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Queen rearing: What are your methods for grafting, cell building/finishing colonies..

25K views 52 replies 20 participants last post by  virginiawolf 
#1 ·
Im going to try my hand at grafting this spring just to broaden my beekeeping horizons!! I have been thumbing through lots of queenrearing ideas and concepts on here and youtube, but need some more input from those who are in the know!!

Grafting: I have a good grasp at the size of the larvae to graft after seeing it for my own eyes over the last couple years of watching larva growth.

Grafting tool: Lots of different opinions and just as many tools to choose from. I am thinking of trying the 000 paintbrush method first to see how that works!!

Cell cups: I am going to use the JZBZ cups as they seem very easy and practical. Does color really matter?

Ok, now here are the questions!!

Starter Hive: I will make up a 5 deep frame nuc of young nurse bees and emerging/open brood, a packed nuc at that! After two days your suppose to move it to a queenrite hive, possibly above and excluder or cloak board? My question is why would it not work to let the starter finish the cells??

Finisher colony: When using a queenrite colony to finish the cells, what is the best way to make sure the queen doesnt get up into the QC frame and destroy cells? Also maybe the bees themselves from destroying the cells? I have read to make sure your feeding 1:1 SS to your colony to make them think a flow is on and all.

Ive seen Lauri's incubator with cells hatching and would also like to experiment with this as I love listening to the piping!! But that will come after I do some successful grafts and have time to mess with that!

So, if you could, please explain what you queen rearers with HANDS ON EXPERIENCE do from day 1, start to finish!! Perhaps describe in detail the amount of bees in the starter, how and what to do to transfer to a finisher, and then i believe its day 12 that they get put into a 24 hour queenless nuc or hive?

Oh ya, when a cell is put into a QL nuc and a virgin hatches, will her or the house bees tear down any cells they start? Or is that up to the beekeeper to check and make sure that a rogue cell doesnt go the distance?

Thank you for all and any help!! And if you have pictures of what you do, that would be awesome also!!

Jason
 
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#30 ·
Nice pic Broke T, is that the genuine take or did you move a few cells around?

Very interesting JBJ, I've tried various methods of starting cells in a queenright hive, with mixed results. Never put the cells in the 4th box among brood though, but can see it may work, I'll give it a shot.

To me the main problem would be rogue cells on the upstairs brood, I guess you'd have to go through it every few days. How does it work during a heavy honey flow, when the bees have lost interest in swarming and want to choc out that top box with honey?
 
#41 ·
Very interesting JBJ, I've tried various methods of starting cells in a queenright hive, with mixed results. Never put the cells in the 4th box among brood though, but can see it may work, I'll give it a shot.

To me the main problem would be rogue cells on the upstairs brood, I guess you'd have to go through it every few days. How does it work during a heavy honey flow, when the bees have lost interest in swarming and want to choc out that top box with honey?
If you give them plenty of cells to work promptly their impulse will be satiated and they do not start many rogue cells. By the time the unit is up to its second graft there is only one box with eggs to monitor and we like to check it on day three and again on day 6. We have never had a problem during a flow. The cells are only in there 6 days and then the unit is reworked ASAP. There should be so much brood up there they can not plug it out until it hatches. On really intense flows it helps to give some foundation to reduce webbing between the cells. We want to see the units making lots of fresh wax, otherwise they will be challenged in making decent cells.
 
#31 ·
The method I'm using at the moment is built around the need to use just a few hives to raise cells and house the breeder queens. I live in suburbia and am allowed 3 hives in the back yard. Swarming is also a no no I have to ensure that doesn't happen. From these circumstances I need to get around 40 cells per week.

So the breeder queens are housed in the same hives the cells are raised in. They are long hives, holding a maximum of 22 frames. The breeder queen is held in a 3 frame compartment at one end in an area sectioned off with a queen excluder. She produces an egg comb once a week for cutting and glueing strips of cells onto the cell bars, I don't graft.

The cells spend a day in a queenless starter, and are then transferred back to the breeder hive, down the other end to where the queen is along with a couple of frames of brood.

Not an ideal method but means I don't have to drive anywhere to do it, I can comply with the 3 hive requirement and do it in the back yard.

Using the cut cell method you don't end up with pretty uniform rows of cells like if you are grafting, but I feel the cells are of good quality. The smallest get culled.

In the frame pictured, I allowed my neighbors, who were curious, to do a bar each, so the two bottom bars have a few less cells than normal, however there are still 35 cells, more or less enough to get me through that week.

The hives are rested, ie, not every hive raises cells every week, or quality will drop off.

 
#32 ·
OT, that was for real. Not very often I get 45 of 45. Thats reason I took pic. Most times I can get 40+.

The webbing in your pic is why I move mine to an incubator as soon as they are capped. I hate having to cut them apart.

Johnny
 
#40 ·
Not necessarily, however we do like to see a colony that has been on a good flow and has been fed well for two or three weeks prior so they are very pumped up and naturally moving in that direction. Sometimes we graft into them the same day we set them up, sometimes a day or two later. The longer one waits, the more must have a sure method to deal with the rogue cells.
 
