# Cell Punch queen rearing



## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

Wondering what experiences others have had with the Cell Punch queen rearing method. My first attempt was a flop, not sure what I did wrong. 

I made up a nice starter colony, punched out 8 cells from my best hive, and inserted the frame in the starter hive. Checked on them 3 days later and the bees had chewed out most of them and left me with nice polished wax cups which the punched cells were pushed into. Any thoughts would be appreciated. The larvae looked very young, barely visible in the royal jelly, so I'm fairly confident the larvae I punched was at the proper age. What things can go wrong with this method? I would like to try it again, but hope to learn from this and experience better results.

When I found this I slipped in a frame with eggs from the same donor colony and will let them build queen cells wherever they want, and cut them out later. Back to the method I've used before with success.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

I saw one video where the fellow melted the base of the cell punch plug with his lighter to stick it into the cell cup base. I thought it looked like it had the possibility of overheating the tiny larvae. How about moisture control with damp cloth?


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## wvbeeguy (Feb 20, 2011)

always had good success with cell punch. peg cell in with wax and take tooth pic and straighten cells walls back. Only time i ever had problems was when trying to use cells puched out of new comb that was so soft the cells deformed as they pushed thru. I like the darkest/oldest comb possible to punch thru. Normally mark the frame queen is on on Wednesday (since I punch on Saturday) that way i usually have both eggs and newly hatched larva to insure have day old larva. Other thing is this time of year (we are in dearth) you would have to feed and have a nice pollen frame next to frame you graft to simulate a heavy flow.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

The bees know that the yearly dearth is on. Unless the flow is still on now
they are in a hurry to collect for the hardship preparation. The last thing they
are worry about is making some queen cells for you. After the main flow here the
only way I can make some after the solstice queens is to do a graft no matter how strong
my mini bee bomb nuc is.


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

I'm just wondering Mike, did you check to see if the cell builder had started queen cells of their own and so disregarded the punched cells you gave them? I ask because I've had bees that would tear down ripe queen cells given them and raise queens of their own from viable eggs/larva that were in the nuc when I made them up.


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## dtrooster (Apr 4, 2016)

> only way I can make some after the solstice queens is to do a graft


 I'm confused. How is a graft different from punched cells? Basically the same thing isn't it, the bees either have the resources and want to make a queen or they don't,,,,,,,,no?


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

Mike Gillmore said:


> Wondering what experiences others have had with the Cell Punch queen rearing method. My first attempt was a flop, not sure what I did wrong.
> 
> I made up a nice starter colony, punched out 8 cells from my best hive, and inserted the frame in the starter hive. Checked on them 3 days later and the bees had chewed out most of them


Sometimes cell starter/builders simply do not want to cooperate. My experience has been you can take a frame with eggs on it as well as brood and start a one or two frame nuc with all kinds of old bees and limited young bees and they will raise an emergency queen close to every single time. Now that sure is a far cry from the usual recommendation for a starter as being stuffed with young bees.

When I set up a starter I find it works a lot better if it is over nite old before I give it grafts. Sometimes it helps to feed sugar. I have never been able to convince myself pollen sub helped a bit. I have not seen a big time of year effect on how willing they are to raise queens. Some starters go crazy starting their own emergency cells and those are reluctant to feed grafts. Others go to town on grafts and start few or no emergency cells. The result is my takes on grafts tend to be either zero or nearly zero or 90% +. And much of the time I have no idea why. But, the process is so easy it makes little difference for a guy who only wants 25 or 50 queens.


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## Saltybee (Feb 9, 2012)

Richard Cryberg said:


> My experience has been you can take a frame with eggs on it as well as brood and start a one or two frame nuc with all kinds of old bees and limited young bees and they will raise an emergency queen close to every single time. Now that sure is a far cry from the usual recommendation for a starter as being stuffed with young bees.


+1 
I think it is because of all the stores coming in and because nobody messes with the old cranks.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

dtrooster said:


> I'm confused. How is a graft different from punched cells? Basically the same thing isn't it, the bees either have the resources and want to make a queen or they don't,,,,,,,,no?


Just nod and keep walking.

I'll be curious to know if Mike's bees start cells now.


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## Saltybee (Feb 9, 2012)

dtrooster said:


> I'm confused. How is a graft different from punched cells? Basically the same thing isn't it, the bees either have the resources and want to make a queen or they don't,,,,,,,,no?


Then your hands don't shake and your eyes can see! 
No different for the bees, different for the keeper.


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## madasafish (Aug 24, 2010)

I have had the same problems as Mike Gilmore. One cell out of 12 to 18 being drawn out, sometimes none. 

I changed my method and washed my hands thoroughly in unscented soap before punching. The handling of the wax base of the cell by dirty/smelly or hands with some lotion on -essential -to attach to cells or wood blocks - appears to deter bees from starting them.

I tried superglue to attach cells rather than hot wax- no change at all..

I remove queen (and frame) to make a Q- raiser and place in a nuc and after Day 1, remove punch frame and insert into super above brood box, into which I have re-inserted the queen (and frame). Much simpler system and allows honey production to continue.


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

Just to add a little more background on what I did. 

I had a 4 medium 10 frame overwintered hive that did not build up as aggressively as my other colonies and my plan was to split this colony up into several nucs for overwintering. The plan is to raise queens from my strong colony to head up the nucs. 

