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Beginner Queen Rearing using the Joseph Clemens Starter/Finisher

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#1 ·
I’m a beginner. This has been my second year raising queens – my third year keeping honey bees. So I am in no way pretending to be any kind of an expert. But Joseph Clemens has generously agreed for me to share some of my experiences using his method of queen rearing.

For anyone who is interested this thread starter is based on a broader post about my experiences as a beginner at queen rearing.

The Joseph Clemens Starter/Finisher System

The system that I’ve been using is what I call the Joseph Clemens System – because that is where I heard about it from, and because Joseph Clemens has proven that it works by producing very large, high quality cells and queens using this system. I have found that it is very well suited for me to produce a fair number of queens while learning skills that can be scaled up to higher production later if desired. It’s fun, affordable, and you can use it even if you only have a few hives.

This system uses a queenless five frame nucleus with 4 medium frames of bees and a cell bar as a combined Starter/Finisher and produces 10-20 cells (more or less) at a time – and it can be used all season without having to be rebuilt. As you can imagine this is much more manageable for hobbyists than the way the commercial guys do it.

You can use this system over and over throughout the season without having to repopulate the starter/finisher hives, and you can use it just about any time that you want without having to do a lot of prep work – once you get it going . This system also avoids the problem of having to manage a cell builder hive that is on the verge of swarming by being Queenless – no matter how strong it is, a hive won’t swarm without a queen. When I first read about it, I thought that it sounded like such a hive would develop laying workers or some other problem because of being queenless for an indefinite time. But, because you give it fresh brood about once a week none of those problems crop up – it just gets really strong and stays that way all season long. It really does.


One of my best batch of cells using this method. I’m still learning, but next year these will be my “regular” sized cells instead of just the best ones. I hope.



This is the setup I started the season with – the top box houses a quart jar feeder. Before long I realized that the small entrance (with a piece of excluder over it) through the slatted rack was too small for such a populous hive, and that the ventilation was not adequate.



So, I changed to this setup – from the bottom – Screened bottom board, queen excluder, 5 frame medium hive body plus the same inner cover, feed shim, and tele cover as in the previous picture.

Setting up the Cell Builder Hive

The two outer frames are capped/emerging brood, the next two contain stores – honey and pollen, maybe some empty space for them to draw comb and store incoming food. The center position is where you will be putting your cell bar after you graft.

You want this hive to be very populous, so shake in lots of nurse bees. After the initial setup the cell builder will stay strong – even get stronger – from the frames of brood that you swap in every week.

Once a week (more or less) when you are working your other hives swap in a fresh frame of capped/emerging brood. The open brood on those frames along with the grafts and other open brood that you add to the cell builder keep it strong and stable. When you swap in new brood, you also have to check for queen cells in the starter/finisher, and on any frames that you take out – you will find wild cells pretty much every time. But since it’s only a 5 frame hive, and it doesn’t have a queen you can shake the bees off, and thoroughly inspect every frame in just a few minutes. Usually there is no need to even look at every frame – 2 of them will be pollen/honey, and one will be the cell bar. It’s pretty quick and easy maintenance, but it does have to be done at least once a week while the hive is being used.

How I (and you can ) Finally produce Big Cells

I tried fruitlessly almost all of this year to produce big cells like Josephs. I packed my cell builder with bees which I fed copiously, I tried double grafting, priming with royal jelly, placing fewer grafts – but no matter how hard I tried my best cells were “OK” at best (did get some nice queens though) – until I found this tip by Ray Marler: 4 days before you graft put a frame of hatching eggs/young open larva in the cell builder. That will insure that your nurse bees get into feeding mode by the time you add your grafts. My experience is that if I skip this step I get much smaller cells. Joseph Clemens produces nice big cells without this step, I think because he is continuously using his cell builder – so the bees stay in feeding/nurse bee mode – while I was only adding grafts to my cell builder every week or two.

When you swap in the cell bar with grafts on it there will almost certainly be queen cells started on the “primer” frame of open brood - At that time also check the other frames for queen cells. If you ever let one emerge it will ruin any cells that are currently in the hive – and you might have a hard time finding a virgin lose in such a crowded hive.

I feed my cell builder hive continuously – 1 to 1 sugar syrup from an inverted quart jar, and under the jar lid…



…Pollen substitute. I just spoon it in through the hole, and cover it with the jar lid. This is 8% protein mega bee mix with enough syrup to make a paste that is thick enough to not fall through the frames. The bees love it.

