# First grafting session of 2014 a success!!



## KPeacock (Jan 29, 2013)

Congrats! I"m going to make my first attempt at it this year. I'll be happy with 15% on my first try. I'll try the wet towel too!


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## WWW (Feb 6, 2011)

Looks great!!!!


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

Well done!


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## Deepsouth (Feb 21, 2012)

looking good!!!!!


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## Flyer Jim (Apr 22, 2004)

Way to go. :thumbsup:


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## DLMKA (Feb 7, 2012)

I hope I can have that kind of success when I try it when it warms up a little.


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## hystad (Jan 14, 2011)

Cool


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## s1sweetser (Aug 9, 2013)

I did my first graft of the year on March 15 too! Excellent job - they look great!!


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## Matt903 (Apr 8, 2013)

So you just used one hive as for the whole process? No queenless starter, and then transfer to a queen right finisher? The reason I ask is that I want to try grafting this year, and just trying to figure out the best method.


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## BeeGhost (May 7, 2011)

Thanks everyone!&#55357;&#56349;&#55357;&#56397;

Matt, i used the Starter/Finisher system that was described in the queen breeding section of this site since it better fits my time constraints i have in life! I also got to bring this hive home with me to watch the progress of things for my own learning experience!

The first thing you do is put a frame of mostly capped larva in the nuc. Then take and shake LOTS of nurse bees into it, I mean probably 6 or 8 frames worth atleast, you want enough bees that they will completely cover 4 frames and have more hanging from the bottoms of the frames, a jam packed house!! Then I added a frame of uncapped nectar, a frame of fresh pollen and then the grafting frame with the cell cups in it. I left them for 2 hours to let them know they were queenless and then I took out the grafting frame, filled the cups with 4 day old larva and after adding a larva to a cup i would cover that cup with a moist towel so the larva would not dry out while grafting other cups. After grafting i put the grafting frame between a frame of pollen/nectar and a frame of the capped brood with some uncapped larva. I took the whole double deep nuc home and there I took the top nuc off and added a bowl of water with a sponge in it on the frameless bottom nuc, the water is for the bees since there are very few foragers. I also added some pollen sub and 1:1 sugar syrup in a quart sized paint can that had 5 holes in the lid that i poked in with a push pin. 

The big difference i did this time compared to the other two attempts is i added a ton of nurse bees and covered the grafting frame with a moist towel to keep the larva hydrated. The last two times i attempted I added maybe two frames of bees and left the grafts open while i was grafting and i could litterally see the larva dry out.

I am not an expert by any means but I have to thank Joseph Clemens and David Laferny for describing the method i used above!


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## Beetastic (Apr 12, 2011)

Nice! I'll be doing my first round this week. What are your plans for the queens?


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## BeeGhost (May 7, 2011)

I'm going to make splits with them! I am making the splits up Saturday afternoon and will add cells Monday after work! I am basically going to break up all the hives into Nucs and do a large increase of numbers, if queens fail to return from mating flights i will combine the queenless ones with queenrite ones, and start the process all over in another month! I basically want to get up to 40 hives by summer!


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

I grafted way back in January, they're taking off!!!!!






wait a minute... wrong forums again.......


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## BeeGhost (May 7, 2011)

LOL JRG13!!! What are those?


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

Cherries. I start pruning and just can't let them go to waste so I start changing over some of the non productive stuff that's redundant.


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

JRG13 said:


> I grafted way back in January, they're taking off!!!!!
> 
> 
> 
> wait a minute... wrong forums again.......


your bad, had me looking for something flying until I saw the tape:applause:


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## Matt903 (Apr 8, 2013)

Thanks for the detailed explanation! I am plan on trying that soon.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

Matt, pm me if you want any tips. I'm a fan of the whip and tongue, but I got an omega grafting tool as well, it's not bad.


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## philip.devos (Aug 10, 2013)

Good going!

As I am going to try raising queens this spring/summer, your detailed report gives me encouragement and good direction (particularly as to how many frames of bees to load into the starter/finisher box. I have two grafting tools, the JZBZ and the Chinese, and one that I hammered out and bent of a paper clip. I will try all 3 tools.

Thanks for mentioning David Laferny, as I studied his excellent description of his method. As I read your description, it reminded me of his method.

I was curious, did you prime your cups when you grafted?


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## Duncan151 (Aug 3, 2013)

That looks very sexy!! I hope to duplicate your feat, this summer, myself! Thanks for the info.


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## BeeGhost (May 7, 2011)

philip.devos said:


> I was curious, did you prime your cups when you grafted?


Nope, no priming at all! I do like the Chinese grafting tools as it scoops up some Royal Jelly with the pick, unlike the JZBZ which seemed to only pick up the larva. The one thing I am going to purchase is a jewlers hood so I see the larva better, a few of the picks I did were questionable if I had a larva or not, so I treated myself to some protein if I wasn't 100% sure!!MMMMMMmmmmmm!!!! And to think people pay good money to buy royal jelly!!


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## Hilltop (Aug 21, 2013)

I grafted a few queens last year with this exact method and they turned out great and are great layers now. This year I tried twice with 2 cups or so each time and not one graft took. The bees were all over the cups, but there was no royal jelly and no queen cell started. Any ideas on what I am doing wrong? I used the wet towel and everything and tried to get it done in less than 20 minutes, etc, but no dice. I didn't expect 100% of the grafts to take, but I can't figure out why they are ignoring all the queen cups.


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## BeeGhost (May 7, 2011)

Hilltop, 

It could be any number of reasons! You may have chosen a larva too old, you may have flipped the larva and it drowned, you may have accidentally put a queen in the starter hive, you may have damaged the larva, it might have dried out, and maybe you grabbed the puddle of royal jelly thinking you got the larva but missed it and transferred just royal jelly! Trust me, this grafting session i chose larva that looked like a boomerang and were almost to small to see, I would pick one up and if I even doubted myself if it was still on the tool or not, I gladly enjoyed consuming the royal jelly, with or without the larva!! Another thing to do is increase the odds, do 15-20 grafts, if you only need two, knock off the ones that are sub par and keep the best ones on the bar! And the more you graft the better you get!! 

Last year i thought grafting was so easy a caveman could do it, I grafted my first batch of 20 cells, picked what ever larva i could get on the tool and place in a cup, my starter hive consisted of maybe two frames of bees, maybe. I thought any queenless bees will produce queens, which they might, but they humbled me when I had only 2 of the 20 turn out! Every other cup was cleaned out! I tried again during the summer, yup, dummy me decided to graft on a 100 degree day in the truck with the AC full blast to keep me from passing out! Well, needless to say i didn't use a wet towel to keep the larva hydrated and im sure the blast of cold air through the can didnt help either! Again it was a small starter hive and in direct sun without much of a flow on at all...........grafted twenty larva that had a smidge of royal jelly when I grafted them but by the time i put them in the hive they had dehydrated so bad there was almost no royal jelly and in bad shape, I thought the bees would save them........thought wrong again! So I spent this winter researching and talking to different people and although im not a veteran grafter by any means, it sure helped sway the odds in my favor!!


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