# Diving into grafting in the spring



## thehackleguy (Jul 29, 2014)

I've read and re-read most of the post, youtube videos, and websites about queen rearing. I think I'm ready to give it a go next June. For those of you who are grafting are there any small things that helped you succeed that you didn't find in your studying?


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## Dacypher (Oct 11, 2013)

Do you have all the hives you need to stock your mating nucs?


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## drlonzo (Apr 15, 2014)

Queen rearing is enjoyable, somewhat labor intensive, and stressful all at the same time. lol Make sure you have plenty of bees for your mating NUC's or are able to break up hives for them. Be ready to either combine those frames back into other hives or place more cells if a queen doesn't come back from mating. Learn to cut losses quickly and cull bad queens. Maintain a good drone colony or two. If using the "Jenter or Nicot" grafting systems, make sure you place the grid in a hive for a week prior to putting a queen into it, that way it soaks up the hive smell. If using the standard old style grafting method, plenty of light and a steady hand is key.


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## thehackleguy (Jul 29, 2014)

Dacypher said:


> Do you have all the hives you need to stock your mating nucs?


I don't know if I have enough hives. I have 9 right now, I'm going to split to 18-20ish the first of May and I'm planning on grafting June 1. 



drlonzo said:


> Queen rearing is enjoyable, somewhat labor intensive, and stressful all at the same time. lol Make sure you have plenty of bees for your mating NUC's or are able to break up hives for them. Be ready to either combine those frames back into other hives or place more cells if a queen doesn't come back from mating. Learn to cut losses quickly and cull bad queens. Maintain a good drone colony or two. If using the "Jenter or Nicot" grafting systems, make sure you place the grid in a hive for a week prior to putting a queen into it, that way it soaks up the hive smell. If using the standard old style grafting method, plenty of light and a steady hand is key.


I'll have to look up drone colony, I had tons of drones this year but I didn't do anything special for them.


Thanks for the replies! I hadn't read about the issues you two brought up already.


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## rookie2531 (Jul 28, 2014)

I reared some this spring and it is very addicting. If you are going to do some walk away splits in may, you could just cut the cells out and have plenty for mating nucs. More than you can handle I would guess. But after those splits, be careful when you start grafting. About that time, you will have fewer frames of bees and more robbers out and more pests also. If you have plenty of FL supers on them, that will help with drone population too.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Yes.
*1) Don't jump the gun in the Springtime.* Let the bees build up a bit first. You'll likely get more and better queens that way, especially if you have a small apiary. In 2013, a VERY dry year in my area, I tried too early in the season and most of my queens were superceded. I lost a critical few weeks to a month of the prime nectar / pollen flow, to the demise of my apiary. The resources consumed, and subsequently re-combined / re-split / requeened, could have waited a few weeks and made an excellent year for me.

*2) Pay careful attention to the SCALE OF YOUR APIARY!*
If you have less than 6 colonies, you'll probably be better off splitting and adding a mated queen or combining with an overwintered nuc' than you would having raised a big batch of queens and making tiny mini-mating nuc's. 

Read up on David Laferney's posts about *Joseph Clemens' system* of a queenless Starter/Finisher colony in a 5- or 6-frame, vented nuc with a feeder rim on top, and making up 40 nuc' boxes. The drones are given 10 days head start, a small (8 to 20) batch of queen cells is started every 11 days. The queen cells get planted into the mating nuc's and stay for 22 days.

By making a limited, small-scale batch of queens, you can maintain a number of full-strength hives to supply the subsequent cycles of queens, keeping continuity in capacity to raise queens throughout the season. <=BIG, HUGE BENEFIT there!!! 

Joseph Clemens' system works well with several methods: Doolittle's grafting; Smith's Cut-Cell method (see Oldtimer's thread, "Raising Queens Without Grafting"), Jenter Box method; Nicot method; Hopkins' method; Mel Disselkoen's OTS method; Miller's method; etc. 

Harry Cloake's method would have to be modified for nuc' box use - either a narrow Cloake board or a plywood adapter board over a full-size Cloake Board. Brother Adam / Michael Palmer's method is for larger apiaries that have enough resources for a strong Finisher Colony, and plenty of bees to stock up the nuc's.

If your apiary is large enough to set up 1 or more super-strong Finisher colonies, you still should keep an eye on exactly how many queens/nuc's to make each batch, each season. This will approximately idealize your apiary's growth and/or profitability if selling queens and nuc's.

