# 24 grafted.... no takes



## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

Well.. I went out to my other bee yard today to look to see if any grafts took when I grafted 24 cells. 

No takes.

but there were a few rouge queen cells just not the ones I wanted them to be!!









I think I just do not have enough bees in my cell builder colony. 

Matter of fact, I am not sure if I have enough bees at all really to even try grafting. I have two strong hives that are worthy of producing honey and also like three of 4 nucs, one sorta weak hive, and 13 packages and 3 nucs just turned into single deeps. 

So I am not sure, without sacraficing producing honey, do I have enough bees to even try grafting. 

Any opinion?


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## peggjam (Mar 4, 2005)

I grafted 18 yesterday, but haven't dared to look yet. I am kinda in the same shape you are, but I have been collecting swarms (two so far) and plan to boost a hive with one of them. You may just be short of bees.


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

I feel sorta retarted at this. I can cook... I can bake... I think I can graft.... but anything after the actual grafting part I just cant overcome. rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr


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## peggjam (Mar 4, 2005)

If you do the best you can at grafting larva, you provide the maxium amount of bees, and they still refuse to accept them, then you've done the best you can. Once their're grafted, the rest is out of your control....we all know how hardheaded these darn bees can be!!!LOL


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

It is just frusterating me. I do not have a lot of time to spend with the bees but just one day a week so I graft on friday and dream until next friend to check and than disapointment hits....


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## power napper (Apr 2, 2005)

Hey Chef Isaac--Let's look at the bright side of this adventure--You just can not do any worse! It will be better next time!


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## peggjam (Mar 4, 2005)

If you feel that you don't have enough bees in your cellbuilder, may I suggest another metheod? Steve Taber suggest a metheod where you set up a dummy hive behind your breeder hive, and into this you placed all the capped brood with attached bees. In the breeder hive you placed all the open brood into the bottom brood chamber, placed on a queen excluder, and place the queen and fresh frames into the second brood chamber. Every seven days you move the capped brood to the dummy hive, and place the open brood below the excluder, replacing them with fresh comb for the queen to lay in. Every seven days you switch places between the breeder hive and the dummy hive so that for one week the field workers were flying into a queenright hive, and for one week they fly into a queenless hive. You would place the grafts into the dummy hive every seven days, and would remove the preovious weeks graft to an incubator. I can send you the exact copy if you want.


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## Sundance (Sep 9, 2004)

Hang in there Chef........ I read your queen experiences regularly.

[ May 26, 2006, 09:24 PM: Message edited by: Sundance ]


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

peggjam:

I read that to when I was reading his book but what is the point? He didnt explain why.


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## Big Ed (Jul 1, 2005)

Chef, I just wanted to relate to you my ONLY experience with queen rearing. There is nothing profound about it and most other replies have stated the same thing. You need Lots of young house bees in a starter to raise queens. I recently used a Nicot system to start cells. I got 100% acceptance(23 of 23) using a swarm box. I felt that would be my best if not most convenient method after gathering information from books and others on here. I shook the bees off of 12 or so frames of open brood from two hives into the swarm box. The books said use about 3 inches of bees if you shook them into the bottom of a 5 frame nuc. I got about 2 inches, but it worked. There was also lots of honey, pollen, and a fresh jar of syrup on them. 

I would like to try my cloake board(if it ever gets here) to see how it does. Shaking all those bees into that nuc was a pain! But, I thought it had the best chance of success. Maybe it was beginners luck. Could be. I hope to try again soon and see how I do again. By the way, my new girls should be laying after tomorrow or so. I plan on checking all my mating nucs on Monday. Wish me luck!


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## iddee (Jun 21, 2005)

Chef, why don't you shake 8 or 10 frames of young brood into a nuc with capped brood, honey and pollen? Then graft only 6 or 8 cells and place in the nuc. Good coverage with plenty of bees for the number of cells. After a few successes like that, then up the size of the box and number of cells.


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## Big Ed (Jul 1, 2005)

Chef, I think iddee is right. Give it a try. I used a five frame nuc with a 6 inch extention duct taped to the bottom. This extension has large openings on all sides and bottom, screened with #8 hardware cloth, and 2 inch cleats on bottom to allow ventilation. It gives all those bees room, too. Shake the bees in(closing cover between shakes to limit loss), put in a frame of honey on each side, one pollen in the middle, and two cell bar frames with larvae inbetween. Place in a cool dark place, put a jar of syrup on top(I modified the migratory cover to hold it), and in 24-48 hours you should have started cells.


