I grafted a two bars of nine on 5/7/20, a Thursday. I had good acceptance, 16 nice cells!!! Today, being ten days from the graft, I started to harvest a couple of cells and since I had more cells than needed opened a few up to inspect. The pupae had barely purple eyes and no wings formed!? Don't they still need a couple more days of development before they're far enough along to harvest? I thought they should have color and wings for sure at ten days post graft. Did I screw up or is this a normal developmental timeline for a queen? If I did screw up where? Obviously I could have by dates wrong, but could something else be delaying the queens development? If I remember correctly the cells were capped when I expected them to be according to my queen rearing calender
Can my Queen Rearing Timeline be wrong?
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The cells need a mimimum of three additional days of development. A lot happens in those three days. Temperature can also play a role if the cells are in an incubator. A few degrees low can delay development by a day.
I think I still have six or seven cells. I know you don't want to handle them while the wings are forming. I did pick up the frame, lay it on its side, and smoke the bees off it. All this was done gently so hopefully the remaining cells will be good. The cells are in a packed hive so I don't see how I can be three days off.
Grafting day plus thirteen equals emerged queens. Or figure eight days after the cells are capped. You can move cells and install in mating nucs on day 12 post grafting, day 15 since egg was laid. They are far enough along at that point that you won't damage them if you are careful.
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Since you were careful, at this point you may as well put them in the mating nucs and see what happens. It is not nearly as bad as what I did a month ago and killed an entire frame of cells.
Well I posted and checked them on Sunday. Checked them again on Tuesday afternoon and one had emerged and chewed out the other five cells. No big loss but now I had a virgin running around in the upper half of my cell builder. I had another frame of cells that were about half capped on Sunday in there. She didn't chew out any of those cells. I'm curious as to why? Maybe they weren't far enough along? I smoked the bees off that frame and am trying to use a series of queen excluders to find the virgin. I think what's happened is that most of the cells were just a little slow in developing and I was trying to harvest them at ten days not twelve. Do most people harvest cells at twelve days? I thought ten was the usual?
I've seen bees that don't have any color when they emerge... At 12 days the queens are already emerging. At 10 days in really hot weather sometimes they are emerging. In hot weather I put them in the mating nucs at 9 days.
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