then try some grafting for the first time this spring.


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## jwcarlson

lharder said:


> I was looking at the foliage in your photos and it looked early spring to me.


Late maples are just now blooming. Apple trees just started. Dandelions have been going about a week.
It's early here.

Good luck with your queen rearing, lharder!


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## David LaFerney

jwcarlson said:


> I pulled the feed so hopefully they don't. Had started a little comb on a couple of them but nothing major.


It really doesn't matter if they have comb on them or not - If I was planning to reuse the cell builder I would probably just keep feeding them.


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## jwcarlson

Grafted again, looks like out of 29 (one fell off the cell bar after I placed them) there were 24 or so building.


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## lharder

At my outyard, I just put on some snelgrove boards on 2 of my strongest hives. All the brood went above the snelgrove board into a single 8 frame box. Each had 9 frames of brood. In 10 days they will be packed with bees. I think I will let them raise a queen cell if they want, cut them out, put in a nuc, then put a board under them and use them as cell builders. Won't graft, but will give them a frame of eggs on new comb. 

Let the games begin.


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## jwcarlson

I couldn't help myself and looked at four of the mating nucs today (day they're set to emerge). Found three cells emerged and one starting to chew out by the look of it. 

Saw two of them right near the cells:


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## Colobee

All I can see is "Oops, Your image was linked incorrectly..." (photo bucket)


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## Harley Craig

that first pic is a monster queen!


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## jwcarlson

Colobee said:


> All I can see is "Oops, Your image was linked incorrectly..." (photo bucket)


Strange... Anyone else seeing that? Harley apparently can see them.


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## Arnie

They look nice, JW.
Good job.


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## Colobee

I can see those last two (nice!). 

Still getting the same "Oops..." for all the rest.


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## jwcarlson

Colobee said:


> I can see those last two (nice!).
> 
> Still getting the same "Oops..." for all the rest.


Well, it's nothing you haven't seen before, Colobee.


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## jwcarlson

I shared cells with a couple of local beekeepers. One texted me yesterday afternoon. 8 days after emergence they had two of three laying eggs. 
And this morning the other guy who got cells sent me this video:


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## Arnie

Nice!


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## jwcarlson

Checked one of the four way castles tonight. 4 for 4 laying.


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## jwcarlson

Looks like of the first batch of 9 placed cells 7 are mated and laying. One was almost empty of bees about a week ago so I assume she either croaked trying to orient or mate and the bees drifted or they swarmed out on her mating flight? The other 'miss' was a cell that emerged into a screwed up queen situation hive that has been messed up since coming out of winter. LWers I think, I shut them off with some brood, gave them a cell and the cell emerged. So either she didn't make it back or she's slower than the others. Might check that one again this weekend, maybe shake them through an excluder and if no queen shake them out entirely and put their combs to use. 



Anyway 7 of 9 for the first round. 9 more from the graft a week younger, one of those intro'd as a virgin looks to be a miss already, otherwise the nucs look like they still have good activity.


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## lharder

That's a pretty good result. I have almost as many waiting for results but am a little more than a week out before I can check. How big do you make your mating nucs?


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## jwcarlson

lharder said:


> How big do you make your mating nucs?


The majority of these are in two frame queen castles (four in a ten frame deep). I made four of them. Like them pretty well, but this is my first go. Two frames is pretty small. Maybe as I grow a little bit I'll use 5-frame deeps.


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## beepro

Two framers only good for mating purpose.
The expansion is the hard part as the foreign bees will
balled the newly mated queen. She's not their own.
Queens I can make but how to expand without the drawn
comb ahead of time?


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## lharder

jwcarlson said:


> The majority of these are in two frame queen castles (four in a ten frame deep). I made four of them. Like them pretty well, but this is my first go. Two frames is pretty small. Maybe as I grow a little bit I'll use 5-frame deeps.


I have some mediocre returns last year, but that may because of overcuriosity/over intervention/bad queens rather than the 2 frames of bees/brood I give them. 

