# First grafts of 2014



## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

That's nice Daniel. I would recommend "quick checking" your grafts at 24 to 48 hours and move all the takes into the center of the frames. It can save some of your good cells on the far ends of the frame from getting chilled on a cold night. Pay close attention to those outside ones, if they have more jelly in them than the center ones it's a pretty good indication of cold damage. It's surprising how even the strongest builder can pull off the outside ones on a cold night.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

Thanks Jim, We did check them after 24 hours and had 36 started at that time. I had not thought about the outsides getting colder. Important for us since our nights stay chilly pretty much year round.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Looks nice. Practice, practice, practice. That's the road to better success.


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

Nice going! 
I noticed that too, my first graft donor frame had little jelly in the cells. First grafts were very dry. Tossed a queen in the grid from a hive that would take up 1:1 and the jelly was much better. My second take was more like yours, although my cell builder is still not up to strength. 

It's still very early, but every day get closer to prime season and better fed larva.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Lauri;1087623 My second take was more like yours said:


> Give it a box of emerging brood?


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

Looks pretty good to me - respectable results all around.


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

Michael Palmer said:


> Give it a box of emerging brood?


It's still early here. I don't want to get_ too_ geared up for another couple weeks. But the box does have a lot of emerging brood in it. Just hasn't hatched quite yet. By the time this second batch of cells are capped it will be good to go as a strong starter. 
I've got them in a 10 frame deep with interior feeder. 5+ solid frames of capped brood.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

Laurie, We started our cell builder on March 21st with the intent to graft on the 31st. Weather disrupted those plans for 5 dyas as well as effected every hive in our apiary for two weeks. not the best of situations. so we where forced to ad lib with our first attempt. On April 5th we where able to add 5 additional fraems of capped brood to the cell builder. making it a total of 15 frames of capped brood put in this cell builder. We then grated on the 6th. The cells in the photo are just old enough to be capped. We moved them to an incubator at the time the photo was taken and will reunite the cell builder with it's queen today and add another 10 frames of capped brood.

I am chomping at the bit to start a second round of grafts but once again limited equipment is preventing that. I have room for additional virgin queens but am concerned about swarming. I want to save as many swarm cells as possible as well.


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## G3farms (Jun 13, 2009)

That sure looks good, hope mine do that well. Grafted for the first time yesterday, will see how it goes.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Why do u suppose the middle bar is full and there are gaps in the middle of the bottom and two places on the top? Do you think the gaps were because of something that happened during the transfer from comb to cell cup? Or the grafting of older larvae? Or something in the finisher?


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

Larva from queen cups 54 and 51 always mysteriously disappear..


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

Looking good Daniel, it gets better the more you do it. I have found that cells on center frames do better also. Perhaps my cell builders are not crowded enough, perhaps the center does better as that bar is in the center of the builder box with more bees and stores next to it?


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

A guy I know who raises a lot of cells uses two bars, not three. Maybe that would increase your success.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

Mark, I have since discovered that this cell builder had made an additional 14 queen cells on frames of brood. this is a total of 53 cells at once. The wild cells do not look nearly as good.

As for the completeness of the bars. The middle one came from cells that where well provisioned with jelly. To a degree of obvious difference. each bar was grafted from a different queen. The bottom one came form one of our best queens if no our best queen ever. but she is getting old and starting to fail. We have a couple of her daughters from last year an their performance is beyond anything I expected. I hope to graft many queens form this old lady but with a faltering hive it is taking it's toll on the suitability of her larva to be grafted. We are taking steps to artificially boost her support population. For now it is simply hard in every way to get a new queen reared from her brood. The top bar was to a lot better. these bees had just come out of a two week cold snap and brood tending seemed to be suffering throughout the apiary.

Also i am just getting back into the groove of grafting after the winter break. the bars where grafted by me in the following order. lowest upper and then middle. maybe I just got better as I went along. I know for a fact I got faster. the last bar taking less than 5 minutes from being removed from the hive to cups being placed in the cell builder.