I hope this is helpful to anyone thinking about trying queen rearing.
 
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#62 ·
Yes, I never close them in. Conditions must be just right, or else confined bees will just spend all their time trying to escape.

Confined bees can't forage, can't relieve themselves, etc. I can't really think of any good reason to confine them, and have often wondered about the reasoning behind that method, whenever I've read about it.
 
#64 ·
If I remember correctly, after closing them in, they need to be placed in someplace like a dark/cool/damp cellar or basement. I don't have anyplace like that, so I've never even had the chance to try it. If I had a basement or other suitable location, I'd probably have tried it with a closed setup, just to see how it works.

I wish everyone the best success at this endeavor. It can be very rewarding.
 
#65 ·
So far my experince with this system is.
6-6-13 20 graft with 4 accepted cells. These 4 are due to emerge yesterday or today. one has emerged and is a small stunted queen. These cells have been relocated to an incubator for the last two days. Low acceptance I consider due to poor grafting technique and a weak cell starter colony. I am also thinking that the one is small due to a weak starter.
We made improvments to our methods of grafting and made a second attempt.
6-8-13 10 cells from the original 20 that had not been accepted where regrafted. again 4 cells where accepted. These are also on the incubator as of yesterday and due to emerge in 2 days according to an online calendar. 3 days by my calculations. So far my calculations have been more accurate.
After this attempt we focused on a stronger cell started as well as improved cell finisher. We added frames of capped brood, added several frames of nurse bees, gave this starter a frame of open brood for 4 days and grafted another set of 20 cells.
6-15-13 we grafted 20 cells. this time we focused on lifting the smallest larva possible. They where tiny barely bigger than an egg. on inspection yesterday there was 0 acceptance. All larva had been removed from the cells. Except that maybe we killed 100% of the larva while grafting I have no idea what would have caused this complete failure of acceptance. All conditions otherwise indicate we should have improved on our so far best 40% acceptance rate.

6-16-13 on the 156th I had unintentionally made another nuc queenless while attempting to mark the queen. this was strong on brood. strong on nurse bees and 24 hours from being queenless. We grafted 20 cells and placed them in this colony even though they showed no signs of producing queen cells on the brood they already have. We returned to attempting to graft 2 day old larva again rather than the tiny 1 day ones.

Today I will inspect for acceptance some time after 6 PM that gives them over 24 hours to show some indication of acceptance. we will also be grafting another 20 cells and giving them to the original starter nuc just to see if we can figure out what is going on their.

Some of my other thoughts are that it has been to many cells in a week. basically a weak starter was given 30 cells in a 3 day period. given a 5 to 6 day break and boosted quite a bit then given 20 more cells. that seems acceptable to me and explains why the original cells did not fair well. The first four cells where left to be finished in the starter as well (Not prepaired). After the second attempt all cells whee moved to a finisher that did a much better job of building out larger cells with the second set of four. I have no idea how well this original starter might due with finishing cells now that they have been strengthened.

At this time I am really stumped. I am most inclined to think it was the attempt to graft smaller larva and not a problem with the starter nuc. But I don't have a really strong feeling about anything at this point. It is almost like adding open brood sapped the bees of what royal jelly they had. they ay have simply refused to stat new queen cells. I have no idea.

By the way this nuc has had sugar water and mega bee the entire time. Plus they do have bees foraging.

hopefully this afternoon will show we are back on track and actually improving our results. If it comes up another zero I will find it hard to justify continuing any further attempts. I will have no idea what to fix in order to expect different results.

We will continue with the mating of these poor queens just for the experience. but so far our final results will be no acceptable queens from 50 grafts. That may improve to 4 out of 50 in the next couple of days.
 
#66 ·
Daniel, please keep us informed. This is along the lines of my own experiences so far but I am going to try more grafts tomorrow. I am going to build open starter/finishers today and graft tomorrow. Last weeks efforts only gave two cells of twenty in one yard and I was not able to check the other.
 
#67 ·
Daniel: Dont give up on grafting those newly hatched larvae. If they are literally floating they should transfer easily, if not then they can be easily damaged which I would agree is probably what happened to you. A tool like the Chinese grafting tool is particularly good at acting as a tiny scoop shovel to lift out larvae and jelly together, a tool that requires the larvae to adhere to it may be a bit more problematic. So much of queen raising is dependent on conditions. I think of it as "swimming with the current". When bees are wanting to swarm its pretty easy but if you aren't in prime swarming season then you must be far more diligent about creating the right conditions by getting even more populous and crowded cell builders.
 