I'm trying real hard to wait the proper amount of time before checking them. I am considering giving them 3 frames of bees. Are your queen castles in the same yard as your big hives?


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## jwcarlson

lharder said:


> Are your queen castles in the same yard as your big hives?


Yes, some. Two of them in my backyard with no other hives. I checked them one of 4 laying the other three look queenless. Looked really hard this AM after not seeing queens last night. 1 of 4 from that set by the looks of it.  4 for 4 on the earlier set in other corner of the yard... Weird.


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## Charlestonbee

Did you use a queenless cell builder/finisher for production of these queens, or did you start them in queenless builder and finish over queen right finished?


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## jwcarlson

Queenless starter/finisher. 5 frame over 5 frame nuc, 6 frames of sealed brood on April 3rd grafted April 13th and again on April 20th. Hindsight... I probably should have grafted a bit earlier and used closer to emerging brood, but... it's worked out OK. Cups were completely full of jelly with some left over for both sets of queens. So I think that's about all I could ask for. Thinking about setting up another this weekend as I tore down the builder when I pulled the second set of cells to make up mating nucs.


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## beepro

I think now is the time to incorporate some
vsh genetics into your apiary. Already put in an order for a 
vsh queen coming at the end of this month. Though the 
algogrooming is here it is not enough I think. Continue to
graft from the survivor will not let me have a tf apiary later on.
Need to inject some mite resistant capable bees too. Now where is
that mite biting breeder? Been looking around for a while now.


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## jwcarlson

beepro said:


> Now where is
> that mite biting breeder? Been looking around for a while now.


Carpenter Apiaries in Florida is one, I think.
http://www.carpentersapiaries.com/Pages/default.aspx

And there's someone out in Washington (state)
www.northwestqueens.com

And Dan O'hanlon...
www.mountainstatequeens.com

I got pricing from all of those, but haven't bought any. From NW Queens I'm on the list, but so far haven't heard anything. I'd like to bring a couple in just for kicks.


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## Charlestonbee

Yeah it looked good to me. I'm only trying to make about 15-30 queens next year in two rounds should this may be my method. Thanks for your post


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## jwcarlson

Charlestonbee said:


> Yeah it looked good to me. I'm only trying to make about 15-30 queens next year in two rounds should this may be my method. Thanks for your post


My "method" is basically a mish-mash of Joseph Clements, David LaFerney, and what I've picked up watching Michael Palmer's talks on YouTube.

But the bottom line is tons of queenless nurse bees and the correct aged larva. It's easy to look at something like what MP does and get a little overwhelmed, but remember you need to scale it. He's probably grafting 2-3 times as many cells as you will be and is going to be. I'm happy with how mine turned out. It looks like (after checking another queen castle today) that I will be either 11 for 18 or 12 for 18. The real head scratcher is the queen castles in opposite corners of my yard... one was 4 for 4... the other 1 for 4. :scratch: Two of those failures are absolutely crawling with bees on their two frames. I guess that's part of the fun. 

My goal was to get 50% of them back. So I exceeded that. Now we'll see how well they were mated.


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## Charlestonbee

Yeah please update on how well they mated and what the pattern was like. That's my only concern using the Emergency response only. I hope they lay like champs.


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## beepro

Here is what I'm proposing or at least heading toward that
direction. Gather all the tf queens available from the vsh LA bee lab, squarepeg's tf,
algogrooming, and the mite biting. Send all those drones to your DCAs in the early
Spring time. That means you have to build up the production hives ahead of time to
supplement feed them when it is still cold, raining, or snow bound depending on what
bee environment you are in. See Mike Palmer walking on the snows to check
his nuc and production hives on you tube. This is a proactive bee management approach to
get those early drones as I have read that these are the best if you want to get the early build up
production hives. Every year select the best breeders to either trade with members here or for
sale. This is the best approach when trying to establish a tf hive to build up the mite resistant bees
in your local area. Bring in the best to establish the best!


