# Day 6 queen cells



## IndianaHoney (Jun 5, 2006)

I have a Nicot system, similar to the Jenter box system. I put the queen in the the box on day 0, then released her on day 1. She layed in all the cells. I Then waited until day 4, I then put the cells on the cell bar and transfured them to the starter hive. Today (day 6) I checked to see how many cells they started. I noticed that there was no wax on the outside of the brown cell cups. I didn't appear that they were building any cells. However, I noticed that there were bees on each of the cells, and they appeared to be tending to the cells. I noticed that there is some stuff lining the inside of the cell walls, I think it was a dull yellow or light brown color, but I don't know what it was. The larvea appeared to still be in there. They also appeared to be beneth a clear jelly like substance that I assume is royal jelly.

This is my first time raising queens, so I just don't know what I should expect. Is this normal? What is that yellow or light brown material?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

If they are feeding the larvae I would assume they are doing well but I would expect a cell by now. They should be capped in two more days.


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## IndianaHoney (Jun 5, 2006)

That's what worrys me. I was also wondering what that yellow stuff was. I thought that royal jelly was clear?


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## simplyhoney (Sep 14, 2004)

You should have wax after 12 hours, if you don't you probably have a queen in your starter. how did you make your starter? did you put brood around your cells to simualte the center of a brood chamber? If you made your starter out of several different hives, sometimes there is a virgin queen that can can get through an excluder of not be easily spotted. I'd start by checking for a queen. Usually if you do have a queen the bees will remove the larva from the cups.


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## IndianaHoney (Jun 5, 2006)

*Failed horribly!!!!!!*

I just checked them again today. The bees did remove the larvea from the cups. However, when I made this starter hive, all I did was remove the old queen. I choose them because they are strong and agressive. Now I have started over and plan to use the breeder hive as the starter hive. Unfortunately I now have to reunite the nuc I made from that starter hive with their parent hive, and I have no idea how to reunite them when they are in a nuc box. 

I followed MB's schedule just as stated, except that I made the starter hive two days before moving the cells. I don't think the starter hive has a queen or a virgin. I have no idea why I failed. Everything seems to be going wrong this year. I got two queens and started new hives with them using 5 frames from the parent hive, their arn't many bees left in the new hives, maybe enough to cover two sides of one frame. I'm thinking about splitting the old starter hive in two and then uniting them with the two new hives.


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## Brandy (Dec 3, 2005)

*Queens*

Sounds like you're spreading yourself and your bee's too thin. I tried the same thing last year trying to make up starters, mating nuc's, breeders, and still have some production hives. Forget it, concentrate on what matters the most to you and build up your numbers and populations to do what you want "the Most". Queen's, increase, honey. You can't do it all until you have the number of hives to commit to the process. Just my two cents.


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## JohnK and Sheri (Nov 28, 2004)

IndianaHoney said:


> when I made this starter hive, all I did was remove the old queen. ....
> I followed MB's schedule just as stated, except that *I made the starter hive two days before moving the cells*.


I would guess that they had their own cells started by the time you put yours in.
Sheri


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## IndianaHoney (Jun 5, 2006)

Thanks Sheri, you're probably right. I didn't listen to MB on that one and paid the price. Lukily all I lost was the 20 larvea used for the cell cups.

Brandy, I have to disagree. Everything I have done this year has been in this one apairy that has seven hives. Here is a list of what I have done.

1. I put a Jenter box in H1 with the queen. She laid in all cups.

2. I made H4 a queenless starter hive by placing the queen and 3 frames of brood with bees in a nuc, and a frame of honey from a deadout, along with a feeder. They are doing fine and still have plenty of bees to get started. This new nuc is now H8.

3. I moved the 20 cells from H1 to the cell bar and put them in H4. H4 killed the larvea.

4. I bought 2 queens for early splits. I then took 3 frames of brood, and attached bees and placed them in H9 (a full deep), with a frame of honey from a deadout.