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## Big Ed (Jul 1, 2005)

Then you can just dump those bees from the starter back into their hives, place another round of grafted cell in, or use them for whatever you want.


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

so should I just take a nuc and place #8 hardware cloth to cover the opening at the landing board and allow ventalation and than shake bees in there?


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## George Fergusson (May 19, 2005)

>So I am not sure, without sacraficing producing honey, do I have enough bees to even try grafting.

The question isn't if you should try, but how many you should try. If you don't have enough bees to raise 24 queens, try raising 12. If that's too many, try raising 6, or 3.

The fact that NONE of them took is an indication that you might have done something wrong too. Almost any hive has the resources to raise atleast one queen, if only a runty one









>so should I just take a nuc and place #8 hardware cloth to cover the opening at the landing board

The swarm boxes I've seen have all had 3" to 4" of screening the length of the box on either side i.e., lots of ventilation. That many bees in that small a space without sufficient ventilation are going to croak. If you want to use a conventional nuc, I'd screen over the entire bottom and top.

I was looking at an ingenious design for a swarm box the other night at the classroom session of our queen rearing seminar. It was a 5 (or was it 4?) frame nuc built entirely of 1/2" lumber stapled together. The lower half of each side was screened with #8 mesh and it was so-constructed that you could slide in panels to close the screens. It also had a 3/4" hole in one end with a sliding cover on it for a makeshift entrance. I shoulda taken pictures. Our field session is today. Hopefully, Tony will bring it with him today and I can grab a few pictures.

Today is the field session part of our queen rearing seminar. We were a little concerned about the robustness of the hives. We picked the best one and crammed the better part of 3 deeps into 2. It's pretty much full of bees now. This hive has been wanting to swarm for a month anyways, they want to build cells. I don't think Tony intends to use a swarm box, I think we're going to use what amounts to a Cloak board. I'll have to let you know.


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## peggjam (Mar 4, 2005)

"I read that to when I was reading his book but what is the point? He didnt explain why."

I think his point was that you could use the same hive for both purposes. It sounded like alot of work, so I have been gathering swarms and using those to populate my cell-builders.


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## BWrangler (Aug 14, 2002)

Hi Guys,

It only takes about 120 bees of mixed age to raise a queen cell. So, it doesn't take as many bees as some of the literature suggests. Too many bees can be almost as much problem as too few.

Bee density is important. A strong five frame nuc could raise 24 cells. But if those bees were placed on ten frames, they could only raise half that many. I controlled density by adjusting the number of frames in a box. The bees should be able to cover all the frames available. Empty space isn't a factor unless there's a honey flow on.

>The fact that NONE of them took is an indication that you might have done something wrong too. Almost any hive has the resources to raise atleast one queen, if only a runty one...

This is my thinking also. The first problem that comes to mind is grafting in a queenright hive. Some hives routinely have more than one queen. Or the hive may have a virgin queen.

Another problem concerns humidity/sunlight. Grafted larva can dry out in just a few minutes if it's windy and the humidity is low. Direct sunlight can also kill them in a short time. 

Finally, some bees just take longer than others to adapt to a queenless state and raise cells. When I raised them commercially, some hives would take up to two tries before they would accept any grafts.

Regards
Dennis

[ May 27, 2006, 07:15 AM: Message edited by: B Wrangler ]


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Bee density is important. A strong five frame nuc could raise 24 cells. But if those bees were placed on ten frames, they could only raise half that many. I controlled density by adjusting the number of frames in a box. The bees should be able to cover all the frames available. Empty space isn't a factor unless there's a honey flow on.

That is consistent with my experience, and not well documented in the books, or at least not emphasized enough. I've raised good queens in a two medium frame nuc before. Only about six or seven (but that's all the cups I gave them), but they were good queens. But the two frame nuc was wall to wall bees.


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## Nick Noyes (Apr 28, 2005)

I would try again and make sure the larva isn't drying out or being chilled on the way to the cell builder. Also make certain your cell builder is queenless.

When I start grafting early in the spring I have a hard time getting as many cells as we need. The main trick is to keep after it and don't give up. Everything will come together and you will get some queens made.