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## yotebuster1200

Charlestonbee said:


> Yeah please update on how well they mated and what the pattern was like. That's my only concern using the Emergency response only. I hope they lay like champs.


If you listen to Palmer he mentions that they build the cells with more of a swarm response. That is why 10 days before grafting he places 7 frames of emerging brood into the cell builder (which is already full of bees) after 10 days these frames will hatch and you will have prime swarm conditions and perfect conditions for raising queens. 

Like already mentioned, if you are doing this with nucs you just need to scale down the number of frames by half and it should work just as well.


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## Charlestonbee

Bees won't swarm without a queen so a queenless builder/finisher is working of emergency response. That's why he uses a queen right cell finisher to promote swarm response.


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## jwcarlson

It's about the amount of royal jelly and the age of the larva. Not what "mode" the bees are in... At least that's my opinion. 

What's the difference if my queen is raised in queenless starter/finisher who still has ample royal jelly on the day she emerges compared to a queen started under emergency response, finished over a queenright colony who also has ample royal jelly at emergence? Considering both grafted as hours old larva? If someone can point to a legitimate difference besides cell size I'd love to read it.


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## Charlestonbee

Yes that's my thing. If you can produce good laying queens it doesn't matter to me. That's what makes this method appealing.


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## jwcarlson

Charlestonbee said:


> Yes that's my thing. If you can produce good laying queens it doesn't matter to me. That's what makes this method appealing.


Emergency response makes plenty of quality queens if that's what you're worried about. Here's an emergency response queen's pattern from last year... Mated in September.


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## lharder

I think emergency queens could be OK. I am doing my last snelgrove manipulation this weekend. 10 frames of brood, placed above 2 excluders, the top excluder will be replaced by a snelgrove board in 1 or 2 days depending. I have some top entrances, so after the snelgrove board is in place, I let the foragers feed the top box for a couple of days to pack it with food (lots of feed on the brood frames this time of year) before I divert them back to the bottom queen. I've got some really nice looking cells this way...except for the last batch. Usually I get 5 or so that I can place, but this time only had 3 decent cells to work with. 

So current vision is to get 2 queen systems going in my hives with 2 year survivor queens. I'll put the new daughter queen in the lower boxes, and put the old 2 year survivor in the top boxes. After the snelgrove manipulations are done, I will then set up a cell builder (I know I keep changing my mind) and start experimenting with grafting. I like the five over five set up JW for my scale of operation. In combination with newly established 2 queen systems, and a bunch of newly laying queens in nucs, I should have lots of resources to work with.


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## cheryl1

I *think* the rational is that you're more likely to get all cells capped under the swarm response, versus the emergency response where they may decide they have done enough cells and leave the rest. I'm pretty sure that's what I heard at the holiday inn express last night. In real life I haven't noticed a difference in my extremely limited experience.


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## jwcarlson

cheryl1 said:


> I *think* the rational is that you're more likely to get all cells capped under the swarm response, versus the emergency response where they may decide they have done enough cells and leave the rest. I'm pretty sure that's what I heard at the holiday inn express last night. In real life I haven't noticed a difference in my extremely limited experience.


I'm not disagreeing with you. But my little 5 frames of brood method capped 21 cells then I grafted after they were capped and they capped another 24 of them literally the next frame over while the other 21 were there.

I don't know what to make of that other than I do not believe the bees are counting cells.


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## beepro

No, they are not counting the cells. The nurse bee's job is to feed as
many of these cells as they cell builder can make them. No queen less
bees can ignore a ripe age larva to turn it into a queen cell. This is in their
nature to do so and we're exploiting their response in such a condition. After 4
years of grafting I'm still learning the system. No matter what RJ is the key as mentioned by JW.
So keep that cell finisher stock up with the nurse bees to concentrate all their effort on building those
healthy cells.


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## lharder

jwcarlson said:


> I'm not disagreeing with you. But my little 5 frames of brood method capped 21 cells then I grafted after they were capped and they capped another 24 of them literally the next frame over while the other 21 were there.
> 
> I don't know what to make of that other than I do not believe the bees are counting cells.


