# Test graft tomorrow in Western Washington-



## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

Cloake board is installed-first queen to be grafted has been chosen. I have so many that are exceptional, it was hard to choose. Here she is, a daughter from a swarm I collected near Mt. Rainier in 2011
Overwintered well and has great traits. These photos were taken today.










How's this for a brood pattern on a barley drawn frame



















I have a fair amount of mature drones in the hives and a good amount of capped drone brood. Weather has been decent and forecast to be mild and consistent. I didn't graft last year until May 10th.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mille...und-HoneyBees-and-Agriculture/256954971040510

This one is Italianish looking, but momma produced five very different colored daughters, so I am assuming she was well mated with a good variety of genetics.
You can see the workers are different colors as well. Some with a very wide orange band,some with two colors of orange, red and black, some with darker black striping. 

I sold all I could raise locally last year, but it is possible I may ship once I get the mating nucs stocked and the first batch mated. I'll post it if I do.


----------



## BeeCurious (Aug 7, 2007)

She's a cutie!


----------



## Rube63 (Jun 28, 2010)

Lauri
How do you go about stocking up the mating nucs?


----------



## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

WOW! A big fat juicy queen bee. I'm sure the mix will give us a diversify bee genetics.
Selection for color and special traits will do. On top of my list are gentleness and high
honey production, etc. I'm sure the new incubator will help you a lot too. Don't forget
to reserve some for us here.

If you goto her website there are many different mating nucs for you to see.


----------



## Luv2beekeep (Dec 11, 2011)

Lauri,
What is your temps. there in Washington. I am thinking about starting some grafts next week here in Idaho and it is still in the 20's at night and 40's daytime. Suppose to warm up to mid 60's next week with lows in the low 40's. Might still be a little cold here. Your queens look awesome though. Keep up the good work.


----------



## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

Nice. Very nice.


----------



## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

Rube63 said:


> Lauri
> How do you go about stocking up the mating nucs?


That's why it is a test graft. I don't want to stock too many mating nucs juuuuust yet. I'll have about 2 weeks until I'll have to do so though.
It has been cool at night recently here..but not freezing. daytime temps are just over 50-60, but forcast to be much warmer soon, with night time temps in the 50's.
It's been a very mild winter here in Western Wa. I am pretty confident all will be conducive to mating flights by the time they happen. All the hives are about a month ahead of last year, according to my notes.


----------



## Rube63 (Jun 28, 2010)

What I was actually wanting to know was detail on the best way to get the bees in the mating nucs and about how many in each. When I try to shake them in most run back out and fly back to where they came from.


----------



## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

Rube, it depends on what set up you have. I overwinter colonies on half size deep frames, so when it comes time to stock the mating nucs, I just distribute the frames accordingly. Same goes for the full frames in divided deeps. If I use the method of the real mini mini nuc with just three top bars, I brush bees from two hives into a box with one frame of brood and some frames. I allow the older crankey bees to fly back to the hives they came from, leaving me the younger nurse bees that are more accepting of the virgins. I let them sit overnight, then scoop them up with the half frame and starter strip and distribute into the mini nucs with a direct release newly hatched virgin and close them up at least on day. It has to be quite warm at night to use those though.



















These are good for getting Queens mated, since they don't take too many resources to stock the mating nucs, but they are harder to manage during the summer and fall. They get plugged fast, are prone to cold temps and fall robbing. 





I like the slightly larger sized nucs better. I charge $40.00 for my queens, partly because I don't bank my queens. I leave them in the mating nucs until they are sold and picked up. I need more space for them to live and the five-half sized deep frame nucs are perfect for that.
Here is a five frame nuc box converted into a double mating nuc.





































$40.00 is a pretty premium price for a queen, But I offer something a bit different than the pay and ship norm. 
When I pull out a frame of capped brood with a big fat queen on it to show the guys what they are getting..and I get a giggle out of the grown men, it is pretty satisfying They can't whip out the $20. bills fast enough.
And if I can manage my stock better so I don't have to buy much sugar, I might even be able to keep some of that money. 
I recently got a 20' flatbed car trailer to transport some of the production hives into the mountains after the flow here is over. I have too many hives in one spot to make enough honey for all of them.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Miller-Compound-HoneyBees-and-Agriculture/256954971040510


----------



## Lburou (May 13, 2012)

Always interested in your next move Lauri


----------



## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

Lburou said:


> Always interested in your next move Lauri


So is my husband, although I scare him at times I think


----------



## Rube63 (Jun 28, 2010)

Thank you so much. I have been following the info you shared last fall on getting bees to accept virgin queens and have had pretty good success so far. I have some of most of the boxes you have pictured. I'm just a piddler and enjoy trying all the stuff I read about. Thanks again.Rube


----------



## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

For the honey you can plant an acre or 2 of canola and borage if you have the land. Or maybe
rent some cheap land for that. Growing berry patch will work too. I like the thornless blackberry.