The queen was isolated in the stack in one box for 9 days with queen excluders above and below. After the 9 days I found the queen and set her aside. I moved two boxes of frames with stores, sealed brood and bees to the side which the queen had no access to the prior 9 days, and then shook all the nurse bees into it which were on the frames the queen had been isolated to containing eggs and open brood. This gave me a fairly strong hive with lots of nurse bees and no eggs or young larvae. I'm certain there were no other queen cells or young larvae in them. 

I then removed a frame from my strong colony with eggs and larvae and punched out 8 cells for my frame with wax cups. The wax cups were softened with a lighter and the cells pushed in. I did not use a towel to cover the frame, punching just 8 cells went pretty quickly. The cells were from old brood comb, but after fixing them in the cups I did not open up the cell walls with a toothpick. Didn't think to do that, maybe that makes a difference. I also did not have any other open brood in the box, not sure if that is absolutely necessary or not.

As mentioned, I checked on them a few days later and most of the punched cells had been chewed up and cleaned out of the wax cups. It was the only open brood in the whole box. Something else that was mentioned, maybe I did not give them enough time to be queenless before inserting the punched cell frame. It was only about an hour or so. 

I'll check soon and see what's happening on the other frame of eggs inserted and let you know.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

From my experience if only using the bees from the same hive that is recently made
queen less they will not make the queen cells. The reason being the queen scent is still
present in a short amount of time when you have a very strong queen. So they think they still have a queen inside and
will not make the queen cells. The other reason is when using the same type of bees the incentive to produce a queen cell
is minimized. But when you have mixed frame of bees into the same cell starter made queen less without any open broods then
they will race to see who can make the cells fastest. They are competing with each others in a mixed environment to secure their
own queens first. That is why I will mixed in other bees from different hives before adding in the graft or in your case the punched out
cells. Also, some bees will not chew out to enlarge the cell tip for a bigger hole so when you do your cell preparation make sure the hole at the
tip is big enough for the nurse bees to go inside to feed the developing larva. I found success in making the hive queen less in 24 hours with
a mixed bees set up from different donor hives.


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

Not sure I really understand the mixing of different bees approach. I usually raise new queens by removing the queen from the hive toward the end of the flow and setting her up in a Nuc. The bees in the original hive seem to do just fine raising a new queen without mixing in other bees. Just thought I would try the cell punch method to raise a handful of queens from a good hive, sounded like an easy way to do it.


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## madasafish (Aug 24, 2010)

My method leaves the hive Q- for 24 hours. I remove the queen on comb and place punched cells within an hour. The cells on a super frame are placed in the space vacated by the comb with queen - and that fills up with nurse bees within the hour before I insert the cells.

Different types of bee? Buckfast cells in carniolan hive..and vice versa.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Here is a very good example of the mixed type of bees.
Here I have the vsh and allogrooming, carnis, Russians and Italians bees on separate hives.
Take a frame with the eggs/larvae of the carnis with the bees attached into a
queen less hive that already had the Italians bees brushed in.
From the carnis frame they will make a few queen cells over 2-3 days. Now while
the other cells are in development from the vsh grafted cells, the carnis are racing to
make their own too. This is a simple strategy of using the different bees mixed in.
Since they cannot fight in a foreign hive territory they have to force themselves to see which genetics will take over
the hive for the new mated queen. Only the strong specie will dominate to take over! The Italians don't care since
they are in their hive but the carnis will race fast to draw out some big cells. 
You can do a small bee experiment by donating different frames from different hives with the
attaching bees on into the same queen less hive. They all should raise some queen cells for you.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

beepro said:


> .....Also, some bees will not chew out to enlarge the cell tip for a bigger hole so when you do your cell preparation make sure the hole at the tip is big enough for the nurse bees to go inside to feed the developing larva...


Forgot to say that after the cells got accepted with RJ deposited inside they will enlarge the entire
cell tip to put in more RJ. This will further extend the cell to keep more RJ in.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Michael Palmer leaves his starter queenless for about 8 hours. That might help. 

David LaFerney and Ray Marler prime their starters with open brood for 4 days before the graft to get the bees into queen rearing mode. That might also help.

Heating separate wax to attach your punch-outs will be much less likely to kill or damage the queen candidate larva than softening the wax with a lighter. Melt some bees wax in a bowl, dip a 3/4" diameter metal tube with the dipping end cut at 45 degrees and flattened except for a tiny hole at the tip. Place your thumb over the 90 degree end, and release the molten wax onto the cell bar. Quickly attach the punched cell.

Hope this helps.


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

Good suggestions. 
I should have been clearer about heating the wax with a lighter. I did prepare wax cups in advance with a rounded dowel rod and secured them with melted wax to a bar. The lighter was used to lightly warm the edges of the wax cups prior to inserting the punched cells. Should have been just enough so the cells would stick to the softened wax on the cups.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

I like your method of attaching punched cells better than mine!

There is the possibility that larval damage occurred during punching / transferring / attachment.

So, back to Cell Starter conditions. As I assume you know, mass failures usually trace to: 1) larvae drying out (unlikely in Cell Punch method); 2) presence of a queen or a queen cell of their own making; 3) insufficient nurse bee population - leads to fewer takes; 4) lack of fresh pollen or bee bread; 5) damaged or diseased larvae; 6) larvae drowning; 7) wrong-aged larvae.

2) & 5) seem like likely candidates, but analyze each idea. There are probably other reasons. Resorting to a method that works for you was the right call.


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