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## bleakley (Jun 13, 2004)

*Chef,*

This is my first season rearing my own queens so take the following comments with a grain of salt.  

I am finding that there is both a science and an art to queen rearing. You'll definitely get the hang of it with repetition! The suggestion to manage your experience by trying fewer grafts has merit.

I'm not sure from your description if you use both cell starter and cell finisher colonies. They each serve a different function. If you are using a single colony to all the cell building, that could be part of your difficulty. I have used a queenless cell starter and a queen-right, free-flight cell finisher with success.

I find that in the cell development stage, it's a time of "high maintenance." That is transferring cells from starter to finisher, keeping the feeder supplied, etc. If you are only checking in on Fridays, it suggests to me that more care/attention may be needed.

Keep at it! You'll get the recipe.


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

The method I use was explained to me by another beekeeper on this site to who I admire.

Take a hive and make her queenless for a day. The next day, graft fro ma colony that has what you want and place the grafting frame into the queenless hive. Check after three days for acceptance. Make up mating nucs and place queen cells inside.

I do think that maybe the queenless hive didnt have enough bees. 

I also agree that maybe I need to graft less cups and focus on just a few.

I need to fork over the money to fly out and see someone do it so I know what the heck I am doing. I am not a good "learn it from the book" type.


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## peggjam (Mar 4, 2005)

Well I took a peak today, 1 out of 18. I was happy with that on my first try. I still think I might be light on the bees in the cell builder, so I think I will add some more when I try again.


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

Peggjam: maybe our bees are on strike??


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## George Fergusson (May 19, 2005)

>I am not a good "learn it from the book" type.

I know what you mean Chef, I'm sorta like that myself. Somethings I can figure out, but sometimes it just really helps to have someone show you how it's done especially when it's part science, part art. That said, there's an easier way than flying across the country...

I set up a queen rearing seminar sponsored by my local chapter of the Maine State Beekeeper's Association and got Tony Jadczack, Maine State Apiariest to teach it.

The seminar was a two session affair, a 3 hour classroom session at the local university extension office including watching Sue Cobey's video, and a 3 hour field session featuring my apiary. The irony is that my wife and I ended up having to pay for the seminar ($10 each) but that's another rant









The classroom session was last wednesday night, the field session was today. There was a good crowd- 20+ people. We started out building and provisioning a swarm box out of a 4 frame nuc I had there- we put 3/4" shims on the bottom and top with #8 screen on them, put in 2 frames dripping with dandelion nectar and pollen, and shook in about 6-7 frames of nurse bees.

Next was setting up the cell finisher- we took my strongest hive which has been trying to swarm for a month and cut all the swarm cells, put all the capped brood in the bottom with the queen and all the open brood (twarn't much) in the top box with a queen excluder between them. Then we selected 3 frames with fresh eggs and larvae from a carniolan hive with a nice black young queen and a good looking pattern, and no disease.

Everyone who wanted to (8-10 people) got a chance to try grafting with different tools into different cups, some wet, some dry, some plastic, some wax. I did 8-10 larvae. All in all we ended up with 4 cell bars which we put in 2 frames and put in the 4 frame swarm box. That box is sitting down in my cellar.

Tommorow evening I'll carry it up to the apiary and put the 2 frames into the cell finisher, above the excluder. I didn't count but I think there's close to 60 or so cups grafted. I'll be surprised and very happy if 10 of them pan out. I'll actually be surprised and happy if 1 of them turns out









Getting some queens out of this deal would be gravy. I sure hope I do, but the real value of the seminar was seeing how it's done by someone who knows, hearing the discussion, the considerations, asking questions, and poking holes in combs. And I got my apiary inspected









I'll let you all know how it turns out.


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

I guess that is where I do not understand it. Making up a swarm box, to me, would be a pain in the butt. 

Whats the point of seperating capped brood and uncapped brood?

Maybe I just need to use a cloake board. How does this cloake board work? 

To be honest, time is also a problem. Fridays (and normally Staurdays but there is hardly a "normal" week in this business) are my day off. I can slip away to the beeyards in the mornings usually and if it is nice out, after work. 

I guess I would like a system that would allow me to make some simple manipulations and go from there. 