When your apiary has grown real big, and you are tuned in to the queen rearing / nuc' production, you'll likely turn to running separate Starter and Finisher Colonies, as they have separate schedules and can be fed into which ever Finisher is below capacity, increasing the total number of queens produces by starting cycles as often as every 4 days. But at that point, you should be telling me how its done


*3) The Queen Rearing Dance* is best started by making up a blank master calendar without numbers for each day (you'll fill these in at the start of each cycle) and making plenty of copies, and a laminated sequence list. 

If a strong Finisher Colony is used in a larger-scale operation, 7 to 10 frames of capped fbrood are imported to it 10 days before Grafting Day. The same applies to a nucleus box Starter/Finisher on a smaller scale, say 4 frames of capped brood for a 6-frame nuc', 3 frames for a 5-frame nuc'. 

ALL QUEEN CELLS ARE REMOVED (you can try planting them into mini-nuc's for learning). Do it again 5 days later. Feed them on Days 1 and 6. Isolate your breeder queen (different colony, man!) if you have a Pritchard box or an excluder-partitioned breeder queen hive at 7 AM on Day 8. 

On Day 10, I set up the grafting tent, place a chair and a table inside it, gather and clean all the equipment - 7X eye loupe, grafting needle/Chinese tool/#000 paint brush, spray bottle, bucket for warm water, towels to dampen for covering up the queen cell frame as I graft, bee brush, etc....use your checklist. 

Grafting Day (apologies to other methods for lack of a more all-inclusive term) is Day 11 if you start on Day 1 instead of "Day zero".

*4) Your mating nucleus colonies* will likely fare much better if it has at least 3 frames side-by-side-by-side. After you have some experience, you may try to use mini-mating nuc's, meanwhile, use regular frames. 

If your apiary is small enough, stock each nuc' with frames and bees from the same hive, the queen cell can come from elsewhere - they'll take it if they're queenless and have no open brood. 

If your apiary is larger, you'll be considering more time-efficient methods. Shaker boxes, bee funnels, baby nuc's, baby nuc' frame drawing boxes, incubators, I.I. setups, and other equipment starts to make more sense the larger your apiary gets.

You'll probably find that more queens and smaller nuc's works better in the early part of the season, fewer queens and larger nuc's work better late in the season.

In any case, try making up your nuc's on the flatbed or the trailer. Plant your queen cells, then haul them to an out apiary 10 miles from the parent colonies. If open mating and not yet starting a breeding colony, choose an area with plenty of drones, near a DCA. If attempting drone flooding, choose an area almost devoid of other bees.

*5) Drone colonies* (Large apiaries only!) should be fed a pollen patty as often as every 4 days if they will take it. Drone colonies are a waste of resources for a small apiary.

Hope this helps. Good luck!


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

You will be amazed at how much resources it takes to make a cell builder and then mating nucs. My tiny failed attempt showed me that I needed way more bees than I could imagine. How many would you expect to have come through winter of those 9? And if split that heavily, are you introducing queens first of May or letting them raise their own?

If you're letting them raise their own I'd venture to say that there isn't a very good chance at having enough expendable brood to be able to make up a proper cell builder on May 31st for grafting June 1. If you introduce queens you might be better off and be able to rob some brood from them at that point.

We are similarly sized and I'll tell you the plan I have. I am going to graft much earlier than prime swarm season here (which is roughly end of May/first week of June). I'm thinking of making up a cell builder around when you're talking about splitting. Last year I tried shaking bees in and it just didn't work out. This next year I should have enough bees to be able to steal five frames of brood between them. So put 5 frames of capped brood in a 5 frame nuc around first of May and super that nuc with feed frames and maybe an empty or two of comb so they have space to expand to. Prime them with a frame of eggs/young the day or two before I want to graft then shake them down into one 5-frame box two frames open nectar frame of pollen and maybe an empty comb. Plus the graft frame. I need to go back through Michael Palmer's cell building video on youtube and re-read David LaFerney's thread here about his implementation of the Joseph Clemens "system". Kind of mis-mash it all around and butcher it into something I can do.

The principle does not change. You need a TON of young, queenless bees with adequate food. The mating nuc piece of the puzzle I haven't even attempted yet because my grafting went so poorly. So that's another piece of it.
Not sure I'd be able to run a schedule like most guys do. I'd likely make up mating nucs with a frame of capped brood plus a frame out of my cell builder or a shake of bees + additional frames for food, etc. So when you start talking about stealing brood for cell builder, then stealing more brood for mating nucs... You see that it doesn't take long before you're taking a whole lot of resources. I have a few nucs that will hopefully help with that next year if they winter.

How's that for a nice ramble? 

