# I'm a big dummy



## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

How many strong colonies do you have?


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## sakhoney (Apr 3, 2016)

pouring syrup directly into the entrance of the hive? I'll agree with your title of this post


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

You may find drowned bees in the mating nucs with that syrup pool in them.

Make up mating nucs with frames of stores so they don't need to be fed until the queens have emerged, mated, and are laying.

Your cell builder may need frames of pollen or some pollen sub as well as syrup to raise strong queens. And make sure it's crowded with bees in there.


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## hex0rz (Jan 14, 2014)

kilocharlie said:


> How many strong colonies do you have?


10



sakhoney said:


> pouring syrup directly into the entrance of the hive? I'll agree with your title of this post


Ahem...




RayMarler said:


> Make up mating nucs with frames of stores so they don't need to be fed until the queens have emerged, mated, and are laying.
> 
> Your cell builder may need frames of pollen or some pollen sub as well as syrup to raise strong queens. And make sure it's crowded with bees in there.


If i make a 2 frame mating nuc, that's not very much of anything. Which is supposed to be the point, right?

And emerged, mated and laying is like 2 weeks...

I re supplied the builder with bees, syrup and protein. I'll try it again, lol. They should have it ready for me by now.


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## sakhoney (Apr 3, 2016)

do you happen to see the plastic feeder tray at the wall - that's where he is pouring the feed - not just in the box


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

Good luck, should work better this time around, now that they are hopeless and have food to feed.


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## Gumpy (Mar 30, 2016)

sakhoney said:


> do you happen to see the plastic feeder tray at the wall - that's where he is pouring the feed - not just in the box


Enlarge the image. There's no feeder in that box.


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## hex0rz (Jan 14, 2014)

He's not pouring into any sort of feeder. He's pouring straight into the nuc box. Hope i don't eat crow for saying that. 

But regardless, i just did a round of grafting and checked the mating nucs. They all took the syrup and put in the comb just fine. Gonna have to remember that one from now on..

I gotta say, i have a hard time understanding why the Chinese graft tool is so popular. I hate everything about it. I did 48 cells, let's see how many take this time...

Here's a better shot:


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## sakhoney (Apr 3, 2016)

I stand corrected


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## Sunday Farmer (Nov 13, 2013)

Hex- 
I think you're talking about reusing the cell builder. I've done that, and successfully in the spring, but I always hold my breath worrying about those cells. Especially if they have enough nurse bees. It seems that if the unit isn't well fed, you'll get a really low take on the next round, like the results you mentioned. 
Just to share- I keep quarts in my truck. "Deli's" or "quarts" is the kitchen jargon for those clear plastic containers restaurants use for all their food prep. Your wholesale restaurant/paper distributer will sell them by the case of sleeve. They are like 13 cents each and an 8 penny nail hole in the lid turns it into a quick feeder. Not as long lasting as paint cans, but for me and my traveling they stack inside themselves and take up little space. Just need an empty extra super and tyvek with a hole for an inner.


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## hex0rz (Jan 14, 2014)

sakhoney said:


> I stand corrected


...and am apology for the insult.


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## hex0rz (Jan 14, 2014)

Sunday Farmer said:


> What is all that white crap?


Have you never learned about the seasons and the trees? 



Sunday Farmer said:


> Hex-
> I think you're talking about reusing the cell builder. I've done that, and successfully in the spring, but I always hold my breath worrying about those cells. Especially if they have enough nurse bees. It seems that if the unit isn't well fed, you'll get a really low take on the next round, like the results you mentioned.
> Just to share- I keep quarts in my truck. "Deli's" or "quarts" is the kitchen jargon for those clear plastic containers restaurants use for all their food prep. Your wholesale restaurant/paper distributer will sell them by the case of sleeve. They are like 13 cents each and an 8 penny nail hole in the lid turns it into a quick feeder. Not as long lasting as paint cans, but for me and my traveling they stack inside themselves and take up little space. Just need an empty extra super and tyvek with a hole for an inner.


I'm using a wax nuc box for my starter finisher. Can't really add anything to the top.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

Sunday Farmer said:


> What is all that white crap?


A new Small hive beetle prevention method.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>I did what i thought was a nifty workaround too. I don't have anything to feed the mating nucs so i duck tape the bottom seams of the box and elevated the front and poured syrup right into the box. Probably a quart of syrup each. 