I contacted Micheal Palmer about just what queens to select to rear queens from and in what ratios. As a result this faltering queen is my number one selection for increasing from. and according to Micheal if I want to expand to 200 hives. this one queen should account for 150 of those colonies. We now have two of her daughters and 6 queen cells. and that is the result so far from making over 100 attempts to graft from this queen. Now just how many ways can fait get stacked against you? But I will not give up. as of today we will set up the cell builder again. and this time all 45 grafts will be from this one queen. In the mean time we will add nurse bees to her colony and feed them to encourage more jelly in each cell. I am just concerned there is an issue with the overall health of this colony that is causing the poorly provisioned cells.

Anyway that is my take on the whole issue.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Great analysis. What's the lineage of your favorite queen? Any idea? Carniolan? Or what?


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

Mark, As far as I know she is a mutt that I captured in a swarm at work last year. A local beekeeper is the one that suggested she may be the old queen and in the process of failing. But she made enough of a showing last year to get me to try and increase from her. it was her daughters that sealed the deal. This spring one of them has gone from a 5 over 5 nuc to 40 frames in two months. and has our record so far of 18 frames of brood. and these are not little spots of brood. they are fully filled or at the least proper brood frames with a band of pollen and honey at the top. I expect to add a 5th box to her hive in the next week or two. She produces just beautiful textbook frames of brood just like her mother did. They also already have 10 frames of honey and the flow has not even started.

I do not think I have any Russian genetics in my bees since nothing flies below 50 and some not until it is 55 degrees. Other beekeepers say that Carniolans prevail in this area. I do not know enough about the traits of the varies types to make a guess. The queen is a tan color. I call those with that color golden queens. Laurie has a photo somewhere around here that looks just like her. All I know is that she is the best I have. And I am not all that short on good queens in the first place. 6 out of my total of 21 queens right now are good healthy producers. I get them all from swarm captures. Cut outs seem to always be dud queens. Figures, hardest work for least reward.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

A quick question. I am going to reunite the cell builder with the queen right part of the hive today. do need to use newspaper to make the combine or just stack the cell builder back on? The only thing I have ever seen mentioned is that it is put back together but never really thought of the details until now.j


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

Part of the reason I use foamboard boxes (made with 1-1/4" or 1-1/2" thick foamboard, lined with aluminum tape), is that the bees are much better able to maintain optimum conditions throughout the cell builder box, despite conditions outside the box (either cold or hot). Cells on the ends of cell bars are cared for and maintained no differently than the cells in the center of the bars. Despite the dimensions, as shown in the drawing below, I only use medium depth frames, these boxes are only used as queen cell growing boxes, and the extra space below the frames is to accommodate the clustering of a very large population of nurse bees. 

​
I've made them with a bottom of foamboard, permanently attached to the boxes, and also that I use a piece of foamboard where I just set the foamboard boxes onto it. Either way works just fine, though I've cut small holes into the corners of the boxes with attached bottoms (for drainage) and that isn't necessary if the bottoms aren't attached.

In some ways it is bothersome to create these special boxes in order to raise queen cells in. So, I've been considering making some foamboard sleeves/shells that will fit over the outsides of regular supers or nucs, so that the insulative benefit can be added to any super, and then used to grow cells in.


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

Daniel Y said:


> A quick question. I am going to reunite the cell builder with the queen right part of the hive today. do need to use newspaper to make the combine or just stack the cell builder back on? The only thing I have ever seen mentioned is that it is put back together but never really thought of the details until now.j


If you have been careful when using the cell builder to grow cells, but especially afterwards, so that you can be certain they haven't developed laying worker problems, or haven't somehow acquired a queen. Then they are hopelessly queenless bees. I often use cell builder colonies as sources of booster bees, adding them, with impunity, to weaker nucs or other colonies that could use an influx of bees to boost them, which could, of course, include their parent colony. No special care need be taken.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Daniel Y said:


> A quick question. I am going to reunite the cell builder with the queen right part of the hive today. do need to use newspaper to make the combine or just stack the cell builder back on? The only thing I have ever seen mentioned is that it is put back together but never really thought of the details until now.j


Seems like doing a newspaper type combine would be prudent. Better safe than sorry.