5. I then took 3 frames of brood from H5 and placed them in H10 with two frames of honey from a deadout.

Lots of the bees from H9 and H10 have flown back to their original hive. The problem is not that I'm spreading to thin, its that I'm making the normal newbe mistakes. I closed up H8 for 2 days, again, they are doing fine. I didn't close up H9 and H10. I now have to go out there tommorrow and give them two more frames of bees, then close them up for two days. Again, I might just get rid of H4 by splitting them up into H9 and H10, if I don't do this I'll have laying workers in H4.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>I was also wondering what that yellow stuff was. I thought that royal jelly was clear?'

Actually it's milky white at first and turns yellow and finally waxy and brown as it dries out.

>I would guess that they had their own cells started by the time you put yours in.

That's my guess.

In my experience, the main issues to get them to build cells are:

_It is the time of year they want to rear queens. Drones are a pretty good indicator of how anxious they are to rear queens.
_They are queenless
_They have no queen cells of their own
_They have wall to wall bees. I mean every frame covered. If the density of bees is not pretty much maximum, they will not do well building cells. It's not so important how many bees as the density of those bees. Better to have a two frame hive overflowing than a 20 frame hive that's sparsely filled with bees.
_They have nectar and pollen. I try to give them frames of open nectar and pollen as well as feeding them.


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## Brandy (Dec 3, 2005)

"I have no idea why I failed. Everything seems to be going wrong this year."

Without knowing previously how many hives you were working with I was trying to note that it takes fairly good sized populations to get better results.
Of course if there are stray cells the size of the population is meaningless.


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## Dan Williamson (Apr 6, 2004)

If it was always easy everyone would do it... no its not complicated but it requires alot of attention to detail and a strict adherance to schedules.

I was getting close to a 95% take last year when I was grafting. My first graft attempt this year I only got 23 of 36 cells to take. That was frustrating. Only thing I did different was try a different grafting tool. My guess is that I don't have the best technique with this tool yet. 

The key is to get back on the horse. You'll get it. Just try try and try again. There is a learning curve. 

Yesterday I was making up splits for a hive and noticed the queen on the first frame I pulled. I was commenting to my Dad how strong the hive was and that she would make a nice breeder queen. I set the frame off to the side so I would know where she was and made up a split. When I was done I picked up the frame to put back in the hive and couldn't find the queen anywhere on it. I had my Dad come over and look for the queen as well cause I thought I was just missing her. It was only after a couple of minutes that I realized she was under my finger. Yep.... SMASHED. Talk about a sick feeling. She goes from being a potential breeder to dead in about 5 minutes. Ah well.... life goes on. Those are the frustrations of beekeeping sometimes. I learned a great lesson with that mistake.


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## greenbeekeeping (Feb 13, 2003)

Keep on trying. My first few grafts this year were pretty bad. The last two grafts I made were in the 95% range.


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## Keith Benson (Feb 17, 2003)

Dan Williamson said:


> Yep.... SMASHED.


Ugh - that had to hurt.

Keith


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## Dan Williamson (Apr 6, 2004)

Keith Benson said:


> Ugh - that had to hurt.
> 
> Keith


Yep... that's an understatement. I was quite irritated with myself for being careless. Happens when you get in a hurry. Fortunately, I had a queen to put in the hive as I was making up nucs but it made me short a nuc. Gotta roll with the punches I guess.

Makes you wonder how many times that happens and we don't realize it... The hives goes queenless for seemingly no reason or we check back in a month or two and they have a queen but don't seem to be going anywhere or doing much when actually they've spent the last month raising a queen due to our negiligence.


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## IndianaHoney (Jun 5, 2006)

Don't worry, I'm not ready to give up yet. I put the queen back in the Jenter box yesterday, I'm starting all over again.


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## Ross (Apr 30, 2003)

But did you reload the top box with nurse bees?


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## IndianaHoney (Jun 5, 2006)

"But did you reload the top box with nurse bees?"

No, I didn't. I figured that as strong as they were, the nurse bees they had would work just fine. What if I use nurse bees from multiple hives?


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