Maybe I just need to take one of my strong hives and cram the bees down to one over spilling deep and than graft and see if they take. 

Maybe I just ened to graft a few and use a 3 frame nuc with a lot of bees in it and try it that way.

My problem, still, is the ability to shake bees properly into the nuc. They all fly around. I did learn to shake a frame and than cover it quickly with the outter cover. 

Any suggestions on properly shaking would be great.


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

I was cruising some old information of grafting on the web and it mentions that there shouldnt be any eggs are young larvea in the hive of the cell builder as they will use their larvae rather than from the larvae from the breeder colony.

Is that the reason using a swarm box?

If the swarm box is to start the cells, will the cell builder colony take all of what the swarm box bees started?


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## George Fergusson (May 19, 2005)

>I guess that is where I do not understand it. Making up a swarm box, to me, would be a pain in the butt. 

It was. It took a long time and we had to shake bees from 3 different hives so as not to deplete any one hive, and finding/stealing 2 frames of open nectar and plenty of pollen was time consuming- didn't want to leave any one hive short. However, Tony had decided given the strength of my hives (which was not great) that the swarm box offered the best chance of success. We were going to do the cloak board trick.

>Whats the point of seperating capped brood and uncapped brood?

Can't tell you. Brain fried. Maybe someone else can.

>Maybe I just need to use a cloake board. How does this cloake board work? 

It's basically like the setup I described with the cell finisher, except the upper body can be completely isolated from the bottom brood body with a solid board. It then becomes a queenless cell starter for the 24-30 hours necessary for the job. Then you remove the board and the upper body becomes the queenright cell finisher. At least that's what my fried brain comes up with now. Someone else might be able to explain it clearer.

>Any suggestions on properly shaking would be great.

It's all in the wrist. Having a space to shake them into, like in between 2 frames in a 4 frame nuc helps. Even at that, some don't go in the box. Having a cover ready helps, having someone to handle the cover for you helps. A funnel arrangement would help but is probably unnecessary.

>Maybe I just need to take one of my strong hives and cram the bees down to one over spilling deep

I ain't no expert Chef... it's too soon to tell if I know anything at all, but it seems you really need a queenless cell starter and a queenright cell finisher and a lot of bees in both along with sufficient stores to raise good queens. There's various ways to set that up. It also helps if the bees want to raise queens so they ought to be on the verge of swarming, or wanting to. My hives really needed another couple of weeks though this one wanted to swarm..

>To be honest, time is also a problem.

I can sympathize with the time problem, but to be honest, bee biology sets the timeline for queen rearing. You pick the start date, they pick the rest of them. Tommorow evening I'll be hauling my swarm box up to the apiary and putting the cell bars in the finisher. In 9 days, come hell or high water, I'll be harvesting queen cells (assuming I get any). I don't even know what day that is yet, but I can tell you right now if it's a week day, I'm taking it off









There's probably some simpler grow-a-queen methods you could use for limited production, but I'm too tired to think of any.

Here's a picture of me learning to graft:

http://www.sweettimeapiary.com/pics/george_grafting.jpg

Notice the eye loupes which really work well. I quickly dispensed with the magnifier on the grafting tool.

Here's a picture of Tony Jadczak showing us how it's done:

http://www.sweettimeapiary.com/pics/tony_jadczak1.jpg

I'll post more pictures of the fiasco later. I'm crashing, hard.


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

Why cant you have a cell builder and finisher hive????

Why ccant you do this:

Take a strong hive, find the queen, place her in a nuc, wait for a period of time, graft, place the grafts into the hive, check them in a few days and go through theh ive for any rouge cells, come back a few days before they hatch and place them into the mating nucs and than either do another batch or place the queen back into the hive.

That is the method I would like to shoot for. 

Is that posbbile?


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## peggjam (Mar 4, 2005)

Chef

I guess you could do it however it works for you. I don't claim to be any expert, but when I made up my starter nuc, I removed all open brood and replaced it with capped brood. Before I inserted the grafts, I checked for any started queen cells, and disposed of those. I think our biggest problem at this point is not enough bees in our starter hives. I like the idea of a cloak board, as you can use one hive for the entire operation, which to me is more feasible than starters and finishers. I just don't have enough hives that are strong enough to rob brood and bees from, but that is changing as time goes on. Try your methoed and see if it works...theres alot more than one way to skin this cat. In the meantime, I am happy that they did at least one cell, if I can just remember everything I did right with that one cell...did I have my vail on or off, where was the light...hmmm


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Take a strong hive, find the queen, place her in a nuc, wait for a period of time

Overnight is good.