I would use more like a half a cup and just before dark... but this method has been used by people like Jay Smith and Roger Morse and others for decades. A quart will probably overflow and run on the ground and probably won't get stored by the next morning so it will lead to robbing...


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

Food + large number of nurse bees + right age larvae should give you decent cells. If in a dearth, feed. For me the biggest trick was getting the right sized cell builder for my dinky operation. I am extremely flexible how I build them as long as I get the basics down. So far there is a flow during all my efforts and am done for the year. 

I think if you are having trouble with grafting, I would try both grafting and a cut cell method at the same time and see if there is a difference. I got some really nice cells by taking a failed mating nuc with capped brood, adding frames of food, shaking in bees from about 10 frames of brood, some open. Putting it on a hive with a top entrance and diverting all the foragers into that 5 frame set up. The cells were almost an inch and a half long. The weight of the bees was so much they tore some of my strips off (I have a solution for that for next year). If not for that I think I would have got 25 to 30 very good cells out of it. But I only needed the 12 they gave me. After they got the cells started (and they jumped on them) I expanded them into a 2 5 frame set up with the cells in the bottom box. They could make comb in the top. They stay in this setup with the foragers until the cells get capped. Then I can take them off and give the foragers back. 

I had very good results but I've raised all the queens during a flow. Will see how well the last batch gets mated. My mating results have improved dramatically over last year. The differences I think is that they used to be in a queen castle like situation, and now I spread them so each is in a distinct location. I also bring in the bees/brood from other yards. They orient to the location they are brought and there is a good mix of bee ages in most nucs. I make them up the same day, so they probably experience a 2 hr period of queenlessness. They are very interested in the queen cells when placed and they are waxed in almost immediately. Its great because they orient and start foraging within a day. I do lose some when they decide to make their own cells. 2 or 3 this year.


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## sakhoney (Apr 3, 2016)

and here's your apology - but in all that snow - very little chance of robbing - middle of the summer well ??? - Why would you not pull a dry comb and tilt it sideways then pour the syrup in the dry comb - way less mess.


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## m0dem (May 14, 2016)

Is that snow??
Where do you live? The North Pole?!


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Why are you grafting so many larva?

As a side note, I hated the Chinese tool the first time I used it too, but this year I got my head on straight and it's a pretty good tool for the job. I think one of the hardest parts of grafting as a new grafter is keeping everything moist enough and handling the larva correctly. It probably takes you "forever" to graft 48 cells and you might sense that and rush which might be causing you to flip larva you otherwise could have done correctly. I know I get frustrated because it feels like it's taking me a long time to graft. But I only graft 30. Honestly, I'd graft 10 if I was you. And make sure those 10 are prime age larva. Be super careful and take your time on those 10.

I understand the desire to go with the scatter gun approach of "I only need a few of these, but I'm not sure I'm good enough at this to get that many so I'm going to graft 3-4 times as many as I need and hope some take". 
But as others have said, it's more than likely that it is at least in part related to the strength of the cell builder.



m0dem said:


> Is that snow??
> Where do you live? The North Pole?!


That's Michael Palmer feeding nucs in Vermont. In winter obviously. Actually probably really early spring.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Sometimes you do what you have to do to fix a problem. I had a group of 4 frame nucs ready to deliver to customers by April 25. That night it snowed 3'. The nucs were buried with heavy, wet snow. Trees broken down. The power was off for 3 days. No one could get to my place as everyone was snowed in. So I poured a bit of syrup in each that looked light. None starved. 

Never say never.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

With 10 hives, I 'd recommend trying the David LaFerney's / Joseph Clemens' method of making up a few queens at a time, all season long, in a ventilated 6-frame nuc' box, not batches of 48 queen cells at a time in a Michael Palmer "Bee Bomb" starter/finisher.

At 9 AM on Day -10 (10 days before Grafting Day, which is Day Zero), prime the nuc' with 6 frames of capped / hatching brood. NO QUEEN CELLS ALLOWED!!! Feed them a high-quality patty over a feeder rim with 1/2" hardware cloth so that the bees have full access to it. Make the top a jar feeder top with a quart of 1:1 + HBH.