Really? I didn't think they would do that. One of my issues is missing queen cells and nothing getting done. 

Now if I only had a use for another 24 cells at a time. 

This discussion has ended up being pretty useful. I think I know what I'm going to do with my failed mating nucs. Combine them in a 5 over 5 nuc box, add some brood, let them raise a few emergency cells and some brood, then place a graft in them. Efficient recycling of resources.


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## cheryl1

I use queenless starter/finishers for cells and my graft went fine. That's what I'll continue to do unless I start running into problems.


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## Charlestonbee

Yes jwcarlson I'll be using your method. I should have 10 hives and 10 nucs coming through winter. That's my guess accepting a 20% winter death. Im gonna make the first grafts as soon as first drones emerge. Again I'll only need 15-50 queens depending on how season goes. I'll be growing and splitting so I'm going to try and time my rounds to accompany splits. I like how I can keep your super nuc goin by adding a frame of brood every week. I'll keep you posted next year


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## jwcarlson

Good luck! I really enjoy queen rearing.


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## jwcarlson

Not going to be in a 5 frame nuc for long...


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## Charlestonbee

Sweet. How did you set up the 5 over 5 cell builder


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## jwcarlson

Charlestonbee said:


> Sweet. How did you set up the 5 over 5 cell builder


Three frames of capped brood centered up top, two or three down below (can't recall if I took 5 or 6). The remaining frames in each box were mix of honey/pollen as best I could. 
Waited ten days, checked for cells (there were none as none of the frames had young larva, but make sure you check). Kept 1-2 quarts of feed on them while they were actively building cells in jars above surrounded by an empty box. I'd put a frame of eggs in about 24 or 48 hours before you plan to graft. Get those nurse bees revved up and ready to go plus get plenty of jelly for when you graft. I only put them in a few hours before on my first attempt and on the second pulled a frame right from the "breeder" and they were well fed so easy to graft. The ones the first time grafted well, but there wasn't very big pools of jelly for the larva yet. Of course they were really really fresh, so they hadn't had much of a chance to feed them yet. The second go I used slightly larger larva but still much less than a day old.


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## beepro

Here is my plan for next year to set up either a temporarily cell builder or finisher.
Put 5 frames of bee bread in the lower nuc box along with the attached bees.
Then 5 frames of about to emerge broods along with the attached bees. This nuc
hive should be fairly strong coming from the donated strong production hive.
And then choose a strong production hive with lots of foragers. 
Swap the position of the nuc hive with the position of the production hive a few hours
before the sunset. Now all the foragers will go inside this nuc hive. Instantly the hive population
will be beefed up. What is the difference is that rather than using the you tube vid of a closed circuit
nuc hive, this nuc hive is alive because all the working foragers will be bringing in the extra resources.
Finally add 2 pounds of patty subs and a syrup feeder on top. Make sure there is syrup available all the
time. 
Use a small 3 x 2" push in wire cage to house the queen temporarily. This way they will turn all the remaining
eggs/larvae into the worker broods. Two days before the first graft, put in an open frame of mature larvae in the center of the top box. This frame will be replaced with the graft cell frame on the day of the graft. Shake the remaining bees off the larvae frame. Check on the cell frame after one day. Any unaccepted cell should be removed. That is why it is so important to graft more than what you need just in case some cells got rejected. How's that for an improved cell nuc hive? Anything else that I might of missed?


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## jwcarlson

Sounds fine to me, beepro. I wouldn't bother putting a queen in there though as I've pretty well always had colonies with queens under push-in cages start cells anyway. Next time I set one up I might seek out actively emerging brood, this time I just kind of grabbed what I could find. 

I do like the idea of swapping locations with a big colony. I really considered doing it but about that time the stand at that yard filled up and swapping positions was going to be too much monkeying around. Mine turned out satisfactory (for me). Got 12-14 queens out of it... their quality remains to be seen, but their egg patterns looked pretty good.