> graft, place the grafts into the hive, check them in a few days and go through theh ive for any rouge cells, come back a few days before they hatch and place them into the mating nucs and than either do another batch or place the queen back into the hive.

You can. I do it all the time. The hive will eventually burn out from not having a queen, but it's a simple method and works well for a few batches of queens.


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

so where am I going wrong? Not enough bees in the hive??


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## George Fergusson (May 19, 2005)

>I just don't have enough hives that are strong enough to rob brood and bees from

Peggjam, that would be my problem.

>so where am I going wrong? Not enough bees in the hive??

Certainly a possibility. Having enough bees is one requirement that is easily overlooked. After one queen rearing seminar, the only thing I can say I've really learned is that while it's not rocket science, there is a knack and an art to it and getting all the elements right is important. The grafting part itself requires considerable practice so you can transfer the right-age larva to the queen cup without drowning or rolling it. I'm going to gear up and practice with small batches next- maybe 6-8 cells at a time, and utiliize the cloak board method. I built a floor without a floor as per Michael Bush's plan and combined with a queen excluder, it should do the trick.

In answer to your earlier question about why putting open brood above the queen excluder in the cell finisher, it's to attract the very young nurse bees with active hypopharangeal glands. You need them to properly nourish the growing queens. I don't know if, sitting over a queen excluder on a queenright colony they'd be inclined to try to raise any rogue queen cells on their own after being given grafts or not. I'll find out I guess.


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## Bob Russell (Sep 9, 2003)

>Why cant you have a cell builder and finisher hive????

There is no reason at all why it can't be done that way.The first failure would have more than likely been due to a virgin queen within the cell builder (package) and not from the number of bees or their age.(Nutrition)well feed bees is the key to good cell building.

The greatest cause of failure with queen raising and queen introduction is a second queen present going undetected.There is no need to look for the queen at all.

A simple method is to take a 2 box populous hive with good pollen and honey stores,laying queen with brood in all stages.To ensure the brood bees will be making coupious quantities of royal jelly suplementary feeding the week before grafting will pay dividends if not in a honey flow.(but don't overdo it)

Preperation is simple with minimal manipulation.All of this can be done in the one operation.Simply shake all the bees carefully into the bottom box after firstly positioning 2 or 3 frames of young open brood into the centre of the top box flanked by a frame of pollen and open honey on each side and feeder type of your choice and placement.Open a gap in the centre and install your rack of empty cell cups (optional).In the manipulation move capped brood to the bottom box leaving emerging or about to emerge brood on the outer sides of the top box.Once the manipulation is completed and a selected frame for grafting grubs is marked for easy finding in the top box proceed to shake down all bees from the top frames into the bottom box to ensure all queens go down.

Fit queen excluder over bottom box,add top box and close up the hive.Nurse bees will be attracted up by the pheromones of the open brood.

Next day (or same day if above manipulation is done early morning)Open hive,remove grafting frame and marked frame for lava selection if using from the same hive.Graft cell bar(s)using wet tea towel to cover grafts progessivly as you proceed to avoid any drying out of grafted lava.Insert grafting rack and lava frame back into their positions.Lift top box off and place on upturned hive lid.Place a single sheet of news paper over excluder and replace top box and lid.(the newspaper renders the top box queenless for cell starting.

At 24-48 hours after grafting(bees have chewed out the paper to form finisher)open brood frames can be checked for any rogue cells,the cell rack can be lifted gently to check cell take.Do not shake off the bees to avoid dislodging the grubs from their royal jelly.Using a soft bee brush or light brush of finger,to move enough bees aside to see cell take.Edited to show photo of what to expect at 48 hours from grafting.

http://tinyurl.com/mc884

Cells can be used at 2 days for very strong splits or for requeening mature hives(no queenless period required for either at that stage of developement).Otherwise take cells onto 10 days with the fitting of cell protector cages at say day nine. (protector cages optional)

If raising cells during a honey flow suplementary feeding is not required and to avoid cells being burr combed just add a frame of undrawn wax in the top box to reduce the urge by the wax builders.

