Chinese royal jelly for queen production

[zukit]

Hi there
I wanted to start grafting some queens to replace my old ones. But I wondered if can use a Chinese royal jelly that is being sold in some beekeeping shops!!!

[RayMarler]

5 days before you need the royal jelly, remove 1 frame of hatching sealed pupae and 1 frame with eggs and hatching eggs, and put them in a nuc with a frame of nectar and pollen and shake a frame of nursebees into it. in 4 or 5 days, go into the nuc and remove the frame of eggs you had put in, and there will be large Qcells that you can remove the larva and rob the royale jelly for use in your grafting.

[zukit]

Thanks for the quick reply!
But I just wondered if this royal jelly on sale can be used or just pure one is needed??

[tecumseh]

I typically do about the same things as ray marler to acquire just a dab of royal honey ahead of grafting which for most folks is all they need. I would not buy royal jelley for grafting purpose for two reasons. The first of course is disease transmisson... our latest problem with disease may likely (this is speculate since we will likely never know for certain) have originated in chinese royal jelley doing exactly what you are attempting to do. The second reason is that royal jelley in a queen cell changes somewhat over a fairly short time interval.... so what is in royal jelley on day one is not the same as what is in royal jelley on day 4. I guess a thrid factor COULD be that freshness counts (at least it does for me and I suspect it does for honeybees also).

I see you are a fairly recent member.. welcome aboard.

[stangardener]

myself and others practice dry grafting. no added royal jelly. i use a chinese grafting tool that scoops up a goodly amount of food with the larva. given more larva than needed you can also scoop out a larva and food dispose of just the larva and then use the tool with food on it to scoop up another larva and it's food. effectively double dipping. this seems to be sufficient.

[Michael Bush]

I prefer to just use the chinese grafting tool. I used to save royal jelly for grafting but couldn't see any difference in acceptance and quit.

[tecumseh]

strangegardner writes:
myself and others practice dry grafting. no added royal jelly.

tecumseh:
humm... not such bad advice if you are an old hand at grafting. I am not so certain this is such good advice if the person asking is fairly new to grafting or queen rearing.

I would suggest that the addition of a bit of royal jelley (priming) makes removing the young larvae much easier... so at least this half of the grafting process goes a bit easier. there are not many things quite as confonding as to try and try and try to remove your first larvae for grafting and then when you finally get one of those little buggers on you grafting needle to discover that it will not come off. just my slat for certain.

[jean-marc]

Grafting is pretty easy with the chinese grafting tool. It's one positive thing the chinese have contributed too in recent beekeeping times. I mean if you have too prime the cups it's just another step too slow you down, no real benefit as far as I can see. The chinese grafting tool allows you to scoop up royal jelly with larvae. Because of my diminishing eyesight I no longer graft larvae , but I'm grafting the royal jelly. If I can't see the larvae then it's about the right size. If I can graft the pool of royal jelly I know there's a larvae sitting on top.

Grafting is one of those things that you just gotta do, and don't overanalyse the situation. You can talk about it all you want but after doing it a few times you'll realise you easy it is.

Jean-Marc

[RayMarler]

I made my grafting tool out of a paper clip. It's got a flat instead of a hook to get the larva, and you twist it using a sideways scooping action to get the larva and royal jelly in the cell. It works really well and dry grafting with it works fine as it's easy to scoop up and release the larva with it's already given RJ. I agree with Tecumseh, royal jelly one day old vs. 4 days old are different from each other. I have no better success using primer jelly or not. However, I've only practiced doing grafting a couple times last year, so I'm no expert by a long shot at it.