Thinking about grafting

[Donovan J]

This is my second year of beekeeping and I've been reading about grafting queens. I really like the nicot method because it seems like the easiest to do. I'm starting with two packages this year so should I wait to see which one is stronger and graft from it or wait until next year?

[BeeMaster2]

Xerox,
The Nicot method is not the easiest.
First you have to open the hive and put it in for cleaning for 24 hours. Then the next day you have to open the hive again and go through the entire hive to find the queen and put her in it. The next day you have to open the hive, let the queen out and move the cells into queen frames and put them in a starter hive. 24 hours later move them into a finisher hive.
If you just do grafting, you eliminate most of those steps.
It is a lot simpler.
Come to BeeFest next year and practice grafting.
Jim Altmiller

[Ben Framed]

All Jim said. If you miss just one queen cell in your cell builder it?s game over. I did that last year. Had many beautiful drawn out capped cells. All for nothing as I missed just one queen cell. Though I thought I was thorough in my inspection. The missed cell hatched and the new virgin killed the rest. It was not the systems fault. Mine and mine alone.

 I can see where the reward would be heavy if a person was really going and growing fast, (reaching for a large volume of hives in a short period of time, or perhaps a queen breeder). But as Mr HP suggested last season, below a certain amount of queens Nicot it is not necessary.


At the same time, I will not discourage you as the experience was fun until the mistake was made obvious. Lol
Phillip Hall

[van from Arkansas]

Xerox:  I use all nicot components except for the laying cage.  I graft directly from the brood frame.  Once you have the steps for grafting understood, piece of cake, I tell ya.

If you have good stock, you can produce the best queens yourself.  Mailing and caging queens is to have some effect that are eliminated with raising your own queens.

Van

[jimineycricket]

FYI, You might like to take a look at this PDF and maybe think about some other method of queen rearing:   https://www.wasba.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Graft-Free-Queen-Rearing-Morris-Ostrofsky.pdf

[Donovan J]

Xerox,
The Nicot method is not the easiest.
First you have to open the hive and put it in for cleaning for 24 hours. Then the next day you have to open the hive again and go through the entire hive to find the queen and put her in it. The next day you have to open the hive, let the queen out and move the cells into queen frames and put them in a starter hive. 24 hours later move them into a finisher hive.
If you just do grafting, you eliminate most of those steps.
It is a lot simpler.
Come to BeeFest next year and practice grafting.
Jim Altmiller

I see. I just thought it was harder because you're handling larvae and there is a chance of squishing them. I'm afraid I won't be able to make it to beefest because I'm about 3,000 miles away 

[Donovan J]

Xerox:  I use all nicot components except for the laying cage.  I graft directly from the brood frame.  Once you have the steps for grafting understood, piece of cake, I tell ya.

If you have good stock, you can produce the best queens yourself.  Mailing and caging queens is to have some effect that are eliminated with raising your own queens.

Van

I'm planning on grafting both to keep a steady supply of queens when the old ones die and to sell to the public. In a few years I plan on selling packages, queens, and nucs.

[TheHoneyPump]

Excellent!  Raising your own queens to have some on hand is fun, satisfying, and rewarding aspect of beekeeping.

I believe the laying cage to be misrepresented above, somewhat.  As with anything in beekeeping there are variations on how to do things.  For example if using the laying cage, my recommendation would be to not use it in a hive.  Set you breeder queen up in 5 frame or 8 frame nuc. She is much easier to find and put in/out of the cage for each batch. In other words your breeder is not in a main hive; her job is to make you queens not bees wax or honey.  The Nicot laying cage is designed towards making a couple hundred laid/grafted cups per week.  For smaller scale, hand grafting or cell cutting would serve better.

Raising queens requires alot of bees, and LOTS of drones.  If you are just starting with two packages, realistically it will be quite some time (3+months at least) before your bee population numbers and age distribution will be approaching being ready to start raising a couple queens. Thus, this should be your year focused on research, study, education, and practice.  To be pragmatic, you are going to spend most of your time, most of your learning, about everything required beyond the graft process. In other words spend the vast majority of your learning efforts on the topics of: cell builders, nutrition, mating nucs, drones, pathogens, and calendar discipline. The grafting is a very small piece.

