Hi
I'm in the process of starting queens for grafting.
I'm using the Cloake board method.
On Monday,(it's now Thursday day 4) I put on the cloake board turned the hive base put in the queen excluder ...
The Cloake Board has an excluder - don't put 2 in the box.
...and put a drawn frame of wax in for the queen to lay in. It was placed right beside a frame she was working on in the middle of the lower brood box, that was day 1. yesterday I pushed in the board to make the top box think they are queenless in the plan of grafting today on day 4.
When I brought the frame in to graft It was full of eggs still standing upright. ...
Eggs standing upright were laid today, not 3 or 4 days ago. Try isolating the queen behind a hive partition with queen excluder wire on it, or an entire cage of queen excluder wire.
...I pulled the board back out to allow the upper bees to mingle with the lower, didn't want to leave them queenless for another day.
Was that the right move???
Yes.
...Also the queen was on the frame that I pulled to graft today. So those eggs that are standing upright, how do I know if they will be ready tomorrow or the next day??? If it's tomorrow then I need to put the board back in. Or will it be the day after next???
Tomorrow they will lean over, the next day they should lay flat, the following day they should shed the chorion eggshell and become a larva. They are ideal to graft about 8 to 12 hours later.
...Any thoughts or suggestions. I'll be pulling the frame again tomorrow at this time 5:00pm to check and if they are ready I'll graft.
I guess the queen didn't jump onto the frame on day one like I asked her too and have no clue what day she did move onto it.
That was probably within the last 24 hours.