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## jwcarlson

Most queens averaging 1.5 or two frames about like this. Drawing comb in their 5 framers... need to come up with plan for what I want to keep, sell, etc. And I think I need to assemble some more deep frames. It's about to get crazy.

There is one dud... not sure what happened. She never really laid much, but there is some worker brood capped. They've got two supercedure cells built that will be capped here in a few days. Queen still wandering around. Will probably cut the cells and give those drawn frames to one of my colonies who could use some laying space to *hopefully* keep the queen grounded.


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## yotebuster1200

Those are some great looking frames. Looks like you have some real winners there.


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## jwcarlson

Well these tiny 2-frame nucs have blow up into an average of 20 frames without feed or bee input. So from mid-May when I moved them from 2-frame to 5 they've grown that much. Did a couple more rounds mid-June and those queens are building up now. Not quite as successful in the mating department... but there's a lot more dragonflies and other predators around now than there is in early-May. All told I raised somewhere between 40 and 50 queens through to mating. Gave some away, sold some, culled some... used most for new colonies and shortly will use them to requeen some production colonies for next year. The remainder will overwinter in nucs and might sell them as overwintered nucs next spring.

Some highlights... probably a repeat or two:


Pretty typical brood frame:


All grown up... before/after:




All in-all, it's been a heck of a fun year. Nothing cooler than raising your own queens and watching them outperform your expectations tremendously. I had to buy more equipment and assemble extra boxes... but I won't complain.

Now to keep them in their boxes the rest of the summer and next spring. Gotta put this new 18-frame extractor to work.


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## Charlestonbee

Yeah I'm a little worried ab keeping mine in boxes still too lol. Great pictures. Queens look great.


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## Arnie

Very nice! Watch out Mike Palmer!

Do you keep track of your various queens' lineage? I thought briefly about trying to keep records to see which 'line' of queens in our small operation were which and track performance etc, but then realized I didn't care enough to document it all. I will raise queens from the best performers regardless. Russian, Italian, Carni.... I don't care; show me the honey, don't swarm too much, and get through the winter strong. That's what I want. They'll all be mutts in a couple years anyhow.

Anyway, nice work.


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## lharder

Yes those are very nice looking queens.


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## Brad Bee

My queen must have got lost in the mail??? 

You had a great year.

What are you painting them with and how are you doing it? I think I'd have to lock them down in a vice to get that sort of paint job.


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## Nordak

Those are some beauties. Good work!


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## beepro

My communication with my seller is a really close one from
the time I put in the order to the time that the queen package arrived at
the transfer station. I usually go there to pick up the package because our
summer heat is in the triple digits every year at this time. A study done on 
exposing the queen to prolong heat will destroyed the stored sperms. I don't want
to risk that on my bought queens. 
So get in contact with the seller to track it. There is a tracking number that you can
go online on the shipper's website to see the transit process. From this tracking # I can
find my package to take home to hive the queen. Don't wait too long in this hot weather!


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## jwcarlson

Arnie said:


> Very nice! Watch out Mike Palmer!
> 
> Anyway, nice work.


Hahahaha, and thank you. 

Re: lineages... In my brain. I'm not big enough to worry about it too much. I know the queen's mom and in some cases grandmother. Rudimentary picking "breeders" based on production, temperament, and how they deal with mites. I am by no means a "breeder". 



Brad Bee said:


> My queen must have got lost in the mail???
> 
> You had a great year.
> 
> What are you painting them with and how are you doing it? I think I'd have to lock them down in a vice to get that sort of paint job.


Re: queen, PM me. 

Re: paint, testors and grass stem. Michael Palmer's suggestions.


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## beepro

Unless you don't want to go the tf route later on, requeening 50 hives is
expensive. Maybe by then you've sold enough honey to make up the difference.
I rather use the tf genetics to expand from a small scale into a bigger operation. That way
the genetics are pretty much in uniform. Trying to keep the Cordovan genetics going is hard here
when there are the local carnis dominating the DCAs.


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