Made my first attempt at this Saturday. I have some questions.
Is temperature and humidity of grafting room that important?
I didn't realize till reading afterwards to make sure I did OK, that 70 Degrees is recommended with humidity. I can use a heater and humidifier next time, if this is important.
If I roll the larvae on the side of the cell while pulling it out, am I likely to have damaged it?
Is priming the cups a good idea? If so, whats the best way? Can you just pull the jelly out of 3 or so cells without the larvae to use?
Do you sterilize a chinese grafting tool with alcohol, or just use it a few times?
I prewaxed the plastic cups, any benifit?
I'm sure more to come. I was going to try the hopkins method but most of my foundation is plastic. I was impressed at how quickly grafting went and would like to get this skill down as it seems very efficent. I'm going to make another attempt this weekend if my first frame is a dud.
How do you tell if your lifting the jelly and not touching the larvae?
Also, I'm thinking that when you make one attempt with the grafting tool, if it dosen't lift out perfectly the first time, you should skip that cell and try the next one?
>How do you tell if your lifting the jelly and not touching the larvae?
You can tell by how the larvae and the liquid move. At least you can if you can see that well.
>Also, I'm thinking that when you make one attempt with the grafting tool, if it dosen't lift out perfectly the first time, you should skip that cell and try the next one?
If you think you bumped it or flipped it over, yes. You may as well just move to the next one.
Most queen grafting instructions I read state to use dark brood comb. Is this so you can more easily see the larvae for grafting? Or does it effect a queen's willingness to lay in it quickly?
well waya it was explained to me years back that the darker comb aided in seeing the larvae, although I (with the assistance of a magnifying lens and light) see young larvae on both equally well.
>Most queen grafting instructions I read state to use dark brood comb. Is this so you can more easily see the larvae for grafting? Or does it effect a queen's willingness to lay in it quickly?
It's easier to see AND you don't poke a hole through the bottom of the cell so easily.
The results are in from my second grafting attempt.
10 out of 50 took to capping. 20%s better than 4% I suppose.
However I had mostly short stubby finished queen cells. What is it that causes this?
The cell starter had plenty of bees, pollen, and feed.
Most of my mateing nucs had finished queen cells in them already since my best hive swarmed leaving loads of queen cells and some real nasty bees.
I decided I had done enough damage to my apiary this spring and combined the cell starter with a week hive. I have 3 colonies starting swarm preparation and will split it up after the cells are finished to fill out my mateing nucs. Kind of depressed about my grafting results, but I will try again this summer for more practice.
>However I had mostly short stubby finished queen cells. What is it that causes this?
Some are larger than others and I don't know why. Some think the small ones aren't as good of queens. I haven't noticed any real difference.
>The cell starter had plenty of bees, pollen, and feed.
Plenty of bees is overflowing.
>Most of my mateing nucs had finished queen cells in them already since my best hive swarmed leaving loads of queen cells and some real nasty bees.
Meaning you did or didn't put your cells in them?
>I decided I had done enough damage to my apiary this spring and combined the cell starter with a week hive. I have 3 colonies starting swarm preparation and will split it up after the cells are finished to fill out my mateing nucs.
Those are my favorite queens anyway.
> Kind of depressed about my grafting results, but I will try again this summer for more practice.
It may not be the grafting. It may just be too early.
>Meaning you did or didn't put your cells in them?
I put my grafted cells in, in addition to the swarm cells. I figured if one cell is good, 3 is better?
>It may not be the grafting. It may just be too early.
Possibly, I'm not really experienced enough to know, although the hives had no problem building their own cells. I'll stick with it, try and build some skills this summer, when I don't have to worry so much about my meddling slowing down the bees.
As a side note, my checkerboarding experiements went great until I ran out of drawn comb. Everything went into swarm mode as soon as they finished it all out. I opened the hives to checkerboard empty frames throughout all the medium boxes, and realized I was too late. I would have needed to do it about 2 weeks ago to make the room when they needed it, but I really think it was too cold for them to draw comb. Perhapse just the extra space would of helped, I don't know. Maybe I can find out next year.
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