Thinking about grafting

[Donovan J]

Xerox, as far as grafting tools are concerned, HP recommends the Chinese grafting tool,  My favorite is the JZBZ tool.   The grafting tools are cheap, I can make any tool work, it is a matter of personal preference.

I do service the lip of my JZBZ tool as well as the German grafting tool.  I find the lip on each tool to be to thick, so I carefully sand down and hand polish the lip.  This step is not necessary, I just have fun critiquing the tools.  I use a stereo microscope for everything.  Picking larva, placing larva, polishing tools, and examining the brood.  Again not necessary but as a hobbyist I have the time and enjoy the experience.

Friends use the jewelers head band which seems to work very well also as the large magnifying lens type lamp that magnify and light all in one small lamp.

On a small scale as I, grafting is just plain ol dog gone fun it is.  success improves with each grafting attempt as you learn to coordinate your actions smoothly.  Before long, grafting is a piece of cake.

The little things help improve success:
-Picking correct age larva
-Heating pad placed under grafting frame and cups to prevent chill.
-Clean everything, clean working table.
-Fresh royal jelly from a queen cell in your bee yard, to wet graft.
-An incubator comes in handy to warm equipment, cups, although I prefer a hive for hatching with roller caged as HP suggest.
-remember the just hatched larva is already 3 days old, so adjust calander.
-can?t have to many nurse bees; either use cloak board or separate cell starter finisher for the grafts.
-use hair roller cage after cell is capped to isolate/protect the new queens
-nicot offers a complete line of cups, holders, frame attachments, even egg cage if you go that route.  Note some queens will not accept laying cage.


There is a sense of great accomplishment, pride when you see a frame full of queen cells.  Every bee keepers delight, pure eye candy.

Van

Thank you for the tips. I'm hoping I can start this up next year and begin to sell queens

[TheHoneyPump]

If the weather ever cooperates, I post picks of correct age larva.  State of the art: grafting, insemination work station.

NICE !!  Impressive.
If I send you a box of caged virgins and a box of drones - how many can be sent back a week later?

[van from Arkansas]

HP, the drones would not live very long.  However, extract the semin, collect in capillaries tube which is easy.  The drone semin lives at room temp for a long time, days if not weeks, even month maybe?  Do not refrigerate.

The experts in Poland inseminate queens in the thousands per year.

It takes me, 10 minutes to artificial inseminate a queen, co2 gas and all.  The queen wakes up and is acting normal in 5 minutes later in an incubator, then back into hive.  Collecting the drones is time consuming to me.

[van from Arkansas]

HP, I inseminated a queen today, took me twelve minutes, I?m a lil rusty.  Pic is how I accumulate  drones for easy Pickens.  All the bees 🐝 on the QE are drones.  Just a standard QE proped up against the entrance.

[Donovan J]

I have another question. Is it better to use a resource hive or separate nucs? I've been researching resource hives and they seem pretty neat. They're also cheaper than buying individual nucs. Any suggestions?

[van from Arkansas]

Xerox, I am not sure what a resource hive is?  Same as my support hive?  In my apiary I have 2 types of hives:  genetic grade and support grade hives.  Genetic grade is to produce queens whereas, the support grade supply nurse bees, frames of food or what ever needed for care of the queens produced by genetic grade hive.

Genetic grade is a least two years old so I can determine the hive traits: lack of swarming, laying pattern, honey production, gentleness, hygenic.

[TheHoneyPump]

Yes, need to be clear on what names use for what or answer may not make sense.  Here are mine, you will hear these around my beeyards.

Hive = the fully functioning stable colony, production, the honey money makers

Resource colony = a colony from which regularly harvest brood from to boost and level the production Hives.

Nucleus colony = for queen mating, queen holding/banking, caged queen introduction and startup, breeder queen home.

Bank = a queenlees colony that is housing and caring for racks of caged queens awaiting placement.

Cell Starter = hopelessly queenless colony that receives grafts and initiates queen larvae from the grafts

Cell Finisher = strong queenrite colony that receives started partly drawn cells and continues feeding and finishing (capping) them.

Dink = weak, diseased, failing colony. To be quarantined and nurtured to sort out their issue(s) or be terminated.

Others may use other T and C


So Xerox when you ask resource vs nuc, what exactly are you asking?  What is the end goal(purpose) of the colony being asked about?  The answer will depend and be different. 

[Donovan J]

Yes, need to be clear on what names use for what or answer may not make sense.  Here are mine, you will hear these around my beeyards.

Hive = the fully functioning stable colony, production, the honey money makers

Resource colony = a colony from which regularly harvest brood from to boost and level the production Hives.

Nucleus colony = for queen mating, queen holding/banking, caged queen introduction and startup, breeder queen home.

Bank = a queenlees colony that is housing and caring for racks of caged queens awaiting placement.

Cell Starter = hopelessly queenless colony that receives grafts and initiates queen larvae from the grafts

Cell Finisher = strong queenrite colony that receives started partly drawn cells and continues feeding and finishing (capping) them.

Dink = weak, diseased, failing colony. To be quarantined and nurtured to sort out their issue(s) or be terminated.

Others may use other T and C


So Xerox when you ask resource vs nuc, what exactly are you asking?  What is the end goal(purpose) of the colony being asked about?  The answer will depend and be different.