#68 ·
Don't worry, it wasn't much better for me when I first began grafting. I wear corrective lenses (glasses), and after I started wearing a pair of high powered reading glasses, over my usual glasses, and using an extremely bright LED headlight to illuminate the larvae I was grafting, which helped me a great deal. Even those very young, very tiny larvae must not be injured or flipped over during the grafting process, so, being able to observe the process (for me, with highly magnified vision), is most important. Some people can do it blind, but I can't, yet. I have learned, for me, if I fumble, even a little, during the grafting, that I need to abandon the larvae I'm working with and select a new one. I use the JZsBZs red plastic grafting needle, most often. It has a small projection, at 90 degrees from the tip, which I use to push under the larvae (from front or back), then lift it cleanly. A tiny drop of royal jelly in the cell cup that I then touch the larvae to as I push the needle through the RJ drop and then up and out of the cup, works best for me. It's sort of a quick fluid motion; pluck larvae from its cell, touch larvae to RJ drop, then push needle down and then up and out of cup. But what really makes this work for me, is my highly aided eyes can see what and how everything is working. I can see the tiny little larvae and observe its entire transfer process. Whenever I notice any tiny flaw in the process, I can almost guarantee it has failed. I still sometimes mark a few that are questionable, to watch how they turn out -- those are almost always rejected.

My most common failure is to unintentionally touch the larvae to the cell wall on its way out of the cell. I have learned that if this happens, to abandon that attempt and move on to another larvae.
 
#69 ·
Jim is right - don't give up on grafting the smallest larva possible. That is absolutely the direction you want to go. I don't know what the weather is like in Reno right now, but I'm going to step out on a limb and guess hot and dry. That can be an issue that you have to deal with. Keep your frame of larva and your grafts covered with a damp towel as much as possible, and get them all back in the hives ASAP. Also feed the hive you going to graft from and they will have more jelly and be easier to work with. Also something I learned recently is that you can lightly mist the brood frame with plain water which also helps.

Make sure that your cell starter is queenless - if they aren't starting cells somewhere then they are not. If they are building cells on brood frames, but not your grafts... That tells you where the problem is.

The most likely problem that I think beginners have is not making the starter strong enough with nurse bees.

Don't give up - there is a learning curve, but soon you will improve a lot if you keep doing it every few days like you are.

Good luck.
 
#70 ·
Joseph - I've had very similar experience. Lot's of magnification and light make a huge difference - I use a donegan optivisor. I never got used to a Chinese tool, and use a German SS tool - I'm a tool user by trade and I like durable ones that I can become very familiar with, but I might have to give the JZBZs tool another try - I do like how it doesn't get in the way of seeing the larva.

For me, I have better luck it I approach the larva from the outside of it's curved shape. And I also abandon and start over if the smallest thing goes wrong.

For best results you need to do everything that you can to stack the deck in your favor - and then it comes out looking easy.
 
#71 ·
I guess it's all in what tool you get used to. The Chinese grafting tool is used by everyone that I know but they no doubt all work well once their particular technique is mastered. A real nice description by Joe. You really need to be able to see what you are doing to get a feel for the proper technique. If you aren't sure if you did it properly then you probably didn't, at least that has been my experience.
 
#76 ·
I made up a queenless 5 framer this weekend. Today, I'm checking for any rogue queen cell building and destroying any of those. Should I wait another day before adding my grafts or will today be fine?
You can add grafts any time. It doesn't matter when you remove queen cells as long as you do it before they emerge - and of course if they are open then they will consume some of the attention that you want your grafts to get. I get the best results if I put young open brood in 4 days before I graft then remove any cells the same time that I get ready to add my grafts.
 
#73 ·
When I first started I got one, each, of most of the various grafting tools available, except the very pricey one, the one with the metal tongue that sticks out when you push on a lever, looks similar to finger-nail trimmers - probably the best one, but I just couldn't get myself to pay that much for a simple grafting needle. All the money I've invested in needles over the years, probably wouldn't be enough to buy three of those.