Watch Michael Palmer's Queen Rearing in the Sustainable Apiary video on YouTube about 15 times being mindful of how to scale it for what you can do and what you can afford to give. The good news is all the brood stealing might help keep swarming impulse down some.


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## fieldsofnaturalhoney (Feb 29, 2012)

The small thing that wasn't in the study, is the actual moving of the egg/larvae to the cup, without flipping or mangling it. This takes practice.


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## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

"For those of you who are grafting are there any small things that helped you succeed that you didn't find in your studying?"

The grafting is the easiest part. The learning curve is steep. One mating nuc that has plenty of bees of the right age blend is better than four that don't. Local mentors who are successfully raising queens are precious.


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## thehackleguy (Jul 29, 2014)

jwcarlson said:


> Watch Michael Palmer's Queen Rearing in the Sustainable Apiary video on YouTube about 15 times being mindful of how to scale it for what you can do and what you can afford to give. The good news is all the brood stealing might help keep swarming impulse down some.


I have seen it a few times....I'm going to be checking it out again.

Now, for more info: I won't be making a bunch of mating nucs. I will be trying to cook up some queens, I will use them if I have room, if I don't I'll give them away or dispatch them. I just want to learn how to do it. Having said that I am taking all of the info in and appreciate the input!


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

1. Practice grafting onto a flat surface first (if you have a microscope handy, use a microscope slide).

2. Put the frame you are going to graft from into the starter for a fee hours before grafting. This will make sure the larva are well fed and are floating on food, and it _seems_ to prime the starter


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## thehackleguy (Jul 29, 2014)

Riverderwent said:


> Local mentors who are successfully raising queens are precious.


I would agree, unfortunately I have had NO luck finding a local mentor...or even someone that will let me tag along for an inspection when I'm available.


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## John Davis (Apr 29, 2014)

I agree with JW. Look at David LF plan. It will give you the ability to produce 8 to 15 good queens in a batch. Do that early and use the first set when you do your splits. They will be ahead by not having to start emergency cells on their own. Timing and not stretching the resources to thin is a key to sucess. Once you get the hang of it you can produce queens faster than you have the resources for.


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## thehackleguy (Jul 29, 2014)

Yes, that makes sense to almost follow your plan JW and graft PRIOR to splitting then using the queens for that. I can always do walk-away splits June 1 if my queens don't grow.


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## BeeCurious (Aug 7, 2007)

I grafted queens for the first time this year and was very happy with the results. I used Chinese grafting tools and used jzbz cups. Buy several..., 
more than you think you'll need, of the grafting tools. I was blaming the tools for the initial difficulties I was having but I saw that the problem was my total inexperience. It was nice having the extra grafting tools to "share the blame". 

I used a double 5-frame medium setup as the cell builder... packed with bees. 

From an initial acceptance of 26 of 29 cups, I ended up with 17 mated queens. 

I'll be buying an entry level incubator for next season. I want to eliminate the stress of worrying about a stray virgin entering my cell building / finisher.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

thehackleguy said:


> Yes, that makes sense to almost follow your plan JW and graft PRIOR to splitting then using the queens for that. I can always do walk-away splits June 1 if my queens don't grow.


I'd encourage you to follow your own plan formulated from MP's advice. David LF's and Joseph Clemens on here... go searching for it. I'd strongly encourage you to introduce queens if you're going to split ahead of time. By the time queens from May 1 splitting are laying (if raising emergency cells) they'll be far too weak to take brood from and grafting is going to be a wash.

Prime grafting season comes and goes awful quick it seems like waiting waiting waiting for "bee weather" and then next thing you know it's 90* and hasn't rained in three weeks then it's fall.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

Not that it's the end all - it's not - but this article on beginner queen rearing has every tip I have ever come across or figured out on making grafting easier. Whenever I find a new one I edit the article to add it in. 

A few additional tips...

1) Your first try at grafting is going to suck. No offence, but it just will. Your first time(s) is about learning, not about making killer queens. 

2) Take it seriously and give everything your best effort, but still... #1.

3) Start early - as soon as you have drones - because #1.

4) Graft every week or 10 days depending on your schedule, and the cycle you decide to use. Repetition is how you get better so that you can put #1 behind you.

5) Run at least 3 cohorts of mating nucs - even if there is only one nuc in each cohort. 4-5 nucs per cohort can be pretty danged productive if you stick to a schedule. But since you only make them up 1/3 at a time it won't hit your resources too hard all at once.

6) Use standard frames for now - don't even think about mini nucs or mini frames yet.

7) Don't worry about drone colonies yet.

8) Have fun - don't give up, because #1 is a given. Count on it and you won't be disappointed.