The resource hive is like a double nuc side by side so it's one box. Each side has their own entrance and exit and I think it's good for mating queens instead of having individual nucs

[TheHoneyPump]

Alright, thanks for clarifying.  The divided box, two or more nucleus colonies in one box.

In my experience:  the divided box works great for holding mated queens while they get established and build up a bit. Once they get strong enough the beekeeper can certainly be pulling brood from them to keep them containable in the small space.

For mating; No my experience with the divided box has not been satisfactory.  Queens are better mated in separate boxes.  Sure the divided box works.  However the results are better with separate boxes.  What I mean by results is; fewer losses, better mating, no bee drift issues.

Hope that helps!

[Donovan J]

Alright, thanks for clarifying.  The divided box, two or more nucleus colonies in one box.

In my experience:  the divided box works great for holding mated queens while they get established and build up a bit. Once they get strong enough the beekeeper can certainly be pulling brood from them to keep them containable in the small space.

For mating; No my experience with the divided box has not been satisfactory.  Queens are better mated in separate boxes.  Sure the divided box works.  However the results are better with separate boxes.  What I mean by results is; fewer losses, better mating, no bee drift issues.

Hope that helps!

OK thank you. So I'll use the individual nucs to mate the queens then use the resource hives to hold them until I need them or a customer is ready for a queen

[TheHoneyPump]

Alright, thanks for clarifying.  The divided box, two or more nucleus colonies in one box.

In my experience:  the divided box works great for holding mated queens while they get established and build up a bit. Once they get strong enough the beekeeper can certainly be pulling brood from them to keep them containable in the small space.

For mating; No my experience with the divided box has not been satisfactory.  Queens are better mated in separate boxes.  Sure the divided box works.  However the results are better with separate boxes.  What I mean by results is; fewer losses, better mating, no bee drift issues.

Hope that helps!

OK thank you. So I'll use the individual nucs to mate the queens then use the resource hives to hold them until I need them or a customer is ready for a queen

Yup, exactly.  You are right on track.

[van from Arkansas]

FYI: I have a cell finisher that is being used as a queen bank at the moment.  I am artificially inseminating the queens one a day.  The banked caged queens that are virgin have just a few nurse bees attending whereas the inseminated caged queens are covered with bees.  So many bees on the inseminated queen cage, I can?t see the cage.  The nurse bees are telling me the insemination process works.

Thus subject came up a while back: virgin vrs mated queen.  Honey Pump was quick to point out the bees will be strongly attracted to the mated queen whereas the virgin will weakly attract nurse bees...

[Ben Framed]

>
Thus subject came up a while back: virgin vrs mated queen.  Honey Pump was quick to point out the bees will be strongly attracted to the mated queen whereas the virgin will weakly attract nurse bees...

This leaves me with a question. When a hive makes a secondary swarm/swarms as has been reported here on the forum, time and time again, the secondary swarm flies off with a virgin/virgins. Why would they possibly leave with a virgin when she does not possess the pheromones necessary to be paid much attention too? Has this been studied? Seems logical the queen MUST be mated. Otherwise, what would persuade a swarm to simply fly away when there is no queen to pay attention too? Perhaps you lifetimers can educate me once more lol ? And thanks.

Phillip Hall

[cao]

Why would they possibly leave with a virgin when she does not possess the pheromones necessary to be paid much attention too? Has this been studied? Seems logical the queen MUST be mated. Otherwise, what would persuade a swarm to simply fly away when there is no queen to pay attention too? Perhaps you lifetimers can educate me once more lol ? And thanks.

It's not that they don't produce pheromones, just not as much as a mated queen.  When I was catching the swarms last year that had multiple queens,  Some were getting attention of the workers while others were being ignored.  I assume that the ones being ignored were the younger less dominant ones. 

If you were in a hive that a week before lost your mated queen to a swarm, had only queens in cells, then once they started hatching one or more of them decided to leave, I think you would pack your bags and hit the road.

[Ben Framed]

I do not want to take away form this topic. Therefore I have placed my response to the above in a new topic titled
"Spinoff from :  Thinking About Grafting"  I had originally ask a question in regard to Mr Vans  following statement.

"Thus subject came up a while back: virgin vrs mated queen.  Honey Pump was quick to point out the bees will be strongly attracted to the mated queen whereas the virgin will weakly attract nurse bees..."

Thanks
Phillip




.

[Donovan J]

Update: I just ordered 2 5-frame nucs and 2 2-frame nucs. I'm going to use the 2-frame nucs to mate the queens and use the 5-frame nucs to hold them until I need them. How am I doing?

[cao]

That's a start.  IMHO you can never have enough nuc boxes.  I have 30+ nucs right now being used.  I have 3,4 & 5 frame nucs.  Most are medium frame.  I filled 3 nucs today from one hive that was preparing to swarm and had queen cells capped.  So that hive is now 3 five frame nucs and the original hive that may possibly still swarm.  So it don't take long to fill those nucs.

[Donovan J]

That's a start.  IMHO you can never have enough nuc boxes.  I have 30+ nucs right now being used.  I have 3,4 & 5 frame nucs.  Most are medium frame.  I filled 3 nucs today from one hive that was preparing to swarm and had queen cells capped.  So that hive is now 3 five frame nucs and the original hive that may possibly still swarm.  So it don't take long to fill those nucs.

I see. They're pretty costly though and those four boxes were 200$ but I'll get more in the future