First try at grafting

[D Coates]

On Saturday I tried my hand at grafting my first queens. I found a pattern of eggs, larva, and brood. The outer edges had the eggs with the youngest larva next to them working inward until there was capped brood. I picked a dozen larva that were absolutely tiny, barely larger than the eggs next to them. I grafted them into empty JZ Queen cells that I had put in the hive a couple days earlier to get polished. I checked yesterday and 10 of the 12 cells were capped. They all look the same, long, full size, and with white wax indicating they haven't been capped long with at least 3/4 of the the respective JZ Queen cells full of royal jelly (could see the amount when held up to the light.

Great!... until I did the math. I did this about noon on Saturday and I checked the cells on Wednesday at 7 pm. This is four full days from graft and they are capped not the five that I've read about. I feel very confident that the larva were the right age because of their tiny size and location but I'm second guessing myself.

Were they capped too soon? Is there now a way to tell if the larva I transfered were too old? Any feedback would be appreciated.

[peletier]

The bees will not deal with larvae that are "too old" so stop worrying about that. The only cause for concern is that the larvae might not be fed "lavishly" if the cells are capped too soon. I think your situation is well within the plus/minus limits given in most instructions. Your percentage is excellent. Congrats.:D

[gmcharlie]

I would relax, the bees know more about the time than you do. If you got 75% capped you did fantastic. don't worry a bit. if they were too old they would not have capped them!... my last craft netted 2 out of 30.... so 75% capped is great!

[BerkeyDavid]

I agree - but adjust your calendar so you take them out no more than 10 days after grafting. THey may hatch a day early

[BigDaddyDS]

Sounds like you're doing all right to me. You're only talking about a variance of 12 hours, or so, which is something I wouldn't lose sleep over.

Your cells are capped. They wouldn't have bothered with larva too old.
You have a good number of accepted queen cells.
The amount of royal jelly in each cup is good. Again, they wouldn't have bothered if they weren't accepted.

Adjust your schedule appropriately. Remove them a day early.

DS

[BigLongYellowMFerz]

If u do graft to big tho, you may have a Virgin hatched out early gnawing down all your other cells..........

[D Coates]

Thanks for the encouragement. I've read about how to do it more than I care to and chickened out last year. Actually doing it invariably leads to questions though. I'm using the Ben Harden method http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/benhardenmethod.html as it looked the easiest with the least manipulation. It took 5 - 10 minutes to transfer the larva and other than my trepidation it's gone relatively smoothly. Beginners luck I guess. I am planning on transfering the cells to my queen castle and nucs on the 10th.

On a side note, the 3 frame dummies used by the Ben Harden method are also really useful when moving a 5 frame nuc to a 10 frame. It gives them more space but not too much. The same goes for adding an undrawn deep. You can also use them in a 5 frame nuc if you've got a couple frames with a swarm cell.

[BEES4U]

The bees will not deal with larvae that are "too old"

Yes, they will! That's why you want to know the age of the larvae you are grafting.

When you pick up older larvae the bees wiil make a queen that's called a mesomorph which is between a worker bee and a queen.
Try to do your transfering/grafting with larvae under 24 hours of age. 12-16hours is even better.
Keep trying,
Ernie

[peletier]

Jay Smith said the bees WILL NOT choose a larva that is too old. C.C.Miller said the bees will not choose a too-old larva IF proper age larvae are available:scratch:. My experience is that the bees will reject any larvae that is too old, too dry, too ugly, or otherwise doesn't meet their high standards. They always correct my mistakes by giving me ZIP.

I'm sure the bees CAN produce a "mesomorph" but don't think it is an everyday occurance. In other words, if I graft a bar full of too-old larvae, I'm not going to get a bar full of "mesomorphs". I'm going to get a bar full of ZIP:cry:

That's good enough to say "the bees won't deal with larvae that are too old".

[Jesse]

I have to agree with Ernie - mesomorph, or an inferior queen - they WILL use day 2 larva and make queens from them - even worse - since those are a day older they will hatch a day sooner and kill the other queens that were grafted from larva of the ideal age. Queens from 2nd day larva usually don't develop very big ovules and are often superceded if they are accepted.

[cow pollinater]

I've had two mesomorphs this year. Both were from frames of brood that I gave to queenless colonies when a previous queen cell failed. In both cases it took the bees longer(old bees)to build a cell and the result was a runt queen that layed a few frames just to keep them going long enough to have a few fresh eggs and supercede.
I believe mesomorphs are natures way of giving a bee colony a last ditch effort at survival.

[cow pollinater]

I forgot to mention: Good job:applause: I'm new to queens this year myself. I've had one batch of ten cells that produced ten queens and one of thirty that produced one with most somewhere in between and I'm thrilled about all of them.:D Fun stuff huh?

[BEES4U]

Relationship between larvae age and characteristics of queen honeybees (Apis mellifera L.)
after single and double grafting

B. Emsen , A. Dodologlu
Department of Animal Science,
Ataturk University
25240 Erzurum-Turkey

http://www.beekeeping.org/articles/us/grafting.htm
The above data has some very good research that is charted on the age of the larvae.
Regards,
Ernie