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## jean-marc (Jan 13, 2005)

Yup. The doing part. Just do it, no need to analyse this to death.

Jean-Marc


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

Give her lots of time


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## Knisely (Oct 26, 2013)

Queen raising is a quantum leap from bee keeping. Having that knowledge of 'when' to do 'what' is something that doesn't come readily from reading or watching videos. Good luck to all who make that jump. Heck, I might even make my #1 try this next spring!


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Whatever you do don't put new foreign frame of bees into your
mating nuc when the virgin is hatched. So be sure to make your mating nuc with a stronger population
than usual to avoid this issue. The foreign bees are not that forgiving of the newly
hatched virgin. Learned my lessons the hard way.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

Read and reread David's link in post 17. Exceptionally well done with tons of great tips.


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## Arnie (Jan 30, 2014)

Are you stretching your resources a little bit?
You have 9 colonies that you plan to split into 18, then a month later you are going to try grafting? 

If I were to do it, I would not make so many splits before trying to graft queens. You have to have bees for a starter/builder and then enough resources to make up mating nucs. 

And, of course, you need to have enough time to start a thread to document your experience here. 

Go for it! Let us know what you learn along the way! Good luck.


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

A couple of thoughts:

1. I was just pricing 'grafting kits' as a doorprize...Mann Lake has chinese grafting tools for 2.95 (1.95 if you buy 50), cups are less than $9 for 100, and they sell a wooden cell bar frame for 45cents (this will fit into any standard lang frame with a couple of deck screws going through the wire holes of the sidebars). If you are placing an order that gets you free shipping (or if you come close), add a few grafting tools, 100 cups, and a couple of grafting bars. If you put together a bunch of these with 10 or 20 cups per 'kit', you are well under $5...all that's missing is an LED flashlight and a pair of reading glasses.

2. I have a 21 page document that (hopefully) will help you understand the 'why' of different queen rearing systems. http://BeeUntoOthers.com/queennotes.pdf


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## thehackleguy (Jul 29, 2014)

Arnie said:


> Are you stretching your resources a little bit?
> You have 9 colonies that you plan to split into 18, then a month later you are going to try grafting?
> 
> If I were to do it, I would not make so many splits before trying to graft queens. You have to have bees for a starter/builder and then enough resources to make up mating nucs.
> ...




No, I'll have enough resources. I won't be splitting that hard, if I need to I'm going to buy nucs to fill out my 18-20 hives.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

thehackleguy said:


> No, I'll have enough resources. I won't be splitting that hard, if I need to I'm going to buy nucs to fill out my 18-20 hives.


I don't mean this negatively, but I don't think you will have enough resources. But it really depends on how big of a batch you're trying to graft. 10 or 100? I suspect a small batch, so you can probably throw something together.

Of course if the flow is like it was this year it might not matter much at all because it seemed like this year was non-stop and very good for making bees and brood (or honey if you managed for it). Even my amateur attempt yielded a little honey and a lot of bees despite not planning to harvest anything.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

thehackleguy said:


> I don't know if I have enough hives. I have 9 right now, I'm going to split to 18-20ish the first of May and I'm planning on grafting June 1.


Hmmm. You're going to split on May 1 and graft on June 1. What will be the queen stock for the splits? How strong will your colonies be on May 1? 

If I were you, I wouldn't split anything on May 1. If you want to graft on June 1, I would choose a strong colony to be my cell builder and graft into that after setting it up properly to receive a graft. I would plan on grafting into this cell builder 10 days before June 1. Then I would make my splits on May 31, and give them the cells on June 1.


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## Arnie (Jan 30, 2014)

Michael,
How do you set up your cell builder? Do you confine the queen to the lower hive body and let the bees in the top box build the cells? Do you add a couple frames of capped brood to get more young bees?
Thanks.


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## BeeCurious (Aug 7, 2007)

Arnie said:


> Michael,
> How do you set up your cell builder? Do you confine the queen to the lower hive body and let the bees in the top box build the cells? Do you add a couple frames of capped brood to get more young bees?
> Thanks.


Here is an entire thread on MP's method. 
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?244271-My-Cell-Building-Methods


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## Arnie (Jan 30, 2014)

Thanks for the link, B.C. 

I like the Brother Adam technique. Just add an extra box of brood over a queen excluder onto the already strong cell builder hive. Nice!


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Arnie said:


> Thanks for the link, B.C.
> 
> I like the Brother Adam technique. Just add an extra box of brood over a queen excluder onto the already strong cell builder hive. Nice!


Wait till you see the cells you get. Nice!!