Because of you and Lauri I am getting inspired to try my own hand at raising some queens. You two appear to be more organized than me though.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

Joseph, Thank you for that information. we reunited the cell builder with it's parent colony yesterday. We will add 10 more frames of capped brood to it today. It will be a hive that is two deeps and 5 mediums at that point. It is after the next round of grafts that we will look at returning some of these bees to the donor colonies or any other colonies that need to be strengthened.

I am looking at how to make cell builders and grafting all queens I woudl have expected to get from swarming rather than continue the hunt for queens as swarm cells appear. We spent an hour looking for a queen in a 5 box tall 5 frame nuc yesterday and never did find her. Finally we simply split any frames with cells from the hive and will check back in a couple of days to find which half has eggs. So far it is the only hive we have that has made any cells besides the cell builder. And it was due to being over crowded.

Mark, this has been a logn time in coming for me. I spent one year just reading about it. One year looking at every detail. A year ago Micheal Bush posted a daily schedule for managing multiple cell builders. starting a new cell builder every 4 days. Day -10 you set up a cell builder Day -6 you set up the second cell builder. Day -4 you isolate the breeder queens for the first cell builder. Day -3 you release isolated queen Day -2 you set up the third cell builder. Day 0 you graft for the first cell builder and isolate queens for the second cell builder. This schedule actually ends up giving you daily tasks rather than having to do multiple ones on any given day.

I took this schedule and then studied every procedure. So on day -10 I am supposed to set up a cell builder. so I looked into many ways that others make up cell builders. you have cell starters. then cell finishers. You have cell starters and finishers which I now call cell builders. You have those that use nucs and those that use 10 frame boxes. You have those that only rear no more than 20 cells per finisher and those that start and finish 45 cells in a single builder. Anyway I think you get the idea.

There is a phrase for what I did and education is not it. it is paralysis of analysis. I wound up with so many choices to make I finally never really made any. And when I finally did try to do something it was a real mess. I was countermanding myself at every turn. This was last summer.

Laurie has been a huge inspiration to keep going. Micheal Palmer was finally the person that I saw, liked what I saw and just focused on his method. I even went so far as to contact him get his personal direction and then told myself to just do what I was told. In short I stopped trying to figure it out and just did it the way someone else has been doing it. I am still not completely certain of every choice I have made. As far as organized. If I am at all it is more of an act of vengeance against last year than anything. I think you would have a good laugh if you visited me while I work my hives. As of yesterday I was not able to get through an inspection of a 5 frame nuc without an hour long delay. we got through it took a break and then went out to start again. We managed to get 11 hives inspected for the entire day. Yes there where a lot more delays. including having to stop and get more inspection forms printed. 

Insanely hard and determined effort is how I think most would describe it. Not all days go like that and it is not the worst one I have had.

We get better with each day that passes. and I have not faced the worst of it yet. Next year I plan to have this same story different chapter times ten.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

After three weeks and what seems like an eternity. we have gotten 258 cells from our hives. My goal was 250 and we are not finished yet. 

We made our hives queenless to prevent swarming and then let them make wild queen cells. I do not recommend this method. one it is way to much work searching for cells and two there are heavy losses of queens in the cells.

OF 258 cells 40 have been sold as virgin. 40 are in mating compartments. 112 are still cells. the rest where lost before they emerged. some 25.6% of all cells where lost before emerging. I have allowed up to 50% losses but that was expected from mating flights.

My goal was 250 cells resulting in 125 mated queens. We now must reduce the losses to mating flights by half or we will not reach our goal. That or go back to grafting to overshoot out cell production goal.

Other than those losses of cells in the incubator I am pretty satisfied with this being our first year. 

My goal was set based upon improvements we made from year one to year two. I then assumed the same level of improvement could be made from year to to year three.

Here are the goal I set and how we have done so far.

Cells, 250 we now have 103.2% of that goal.
250 virgin queen or 125 mated queens. we have had 80 virgins so far 32%
112 cells still in incubator 44.8%

It has not been easy but we exceeded our cell production goal. have had a hard time in getting the virgins from them and it is to early to start getting numbers on mated queens just yet.