My suggestion to you would is to start with JZ-BZ. Get one cup holder bar, a bag of cups, some cell protectors, a chinese grafting tool, and 4 mini mating nucs.  Get started with that experimenting and practicing. With those basic equipment, and the bee population you have, should be able to produce 2 to 8 queens this year. If your bees survive the winter then you can take the learnings and experience gained, and more bees into next year to expand a bit with the same stuff to do 10-20 queens. Continue scaling up thereafter.

Some Words of the wise.  Setting up queen rearing based on packages may not have desireable results. Ideally the queen you choose to graft from is at minimum 2 years old so you have good notes on her traits, behaviours, and performance.  Copy(graft) only from what you really REALLY RR EE AA LLL YY like. Let the others run the course to die off in their natural time or help them out via the hive tool test. Please do not just start grafting from the first queen and propagate the unknown or undesirable by selling/giving those to other beekeepers. Definitely; get started grafting and practicing as soon as you can with whatever you have. However, keep them all to yourself or kill them all yourself with kindness.  Wait until you have a couple of years of proven survivors with robust gentle and productive genetics before sending them out into the gene pool.

Hope that helps!

Oh, I almost missed an important question.  How fat is your wallet?  Check the weight of your coin purse.  Initial setup for making queens is not very costly but the equipment needed to house all the bees they are going to make gets spendy real quick.  Ensure your plan includes alot of new boxes, frames, a new bee shop, a new deck truck, etc, etc, etc.


PS:  head over to the Queen rearing section and scroll through there.   Quite a bit of good stuff over there to get you started.
https://beemaster.com/forum/index.php?board=45.0


..

[Donovan J]

Excellent!  Raising your own queens to have some on hand is fun, satisfying, and rewarding aspect of beekeeping.

I believe the laying cage to be misrepresented above, somewhat.  As with anything in beekeeping there are variations on how to do things.  For example if using the laying cage, my recommendation would be to not use it in a hive.  Set you breeder queen up in 5 frame or 8 frame nuc. She is much easier to find and put in/out of the cage for each batch. In other words your breeder is not in a main hive; her job is to make you queens not bees wax or honey.  The Nicot laying cage is designed towards making a couple hundred laid/grafted cups per week.  For smaller scale, hand grafting or cell cutting would serve better.

Raising queens requires alot of bees, and LOTS of drones.  If you are just starting with two packages, realistically it will be quite some time (3+months at least) before your bee population numbers and age distribution will be approaching being ready to start raising a couple queens. Thus, this should be your year focused on research, study, education, and practice.  To be pragmatic, you are going to spend most of your time, most of your learning, about everything required beyond the graft process. In other words spend the vast majority of your learning efforts on the topics of: cell builders, nutrition, mating nucs, drones, pathogens, and calendar discipline. The grafting is a very small piece.

My suggestion to you would is to start with JZ-BZ. Get one cup holder bar, a bag of cups, some cell protectors, a chinese grafting tool, and 4 mini mating nucs.  Get started with that experimenting and practicing. With those basic equipment, and the bee population you have, should be able to produce 2 to 8 queens this year. If your bees survive the winter then you can take the learnings and experience gained, and more bees into next year to expand a bit with the same stuff to do 10-20 queens. Continue scaling up thereafter.

Some Words of the wise.  Setting up queen rearing based on packages may not have desireable results. Ideally the queen you choose to graft from is at minimum 2 years old so you have good notes on her traits, behaviours, and performance.  Copy(graft) only from what you really REALLY RR EE AA LLL YY like. Let the others run the course to die off in their natural time or help them out via the hive tool test. Please do not just start grafting from the first queen and propagate the unknown or undesirable by selling/giving those to other beekeepers. Definitely; get started grafting and practicing as soon as you can with whatever you have. However, keep them all to yourself or kill them all yourself with kindness.  Wait until you have a couple of years of proven survivors with robust gentle and productive genetics before sending them out into the gene pool.

Hope that helps!