----------



## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

So weather is not cooperating The starter upper portion of the hive never got the chance to get crowded with bees, since it was really too cold and rainy to come out of the bottom box. Too ugly for me to brush in extra bees. 
I checked the graft frame and it has two lonley cells drawn out. And at 24 hours, those two cells are already about an inch long! LOL 

So I removed the divider board and recombined the hive..cells above queen excluder. The real test will be if these two queens get mated well. about 4 more days of crappy weather, then temps forcast in the 60-70 degree range. Just about perfect timing for mating flights. 

My other hives are still not ready to break up into mating nucs, however. They have nice small young bees, healthy frames of capped brood, larva and lots and lots of eggs. Just not enough numbers to break up. 2-3 weeks will put my population explosion right on time with grafting. Looks like I'll just have to wait.
I have 50+ hives and need to make 100+ mating nucs. Not all at once, of course, but as soon as numbers allow. (I have 135 built if I can populate them)
-I do three deep frames in divided 10 frame box. Each with an interior one gallon feeder to start. They they go to four frames.

-half sized deep frames in mini nucs-3 needed to start 5 frame nuc

-and real mini nucs with three top bars with starter strip. (These need bees brushed into them to start)
It sure would be nice to get a batch of early queens, but it looks liike the May 10-20th normal grafting date will stand.

At least I have progressed to having nice drawn frames full of brood and stores to stock with. Sucked last year starting out with no or little resources. I had to buy packages and install them on the mini frames to get them drawn out. That worked well, but I had to feed feed feed and wait wait wait.


----------



## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

It is early spring now. Your resources are available just that you have to wait longer
for the weather to cooperate a little. Crowding a nuc with nurse bees that are queen less
will help produce early queens. But that is not the method you are using, right. I'm in the
process to make my first batch of queens from a carni queen hive--F2. Not sure if the queens
will be carni or Italians. Hopefully I will see some good supercedure cells this week. Have you
try the crowded nurse bees method before?


----------



## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

When the time is right I set up a queenless starter hive in a 10 frame deep. Starting out with five or 6 frames of bees, capped brood and recourses, I also brush in extra nurse bees to fill the frames to overflowing. I use a follower board to keep them corralled. Since I also feed and protein patty them, when it comes to refreshing the nurse bees with capped brood, I don't remove a frame, I just insert the brood frame. I don't remove a frame because the resident bees have filled it with feed. Why take it out?
I just move the follower board to accommodate the new frame and makes it easy to manipulate the inserted graft frame in and out.
Here's how it looks before I knock the bees off the screened inner cover:









And inside. (Disregard that lone frame) The bees will never cross this follower board and make a mess. They stay crowded clustered on the frames. But they _will _cross to the feeder I usually have inserted. A one gallon interior Mann Lake pro feeder to be exact.









By the time I have inserted enough frames to fill this box, they have started many frames of queen cells for me. Then I give them a virgin queen and let them start their own content colony. These starter hives are the strongest, most mite free hives on the place come fall. Go figure!


----------



## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

I did receive my new incubator today. It is a little smaller than I thought, but it should hold 150-200 roller cages. Plenty for my small operation. It is almost exactly the same set up as my Cabellas food dehydrator..digitally controlled, with a nice circ fan.

I actually bought a scratch and dent Cabellas Commercial dehydrator to use as an incubator. The fan is a bit forceful and it shuts off after 24 hours, but is a superior quality product. I will still try it though. I have hatched chicken eggs in it in a pinch-so I know it will work. Just have to keep the moisture pan full at all times. Even the small one will do a several hundred cells.

http://www.cabelas.com/product/Home...wse/_/N-1101295&WTz_l=DirectLoad;cat104294880
Heres how I'll arrange my roller cages. Now I can see if the queen has hatched and is on the bottom of the roller, so I won't miss her and let her crawl back into the cell.










Here is my old set up, chicken incubator. Crude, but you know what? It worked perfectly
You can see though, the bottom of the roller cage is covered. When the queen hatches she usually drops down to the bottom and hangs out for a bit. Got to remove the empty wax cell or the queen will crawl back up into it and die.


----------



## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Humm, I wonder if you can double your production by 
dividing the roller cages in half. That way you can get more early spring queens at
the same time. Or run it at the same time with the smaller incubator. How fun!
Thanks for sharing.


----------



## tefer2 (Sep 13, 2009)

Lauri, how do you deal with the fact that the unit only has a twelve hour timer?
Do you just reset it everyday?


----------



## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

tefer2 said:


> Lauri, how do you deal with the fact that the unit only has a twelve hour timer?
> Do you just reset it everyday?


Yup, and don't forget! Since the queen cells are generally only in it for two days a batch, it's not a big deal.