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

deknow said:


> 2. I have a 21 page document that (hopefully) will help you understand the 'why' of different queen rearing systems. http://BeeUntoOthers.com/queennotes.pdf
> 
> Well fed (not dry looking) young larvae up to about 3 days old are what is needed.


I'd like to see those queens that are grafted from 2.5 day old larvae, and compare them to queens grafted from .5 day old larvae.


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## Arnie (Jan 30, 2014)

Michael Palmer said:


> Wait till you see the cells you get. Nice!!


Looking forward to it.

Can I use a queenless nuc as a cell stater? Set it up a day or two ahead?

Edit: Now that I re-read your post it looks like you put the grafted larvae directly into the cell builder.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Arnie said:


> Michael,
> How do you set up your cell builder?


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## thehackleguy (Jul 29, 2014)

jwcarlson said:


> I don't mean this negatively, but I don't think you will have enough resources. But it really depends on how big of a batch you're trying to graft. 10 or 100? I suspect a small batch, so you can probably throw something together.


Well this is how I look at it: I'm not making a living from my bees, if I screw something up I can just recombine the cell builder bees and move forward. I don't really care about honey so that is not an issue (I also took about 70 lbs this year when I wasn't going to at all). Really about the only thing that could go horribly wrong would be for me to get no queens and all of the bees in the cell builder died, but I still won't really be out anything that I can't recover.

*I am making some assumptions here also,* assuming I have viable hives in the spring, assuming they start to build up good, ect. Of course everything could change, if I have NO hives that make it to spring I might just have a bunch of equipment for sale. 

That is a great lecture, I've watched it a few times and need to a few more :thumbsup:


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## thehackleguy (Jul 29, 2014)

Michael Palmer said:


> Hmmm. You're going to split on May 1 and graft on June 1. What will be the queen stock for the splits? How strong will your colonies be on May 1?


That was the plan before I started this thread to discuss it.



Michael Palmer said:


> If I were you, I wouldn't split anything on May 1. If you want to graft on June 1, I would choose a strong colony to be my cell builder and graft into that after setting it up properly to receive a graft. I would plan on grafting into this cell builder 10 days before June 1. Then I would make my splits on May 31, and give them the cells on June 1.


That will be my plan, thanks for taking the time to respond!


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## BeeCurious (Aug 7, 2007)

thehackleguy said:


> No, I'll have enough resources. I won't be splitting that hard, if I need to I'm going to buy nucs to fill out my 18-20 hives.




I would try to avoid buying any nucs and use the available resources to accomplish whatever increase you can manage to achieve. I bought a couple of nucs in 2008 and since then I have not purchased any packages (or nucs) for my own use. I have bought numerous queens through the years but the thrill of receiving a shipment of queens has faded. I didn't take a single frame of honey this year but I managed to graft queens and get bees back into a lot of my boxes. 

A modest incubator is on my wishlist for next season...


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

From 6 overwintered nucs I managed to get 28 nucs for overwintering with queens, and still have the original nucs in big boxes. Some of the nucs are marginal quality, some of them may have been started a bit too late.

I tried a few different ways to raise queens. I soon realized I didn't have the resources to build single box cell builders. My early fumbling efforts put me behind and I had to work really hard to meet the goal of 30 nucs. At my scale, a big cell builder wasn't possible, nor necessary. I had the resources to make about 6 mating nucs at a time with marginal resources. That was my goal for queens. I found that strong failed mating nucs, given more resources, were motivated to make decent queen cells in comparison to my early grafting, cell cutting attempts. They also made about the right number at my scale. Since I was foundationless and all my colonies were building comb, it was easy to give them a frame with new comb along with eggs/young larvae. I did get some decent queens in my limited experience. 

I would also forgo grafting for the first queens. Some success with the first batch will give you a good start and more resources to work with. I would go with OT's cut cell method or something like I have done. Once you get going then it will give you more room to experiment with grafting later. 

Next year the ratio of nucs to 2nd/3rd year hives will be much better. I'll be shooting for 30 to 60 nucs going into winter. I will be making the mating nucs stronger and hopefully improve mating success. Poor mating success creates alot of extra work.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

I would break down these 9 hives into fairly strong nucs with
eggs/larvae first. And then allow the bees to make 2-3 queen cells in each nuc hive.
At the same time graft from your favorite breeder queen(s) into these
fairly strong nucs. Now you got your nucs made up for as many as you can and the experience of
doing a graft in the same day too. How's that sound?


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

The idea is maybe not depending on grafting the first year you use it, but learn to graft in parallel with other methods till you get it down.


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