I started with the German stainless, double ended. Then I found the JZsBZs No. 1, red, plastic needle to work nicely. I also tried the Chinese ones with the goose quill tongue and bamboo or plastic pusher. I do appreciate those Chinese grafting tools, when they work, they work very well, and cups don't need to be primed, but I sometimes find it difficult to locate one where the quill tongue flexes just right. Then, once I have one that works quite well, it usually wears out just when I'm on a grafting roll. I've also tried some differently configured JZsBZs grafting needles (Jim let me try other needle sizes and angles to see if any particular configuration worked best, for me). None worked better than the original No. 1, but a slightly different No. 1 angle worked almost as well. I like to keep plenty of the JZsBZs needles around, since I have the habit of placing them where the fragile needle tips keep getting knocked off (Note to self: I need to build a holder that will protect the needle when not in use). What I like about the JZsBZs needle is how it has a tiny tip that barely touches the larvae (the larvae is perched above the needle as it's being moved), then once I touch the larvae to the tiny bead of RJ and quickly push the needle down and move it up, the surface tension of the RJ holds the larvae and the needle is removed, sans larvae.
 
#74 ·
That actually sounds better than what I do with the SS tool which is try to just barely get under the larva so that it's hanging off the edge of the tool. If you get it too far under the larva it's difficult or impossible to get it deposited in the cup. When you do pick it up just right it's a breeze. I probably eat about every third one.

It would be great if someone with a really good camera could video the different techniques you use with the different tools.

The thing that beginners need to understand is that it isn't all that hard no matter what tool you use - it just takes a bit of practice and diligence.
 
#75 ·
Another trick I sometimes use, that I haven't heard much mention of, yet -->

After I do a batch of grafts, 1, 2, or more bars. I keep track of the frame I grafted from, so I can reacquire it easily. Then I only wait about an hour, then check them. Those that are now empty, I regraft, it usually improves the total take. Sometimes I do this two or three times, an hour apart. Usually, if I've done this I can get nearly 100% of the cups started (they may not finish them all, but at least I get more started). Sure, it's cheating, but in a good way.

----------------
Getting this documented on video seems like it would be quite a feat. I am not a video expert, and there's probably an easy trick to get it done. But, it usually is a very narrow angle I must acquire to properly view each larvae as I pick them up with the needle and then likewise as I deposit them in the cell cup. In my minds eye, I don't know how the camera could capture this, without completely hindering the process, or vice versa. It would be very nice though, if it could be done.
 
#78 ·
Update on yesterday. It turned out we had 26 grafts in that last frame. My daughter had added some used but ignored cups from previous attempts she had added. I was not even counting at the time we grafted. We had an acceptance of 8 cells. An acceptance of 36.6%. It beats the previous day anyway. I am not going to admit our less than 16% running total. Oops.

We also combined the two nucs to make a stronger 10 frame starter. Two 5 frame deep nucs stacked on top of each other.

We grafted another 20 cups focusing once again on the tiniest of larva. this afternoon will tell if we have improved with them. I primed all cups and we where more careful in abandoning any failed attempts. I also gathers a drop of jelly for each cup before transferring any larva. We did not have the best frame for larva selection so I had a hard time finding the size larva I wanted so I am probably still on the largish size my daughter found a patch of very small larva. so comparing her bar to mine may be interesting.

So in all after 96 grafts we have 16 cells cooking, 4 queens emerged with only one of acceptable quality and 4 still in the incubator. 8 are in my largest hive that we are using as a finisher. If we make another attempt I may see what happens if we just start and finish them in this large hive. The starter we have is struggling to start cells so I am not using it to try and finish them. the first batch of cells where started and finished by one of them and the queens turned out very poor quality.

I also think it is time to boost the starter again if we continue grafting. For the most part I think we are done for now. It depends on the quality of some of thee other queens. the next 4 cells look far more promising and I only need 15 queens total.

In all I am not real happy with our acceptance rate. but if we get the queens we need that is what counts. So the journey may look ugly but the results are right where we need them. So I will keep going until we have 15 acceptable quality queens.

Final note on another thought I have had. We are most likely past the best time to be starting queens.
 
#80 ·
Ok! So using all the little tips and tricks I picked up in this last page of this thread about the handling of larvae I did 20 more grafts today!

I used an illuminated magnifying visor that was only seven bucks from amazon, I cut down comb with a razor, I slipped the tongue of my trusty Chinese grafting tool stealthily under bug after bug! It all really went very, very well from what I have read and experienced last week.

My big question is...... The very NEWEST larvae were in a pool of royal jelly that was so small that the tool really just did not work very well, at least for my inexperienced self. I ended up picking SLIGHTLY OLDER larvae just because they had a "juicier" puddle of RJ. Has anyone else experienced this?

Also, did the grafts at noon and tomorrow is a 24 hour shift at the firehouse, can I check tonight and tell if they have taken?
 