#36 ·
Yes, I just googled the Alley method to see what he did, and that's what I do as far as the way the cells are cut. But in his method he destroys every secong egg, i destroy two and leave one, or else some of the cells are too close to seperate them without killing one.
 
#37 ·
Alley was the first to write about cutting strips of comb (in his case old comb).

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesalleymethod.htm

Joseph M. Brooks wrote about a similar method using NEW comb instead of old comb and this was adopted by Isaac Hopkins and written about in The Australasian Bee Manual.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beeshopkins1886.htm

Later it was reinvented by Jay Smith and written about in Better Queens:

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesbetterqueens.htm

All of these are basically cutting strips of larvae and destroying some so the cells won't be all stuck together. But I think Hopkins eventually found it easier to just destroy the larvae without cutting and waxing strips and just turn the frame flatways:

http://www.bushfarms.com/beeshopkinsmethod.htm
 
#39 ·
The wax is melted in my high tech custom wax melter pictured below. :)

The wax is painted on the bar with a small paintbrush and the cells glued on, then some more wax is painted on the join just to make sure the cells won't drop off.

Although the cut cell method is reasonably simple, the most difficult part if starting out, would be getting the comb with eggs. Grafting offers the advantage that you can pick and choose larvae so don't have to produce a comb with all larvae the same age. For this reason I'd recommend anyone starting out does learn to graft, ( it's actually pretty easy ), but the cut cell method is also a good way, or in my opinion, the best, long as you are organised to produce the combs with larvae all within 24 hours of each other.


 
#43 ·
Depends on the time of the year. If its go time and we need a lot of cells fast we just catch the queen and start the cycle over. Depending on how hard we are pushing them we may have to add some brood periodically to keep them jam packed. I like to see so many bees festooning in the slot to receive the grafts that the frame barely fits and can just gently settle in.
 
#44 ·
Oldtimer,

I have seen pics of your queen contaiment excluder. how did you get such a clean & precise bend for that?

I would love to use that. like to see in detail how you made it.
 
#47 ·
If your using open brood you have to keep an good eye out for rogue queen cells. If I put open brood in it's only one frame and gets replaced with a cell bar frame when I put in my grafts.
 
#48 ·
Lakebilly, I just bent the excluder over the edge of the bench, before sliding it into the groove in the box. Adrian has made an excellent job of the one he did also, the pic he linked shows it very well.
 
#49 · (Edited)
This is a great thread. Getting to read everyone’s beekeeping strategies is a privilege. I have a question that is asked in this post but I feel like I am still unsure. Whenever I grafted a few times before I just put the cells in a queen less hive... This time I caged some nurse bees in a swarm box for the first time. Normally I don't cage the bees but since I have a well ventilated swarm box I tried it. I read contemporary queen rearing and if I am comprehending properly ... the next step is to put them over another colony with a division board keeping them caged still until I am ready to take the cells out and use them. The cells are coming out very well so far and I was wondering why I need to put them over another hive. If I continue to give them fresh syrup and keep a moist sponge in the cell starter can I keep them in there till Sunday when I move the cells to a queen castle and some mating nucs? I am only doing one round of grafts. Can I keep the cells in the cell starter with caged nurse bees and one frame of emerging brood till the end? I realizes on page 70 a starter can be a finisher so I guess I will be alright. Still getting my head around this.. Thanks. :)
 
#50 ·
The reason they are normally transferred to an unlocked hive is because level of care drops off if the bees are kept confined, generally, the bees work well for the first 24 hours then things start going down hill after that.
 
#51 ·
Thank You for responding Oldtimer. I appreciate you taking the time to help me with my uncertainty. Caging the bees worked so well to start the cells that it seemed like I could leave them caged although instinctually I want to see them with an entrance. It is day 4 now and the cells are looking close to capped so I opened the entrance up so the bees can get out and back in. It is raining now but tomorrow they will be able to fly. I am excited to what these new queens look like.
 
#52 ·
Thanks, and I've been following those videos you post on youtube! :)

Just make sure they are not close to another hive, the bees will drift if they can find one with a queen in. It is important the capped cells are kept at the right temperature, so if you feel the bees are drifting & there aren't enough, just transfer the cells to a normal hive, between two or more good combs of brood, over an excluder, with the queen below the excluder.

Keep us updated! :)
 
#53 ·
:) Thanks and Thanks for checking out my videos:) I'll post more. I will be working all day tomorrow so hopefully they won't drift too much. I was wondering why the cell starter goes over another hive... It is for the temperature control... plus lets the young bees visit the cells if they aren't capped. That makes sense. It has been cold here so I instinctively have been aware of the coldness on the larvae and stuff. I will let you know how it goes. This is the earliest I have tried to raise queens and the coldest too. I really hope it works out that is why I have been re reading and asking questions and things. It seems like the questions never stop. I appreciate the help. I really love the bees. They are in my dreams and things:)
 
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