[AstroBee]

A swarm that I captured this year that turned very aggressive. I finally had enough of getting tore up every time I popped the lid. After dispatching the queen I had a lot of nurse bees and brood looking for a job, so I hastily through in a graft and gave a quart of sugar water. Of the 15 grafts, 11 took and turned out pretty good. Of course working the cell builder is still a hassle (ouch), but at least they paid something back. Here are a few of the cells, not the best, but will do. I could probably get another round out of this builder without any trouble - of course, other than a few stings....

 

[mmiller]

They did a great job for you with nice looking cells and cups plum full of royal jelly. Congats!

 

[Brandy]

Looks great. What were the grafts taken from??

 

[AstroBee]

Two different sources: Harbo 2014 VSH breeder and a 2nd gen VSH. The later is the "slow starter" I referenced here and on the VSHbreeder site and are the ones you can see in the green cups above. The Harbo cells came out nice too, but had fewer takes.

 

[WBVC]

I would be absolutely thrilled to get cells like that!

 

[Honey-4-All]

Very nice looking cells.....One question. Seeing how the end caps look like they are within 3 days of hatch I'm wondering why there is so much RJ in the tops of those cups. ???

When I see full ones like this they get candled very carefully as ours with this much RJ left on top often are suspect at best!!!

 

[AstroBee]

Seeing how the end caps look like they are within 3 days of hatch I'm wondering why there is so much RJ in the tops of those cups. ???

These are scheduled to emerge on Tuesday afternoon. I appreciate the feedback. I'll try to give follow-up post on what I find.

BTW, I did prime these cells with RJ that came from the CB just prior to placing the cells. As I mentioned this was queenright, but I killed her 4 days prior to the graft. They had many queen cells started. I cut out all cells and took the RJ and primed my cups. I generally don't prime cups, but wanted to try something different this round. We'll see....