A better take and heavier queen weight can be achieved by using a 5 frame box over a single deep.More on that if there is interest.

[ May 28, 2006, 06:46 AM: Message edited by: Bob Russell ]


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

please tell us about this 5 frame box over a single deep.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Not enough bees in the hive??

That's my guess. That certainly is usually where I failed when starting off. The DENSITY of the bees needs to be high. Wall to wall bees is the trick.


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## jean-marc (Jan 13, 2005)

Bob R:

If I got you right, you place the 2 day old cells into queenright colonies? You are not finding the old queen and pinching her head? This could be a great time saver. I suppose you would only place 1 such cell into colonies. What range of succes do you get? In other words how many new queens do you get during the process. I've tried cell protectors and virgin hatches and kills old queen (80-95% or so). Virgin tries to get mated and bird eats virgin, or gets lost so on and so forth and results vary from 60% to 90-95%. At the lower end it is totally frustrating because I had a perfectly good albeit older queen and end up with a hopelessly queenless hive. 

Chef: I've already invited you here and save you an airline ticket. You'll just have to burn 2.5 hours worth of gasoline.

In a p.m. sent to you I described a good method to raise cells. I perhaps did not emphasise sufficiently the importance of bee density as did Michael B. and Dennis. If you look at the picture of 2 day old cells from Bob R., that's good bee density. You get that from strong 2 box hives or smaller units with lesser frames.

Jean-Marc


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

Density... I see.

Jean marc: so is that 2.5 hours from the boarder?


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## George Fergusson (May 19, 2005)

If I got you right, you place the 2 day old cells into queenright colonies?

Jean-marc, there was quite a discussion on requeening with 2-day old queen cells some months back. A quick search..... Ah hah!

http://www.beesource.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=5;t=000455#000000

I think that's the whole thread. It might have split. It was quite interesting and very enlightening.

Tony Jadczak was telling us the other day that a lot of commercial beeks requeen their colonies by putting a ripe queen cell up in the honey supers and not bothering to find the old queen.

>You'll just have to burn 2.5 hours worth of gasoline.

There you go Chef, you ought to be able to burn some gasoline, you're a chef. You're used to burning things


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## peggjam (Mar 4, 2005)

This gets better and better. Would like to know more about the 5 frame idea, as it's better suited to my situation.


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## George Fergusson (May 19, 2005)

>Would like to know more about the 5 frame idea

I would too. I can imagine it's as simple as putting a 5 frame nuc over the queen excluder in place of a second deep for a cell finisher, and covering the other half of the bottom deep with a board. This would certainly make it easier to obtain the required bee density.


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## jean-marc (Jan 13, 2005)

Chef:

More or less, but I think you're at my place in 2.5 hours. Go to the Sumas, Wash. border crossing. My home yard is 20 min. away or I have bees in raspberry pollination very close to the border crossing.

Jean-Marc


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## jean-marc (Jan 13, 2005)

George:

It's that simple, actually it's a special board, so that the 5 frame nuc sits in the middle and the board covers 2.5 frames on either side, and there you have it. Bob's your Uncle. Saw them in Brazil.


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## jean-marc (Jan 13, 2005)

George:

It's that simple, actually it's a special board, so that the 5 frame nuc sits in the middle and the board covers 2.5 frames on either side, and there you have it. Bob's your Uncle. Saw them in Brazil.

Jean-Marc


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## George Fergusson (May 19, 2005)

>It's that simple

I like it. I'm a little concerned about the bee density in my cell finisher, which is a 10 frame deep. I'd feel more comfortable with a 5 frame nuc instead. I think however it'll be fine, this time around.

I'm considering shaking my swarm box into the cell finisher after I've transferred the cell bars. I've been figuring I'd wait until I had it open to see what it looked like. Any reason why I shouldn't throw in some extra nurse bees?


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## George Fergusson (May 19, 2005)

Welp, Nancy and I put the grafts into the cell finisher tonight. I didn't brush off any of the bees but from a cursory examination it appears that possibly as many as half a dozen, maybe more took...

I think we could have used more bees in the swarm box. The cell finisher looks to be adequately provisioned with bees. We'll see.


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

first of all.. George: I DO NOT BURN things. I neatly toast them







I havent burnt anything for a while but when I toast nuts in the oven, I sometimes can be at risk!