On Day -6, check for queen cells and remove all that you find. Check them again. NO QUEEN CELLS ALLOWED!!! Feed as necessary. 

At 7 AM on Day -3, isolate at least 2 breeder queens (they live in different hives!) each on a single, freshly-drawn comb locked in by queen excluder material, preferrably in a Pritchard Box. Now go over to the LaFerney nuc Starter / Finisher colony. Remove the 2 frames that have the most hatched-out, empty cells. Replace one with a frame of pollen and the other with a frame of open brood from another hive - this is Ray Marler's trick to get the nurse bees into queen rearing mode.

On Day -1, set up your back pack tent for grafting, put in your table, your chair, your bucket for warm water, your spray bottle to dampen the cell cups, a towel to dampen and cover the grafts as you go, your loupes, your head lamp, and your grafting tools. Now go to the 6-frame Cell Builder nuc', and remove the frame with the fewest unhatched bees and replace it with your queen cell cup frame for polishing. Feed them a fresh pollen patty and a fresh jar of syrup.
If running more batches of queens, you can now replace all hatching brood combs with full combs of capped brood from strong, healthy donor hives. The hatched-out frames can go back to their original hives.

At 3 PM on Day Zero (80 hours after isolating the breeder queen), get the queen cell cup frame out of the nuc box, get a grafting donor frame from one of the breeder queen hives, brush off all the bees, take it over to the tent, brush all the bees off your suit, go in the tent and graft a frame of no more than 16 queen cells, less if it is after the main nectar / pollen flow. place them back into the Starter / Finisher nuc'.

On Day 8, peek at the queen cell frame, count the cells. Now go make up that many nuc's. Put robbing screens on the nuc's, and feeders. Place them in the back of the flatbed truck.

On Day 9, Cut out the queen cells and plant them into the mating nuc's. Move them at least 10 miles to a known DCA (Drone Congregating Area) with a good pollen flow. Fill the feeders, and give them a patty.

On Day 10 (11 days after the first graft) you can repeat the queen rearing cycle.

On Day 20, transfer the bees from the nuc's into 8- or 10-frame boxes. Any that do not have a laying queen can be combined with other colonies.

On Day 28, treat the nuc' colonies (now in full-size boxes) with Oxalic Acid dribble as described in Randy Oliver's website, www.scientificbeekeeping.com Day 28 to 30 is a very special opportunity to treat a new colony when most mites are phoretic (exposed). This starts a new colony out right - NO MITES  Donate $10.00 to Randy!

Re-read David LaFerney's posts, and Michael Palmer's "sticky" thread, "My Cell Building Methods". David LaFerney's / Joseph Clemen's system of a few good queen cells all season long should build your apiary up after a few successes. Soon you'll be out of one queen rearing resource or another. Next year, you may have a large enough apiary for Michael Plamer's method of a large, powerful, 2-1/2 to 3-box tall "Bee Bomb" Cell builder colony so you can graft 48 queen cells at a time, or use Oldtimer's / Jay Smith's / Henry Alley's *Cut Cell Method*.

Hope this helps. Good luck!


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## Sunday Farmer (Nov 13, 2013)

Daniel Y said:


> A new Small hive beetle prevention method.


Better than nematodes?????


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

I'm always amazed by the photos that show up. Never knew those were online.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Michael Palmer said:


> I'm always amazed by the photos that show up. Never knew those were online.


Here's some more 
http://s97.photobucket.com/user/winevines/library/Keith Vermont Beekeeping Photos?sort=6&page=1


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## COAL REAPER (Jun 24, 2014)

wow that really is a tremendous amount of dandylions


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## winevines (Apr 7, 2007)

Michael Palmer said:


> I'm always amazed by the photos that show up. Never knew those were online.


Weren't those Keith's? I don't recall he ever posted them on line but there they are


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Yes, I would say Keith's


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## jean-marc (Jan 13, 2005)

Hex0rz:

Duct tape, Red would be proud. Either way the styrofoam nucs that Dave Tegart designed that are being sold by BetterBee ue the same idea. Solid and sealed bottom. Feed is poured through the entrance, goes to the bottom and the bees feed.

The principal reason you are lacking success is the bees are lacking nutrition. On your first graft there could have been the tail end of the honeyflow. On the second it was over.

Jea-Marc


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