I have the units in my kitchen so I can monitor them often and at a glance. Start the coffee-reset the incubator/dehydrator.


----------



## BeeCurious (Aug 7, 2007)

> $40.00 is a pretty premium price for a queen


Until today, the most expensive production queen I knew of was Charlie Harper's Russians at $37


----------



## tefer2 (Sep 13, 2009)

This was my plan for a bigger incubator also. I think I will find a way to bypass the timer. Looking for a scratch and dent unit is my plan now.
What temperature are you using in your setup?


----------



## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

You can't beat that Cabelas dehydrator for an incubator 'remodel'. I've used three of them for a few years ( For food) and they are really great quality inside and out.
I'm not sure why incubators go from the cheap-0 junk to thousands with nothing in between. Trust me, I've looked.

The lab-science incubators look OK, but a super small and cost hundreds if not thousands. You can't buy a used one for fear they've been cooking up an H1N1 stool sample somewhere along the line


----------



## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

BeeCurious said:


> Until today, the most expensive production queen I knew of was Charlie Harper's Russians at $37


Like I said, my operation is different than the bank and ship operation most of the larger breeders do. I give one on one service with a apiary tour if requested. There is no one in my state that offers what I have both in product and in service. There is a good market for it, and I charge for it.


----------



## minz (Jan 15, 2011)

I had to go local for some deep foundation this week and went in to pick it up. The board was up and listing queens for $33. I could not believe it. 
I opened up my hives today and the dead out I was going to steal frames for my swarm traps still had a couple frames of young bees. I pulled a frame of capped brood, one with small eggs and found a superscedure cell looked like it was full of jelly for that hive (from one that was really booming and needed the brood nest opened). Problem was the frames with the brood and swarm cell was plastic. There was ton of drones in that boomer hive so I should be OK (about 90 minutes south of Lauri).


----------



## monrovi (Jan 22, 2012)

Lauri, 
Im curious have you done anymore graphing?


----------



## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

Yes, I have three graft frames in finisher hives now. The only thing holding me back from full production is the fact I am not quite ready to split up my hives to make the mating nucs. Almost though, they are looking good. Every few days I choose another strong hive and arrange it with a cloake board-then graft the next day and insert the frame for starting. By the time May gets here I'll have cells coming out my ears. Hopefully the weather will hold, it's been great with only a few days of rain.

People are *screaming* for queens around here. But I can only do what I can with the climate and timing. I am already 3 weeks ahead of schedule. I can have capped cells and virgins easily enough though. I wish folks were not so afraid of using them. They are cost effective and very early. 
There are plenty of nice fat healthy drones available for mating. 
It is really amazing the number of people panicked who bought nucs and packages recently that had dead queens. I'm telling them to combine the bees with a queenright hive and wait until the queens are availble. There is absolutly nothing bad about that..better to do that than to buy a poorly mated queen too early in the season.

I think folks don't realize it is not only weather but day length that stimulates the bees. Even my own order out of Texas has been delayed a month..and you'd think they are far ahead of Western Wa. with their hot weather. They are having one heck of a time getting queens mated there.
I'd like to wait until my hives are packed full before I break them up for mating nucs...get the most bang for my buck with the resources I have.

Heres the graft frame from the hive shown in my OP. 16 for 16..should be capped sometime tomorrow. This is one of my frames with not too many cell holders. Didn't want to push it too early. As soon as they are capped I'll finish them in another hive and reuse this hive to start a 30 cell frame. Nice going ladies


----------



## monrovi (Jan 22, 2012)

I was going to try to graph today for the first time but unfortunately doesn't look like the weather is going to cooperate. Good old western washington. Maybe it will break for me midday.


----------



## minz (Jan 15, 2011)

We are way ahead down here in Portland. 70 degrees for a week in April is unheard of. I am already getting swarm calls because the big swarm hogs are overwhelmed. Unfortunately my own are also in the trees 3 weeks early and I have also have not been able to respond. The warm spell we had at Easter must have pushed everything to swarm impulse. Drones are not an issue. Here is one I was playing with after watching the Palmer marking video (catch them by their wings works way easier than I was doing it).
http://s1141.photobucket.com/user/6minz/media/DSCF4465_zpsb11337ca.jpg.html
http://i1141.photobucket.com/albums/n599/6minz/DSCF4465_zpsb11337ca.jpg


----------



## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

Minz, Your links don't work.

Nothing swarmy in my yard, but I went though every single hive last month and made sure they had plenty of empty drawn woker sized comb above the brood nest + nice frames of feed.
There is still tons of pollen coming in and a light flow..If I could discribe my hives at the moment, in one word, it woud be 'Content'

Yeah, I don't even post for swarm collecting anymore on Craigs list. My ad just keeps getting flagged..by the 'swarm hogs' you mentioned, I assume. Too bad, I got some really good genetics from a couple swarms in 2011.


----------