I will focus on the density... no problem.

So my question... again...

Can I take a three frame nuc and cram them with bees, open brood and sealed brood as long as they are packed with bees??? than graft from a nother hive, take out the center frame fo the three frame nuc and shake the bees from the frame and place the grafting frame into the nuc? I am only talking maybe 5 to 8 queen cells. Is this possible?

Can I leave that small three frame nuc to also be the finisher colony too? 

I do not want to have to have two seperate hives... a starter and finisher if I can possible do it. 

I guess I can also take a really populas hive that I was looking to for honey production and use a fume board to get the hive down to two deeps or maybe even one overflowing deep. Right now the five is 2 deeps and 2 supers.

Any thoughts or suggestions to be able to get high density hive and be able to use it as the starter and finisher colony?


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

I was rereading someo f the posts on this topc and had another question.

to control density from a hive that would normally be deemed as somewhat moderate in population when it is in a deep, can you use a following board and cram bees on the frames and place the following board if there is any extra space in the deep???


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## jean-marc (Jan 13, 2005)

We always shake the swarm box bees into the finishers. The swarm box bees come from the finishers in the first place. Extra nurse won't hurt the finishers, probably will help them. Extra nurse bees made for better cells when shaken into hives that used the Cloak board method. It's an extra effort though, certainly worth it for the Cloak board method in my opinion.

Jean-Marc


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## Bob Russell (Sep 9, 2003)

>please tell us about this 5 frame box over a single deep.

A three page article titled:

"A Mini Starter-Finisher Hive Model That Facilitates Queen Rearing"

This article was published on pages 503-505 of the June 2005 issue of ABJ.


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## jean-marc (Jan 13, 2005)

Chef:

You can do that ( 3 frame nuc), except use open brood, 1 frame pollen, 1 frame honey , 1 feeder. Arrange as feeder, larvae, (graft) pollen honey.
It's what Bob Russell described. I would not use the capped brood.

In the past I've taken doubles and broken them into 4 five frame nucs. I arrange the frames as described previously and give the capped brood to other hives. Basically 5 frames are reduced to 3 frames (larvae, pollen and honey plus feeder), capped brood is removed. This gives a good bee density. Graft 8-10 cells.

Jean-Marc


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## peggjam (Mar 4, 2005)

Peggy and I grafted some more cells today, 36 of them. She grafted 24 and let me graft 12. We'll see how we do this time. I brought them to the house and grafted at the kicten table this time, hope it works better.


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## peggjam (Mar 4, 2005)

Update on the grafts from yesterday, 27 of 36 were accepted!!!!! Now we'll see how many they finish.


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## L.Jacobsen (May 31, 2006)

To make grafting succesfull i find that one important condition has to be present. The bees must make curtains in the empty frame space where you will later put the grafting frame. This must happen within an hour from remowing the graftingframe. To make the bees come to this point there are many prerequisites:
-There must be many young house bees in the starter hive 
-Feeding the bees with a 40% sugar solution on the day before grafting will enchange the courtain building.
If its still difficoult to make the bees accept the grafted cells, then feed the bees with sugar solution and increase the number of young bees and graft every day. The bees should have accepted the queen larvae within 6 hours so actually you can graft every 6 hours.(But i dont know what you do, do you graft eggs or 1 day old larvae?). Don't feed to much sugar, only ½l every day. Also make sure that a good supply of pollen is present in the starter hive and that there are not a virgin queen somewhere in the hive. 

I find the discussion on pesticides contra queen and drone quality/grafting problems very interesting. Do you have any references?


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## Velbert (Mar 19, 2006)

It's best to graft larvae that is not over 24 hours old the Queens will have a better chance to have more overies for egg production when you graft a real young larvae.what i like to do as I work my hives during the day when i come accross some frames packed with freash pollen I will pull them and save them for my cell starter.I nail a queen excluder onto a 9 5/8 hive body And place it on top of my arranged hive with pollen frame,honey frame couple empty built frames that is going to bee my cell starter .I shake about 4 lbs of nurse bees out of a strong colonie and smoke them through the Queen excluder making sure i dont have any Queen in the starter.Also make sure you have the entrance Screened so they wont run out or a Queen enters through the entrance. I then let them stay Queenless over night then put in a 32 cells that i grafted


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