#88 ·
My big question is...... The very NEWEST larvae were in a pool of royal jelly that was so small that the tool really just did not work very well, at least for my inexperienced self. I ended up picking SLIGHTLY OLDER larvae just because they had a "juicier" puddle of RJ. Has anyone else experienced this?
It helps if you feed the hive you are going to take the larva from. Also, you can give the frame of brood a very light mist of water - which helps more than you might expect.

I'm sure you can tell pretty quickly which ones they are going to make queens from and which ones they are going to abandon, but I've never tried looking before the next day.

I'll bet that your success rate is about to go up. The magnification alone will probably make a difference - it did for me.
 
#83 ·
> The very NEWEST larvae were in a pool of royal jelly that was so small that the tool really just did not work very well

The only tool I've found that works on the youngest larvae is the chinese grafting tool. The rest you have to pick up the larvae. With the chinese grafting tool, you pick up the pool...
 
#84 · (Edited)
Steves, according to one post above you can go back after 1 hour and look for cells where the larva has been removed.

I may have to get a Chinese tool.

At this point I am 18 total cells some of them not producing really good queens out of 96 attempts at grafting cups. I will also say that the queenless nucs I am using are not even making emergency queen cells though. It is like I am in a period where the bees don't care if they have a queen or not.

What I know for now is I am done. I need 15 queens and will see if I can get them from these 18 started cells. 6 queens have emerged so far with 2 more due today. That puts me just over half of what I need. If I come up I will make up short the difference with a split next spring or swarm captures at some point. But for now my first overall attempt at grafting cells has been a disaster. I am probably going to look at completely different methods of starting queens. Cell punch the nicot system or something. it can't be much worse than this has been.
 
#85 ·
When I am being unsuccessful grafting (often) I do not find punching or cutting works either. What does work consistantly is removing the queen into a nuc temporarily. Relatively new wax helps the looks of the cell, it may not make any other difference. New wax tends to make closely grouped cells though. Make the splits after the cells are started.
Not high tech, relatively non disruptive.
 
#86 ·
Well Daniel, I wish I could say something encouraging but I cannot at this point. Out of 40 grafts I tried last week I only KNOW I have two cells to transfer to nucs tomorrow. The twenty grafts I did yesterday looked and felt great though so I will check my cell builder tomorrow and check back in ;) I am also going to make up another cell builder in a different yard and try some more. This particular skillset and beekeeping in general is one of those things that look simple from the outside but has a lot of nuance that I just have not "mastered" yet. So I will just keep tilting the windmill and try to learn ;)
 
#87 ·
Daniel Y;724816 1. an egg that is laid in a worker cell compared to a queen cell. 2. the difference in a queen cell that was made by man or one made by bees. 3. The care of a larva from the moment it hatches that is laid in a worker cell and one that is laid in a queen cell. 4. a queen cell in a hive that has a laying queen and one that does not. 5. The importance of royal jelly or as some refer to it "Milk" In detail and exactly what minute difference are there in how it is supplied to a worker and a queen. 6. The possible effect it has when bees have chosen and prepared to produce a queen and those that have had in forced upon them. 7. Why do bees that have had open brood supplied to them prior to being given queen cells produce larger queen cells and quite probably produce better quality queens? 8. Why exactly is it that bees will produced better quality queens in larger numbers when influenced by the swarm impulse than under any other impulse? 9. It is impossible to ask bees to do a top quality job that they are not prepared to do. What do you understand is involved in bees being prepared to produce queens. 10. even bees that are well prepared can only be expected to adequately produce and tend to a limited number of queen cells. what is your understanding of where that limit is? I have seen claims of as many as 150 queen cells being placed in one hive. Is it possible that a hive can produce 150 quality queens at one time? or are there simply going to be 150 trash queens being produced.[/QUOTE said:
Daniel y.. Those are good questions to use on the Master Beekeeper Certificate Exam.

cchoganjr
 
#89 ·
I find that if the bees are going to reject my grafts, they do it almost immediately.

To check on graft acceptance, after about an hour (it may even be possible sooner), I lift the cell bars, turn the cups open side up, then give the bar a sudden bump (I move it in a downward motion, then stop it abruptly against my other hand), just hard enough to knock most of the nurse bees off and back into the top of the cell builder nuc. Then I give a quick look for small pools of RJ in the bottoms of the cells, and remove all cups that have clean bottoms (they were aborted/rejected).

If I need those cells, I will place them together on another empty cell bar, regraft them and place the new grafts back in the cell builder.
 
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