The cell loss problem has actually gotten worse over the past few days. we will likely have to return to grafting to make up the difference.

My suggestion so far. don't waste your time on wild cells. Just graft and be done with it.


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## WBVC (Apr 25, 2013)

Daniel...we are now where you were last year...in a state of paralysis!
How many hives do you think one needs to have adequate resources for cell builders and mating nucs?
Could you post your rotational system and/ or post a link Michael Bushes post that inspired you?
Also....as/if one becomes successful at Queen rearing what does a non commercial person do with 250 queens?
Thanks so much.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

WBVC said:


> Also....as/if one becomes successful at Queen rearing what does a non commercial person do with 250 queens?
> Thanks so much.


Become commercial. Actually there are no local sources of queens in this area I have been gettign calls from as far away as 200 miles with people commenting on how excited they are that there is now a local source.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

I did not ignore the rest of your request.

I started with Micheal Palmers cycle of adding ten frames of capped brood to a strong hive. wait ten days search carefully for queen cells then introduce grafts. You can get a lot more detail here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7tinVIuBJ8

Micheal bush has added to this system a rotation that is far faster in turn around and breaks down very well into daily tasks. I never have gotten that system fully incorporated this year. I did write out an entire cycle from egg to mated queen and how it would look day by day. Get ready for your head to spin.

My revision of Michaels breeding system from day 1 to day 38 complete with a new shcedule starting every 4 days.
Day 1 Schedule A- Set up Cell Builder
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4 
Day 5 Schedule B- Set up Cell Builder
Day 6 Schedule A Grafting comb in breeder colony
Day 7 Schedule A Release Breeder Queens.
Day 8
Day 9 Schedule C- Set up Cell Builder
Day 10 Schedule A Check Cell Builder for wild queen cells 
Schedule B Grafting comb in breeder colony
Day 11 Schedule A Graft, 
Schedule B Release Breeder Queens.
Day 12
Day 13 Schedule D Set up Cell Builder
Day 14 Schedule B Check CB for queen cells
Schedule C Grafting comb in breeder colony
Day 15 Schedule B Graft
Schedule C Release Breeder Queens.
Day 16 Schedule A Remove capped cells.
Day 17 
Day 18 Schedule D Grafting comb in breeder colony
Cell Builder 3 Check CB for queen cells
Day 19 Cell Builder 3 Graft
Day 20 Schedule B Remove capped cells, Re-unite CB , Add 10 frames of capped brood.
Day 21 Schedule F Set up Cell Builder from Sch. A for second round
Schedule A Cells Ready 
Day 22 Schedule E Grafting comb in breeder
Schedule D Check CB for queen cells
Day 23 Schedule D Graft
Day 24 Cell Builder 3 Re-unite CB
Day 25 Schedule G Set up Cell Builder from Sch. B for second round
Schedule B Cells Ready
Day 26 Schedule F Grafting comb in breeder
Schedule E Check CB for queen cells
Day 27 Schedule E Graft
Day 28 Schedule D Remove capped cells, Re-unite CB
Day 29 Schedule H Set up Cell Builder from Sch. C for second round
Schedule C Cells Ready
Day 30 Schedule G Grafting comb in breeder
Schedule F Check CB for queen cells
Day 31 Schedule F Graft
Day 32 Schedule E Re-unite CB
Day 33 Schedule I Set up Cell Builder from Sch. D for second round
Schedule D Cells Ready
Day 34 Schedule H Grafting comb in breeder
Schedule G Check CB for queen cells
Day 35 Schedule G Graft
Day 36 Schedule F Re-unite CB
Day 37 Schedule J Set up Cell Builder from Sch. E for second round
Schedule A Mated Queens Ready
Schedule D Cells Ready
Day 38 Cells ready to re-cell mating nucs

Okay you asked for it.

Many many methods and means. a lot of things to research. i took two years just looking over each point as a subject all it's won. such as what is a cell builder and what is the best way to set one up.

Now I did some sort of mish mash of the above method. that was altered daily as needed to survive. I also was searching hives every other day to find wild cells. Never again. I will focus on Micheal bushes rotation next time simply to keep things manageable.


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