Oh, I almost missed an important question.  How fat is your wallet?  Check the weight of your coin purse.  Initial setup for making queens is not very costly but the equipment needed to house all the bees they are going to make gets spendy real quick.  Ensure your plan includes alot of new boxes, frames, a new bee shop, a new deck truck, etc, etc, etc.


PS:  head over to the Queen rearing section and scroll through there.   Quite a bit of good stuff over there to get you started.
https://beemaster.com/forum/index.php?board=45.0


..

Okay this will be my research year and I will find out how good the queens I have are. My current queen is doing well and has about 3 frames of brood. I will have to see the two package queens side by side to see which one is better. I will also get my equipment ready this year. My wallet is decently fat and I've been saving up to buy bee stuff.

[Oldbeavo]

I agree with HP
The hive/queen you select to breed from must have all the qualities you require from your bees.
Temperament
Good layer
Honey gatherers, bees vary in their ability to find and gather honey.
Clean bees, I like to see a hive floor that is very clean.
These are my criteria for selecting a hive to breed off.
May be with your situation, then making some splits and buying some caged queens to give you a comparison with your package queens.
As HP said, be careful you don't invest in your package queens if they are not up to standard.

[Donovan J]

I agree with HP
The hive/queen you select to breed from must have all the qualities you require from your bees.
Temperament
Good layer
Honey gatherers, bees vary in their ability to find and gather honey.
Clean bees, I like to see a hive floor that is very clean.
These are my criteria for selecting a hive to breed off.
May be with your situation, then making some splits and buying some caged queens to give you a comparison with your package queens.
As HP said, be careful you don't invest in your package queens if they are not up to standard.

That sounds like a good idea. I'll take all of these suggestions into consideration

[CoolBees]

Outstanding and detailed advice from all parties here. Truely outstanding! Thank you to each for sharing.

[Duane]

because it seems like the easiest to do.

I'm queuing on your desire for the easiest.  Consider what Jimmy gave as a link for Graft-Free Queen Rearing.

I'm trying, but having a hard time understanding the desire many have for grafting.  I asked in a bee keeping meeting and the response was so you have all the queens the same age.  Makes sense.

But whether you peer through magnifying glasses, using teeny tools and trying not to mash and mangle something or you are selecting a strip of larva, are you not doing the selecting of the larva yourself either way?

I suppose that an expert grafter could somehow make lots of high quality grafts in a short time with no waste.  However, I believe I could cut a strip of eggs out, have half the waste, and able to do multiple more without squinting and no tediousness.

Have I actually done it?  Well...no.  I tried on a small scale last year, but it was later in the year, and I made mistakes and lost cells.  But I have not the space nor equipment for a high level of queen rearing.  I just take a couple frames of brood, add it and pollen and honey to a empty hive, shake extra frames of bees in, and then divide the cells later.  I have only rarely experienced cells too close together to be used.  I end up getting way too many to handle, so end up doubling them up in the nucs.  And watching a few swarm away!  Michael Bush has an article on raising A Few Good Queens.

Mind you, this assumes you can cut the cells out.  If you're using plastic foundation, usually kind of hard to do.

[Donovan J]

because it seems like the easiest to do.

I'm queuing on your desire for the easiest.  Consider what Jimmy gave as a link for Graft-Free Queen Rearing.

I'm trying, but having a hard time understanding the desire many have for grafting.  I asked in a bee keeping meeting and the response was so you have all the queens the same age.  Makes sense.

But whether you peer through magnifying glasses, using teeny tools and trying not to mash and mangle something or you are selecting a strip of larva, are you not doing the selecting of the larva yourself either way?

I suppose that an expert grafter could somehow make lots of high quality grafts in a short time with no waste.  However, I believe I could cut a strip of eggs out, have half the waste, and able to do multiple more without squinting and no tediousness.

Have I actually done it?  Well...no.  I tried on a small scale last year, but it was later in the year, and I made mistakes and lost cells.  But I have not the space nor equipment for a high level of queen rearing.  I just take a couple frames of brood, add it and pollen and honey to a empty hive, shake extra frames of bees in, and then divide the cells later.  I have only rarely experienced cells too close together to be used.  I end up getting way too many to handle, so end up doubling them up in the nucs.  And watching a few swarm away!  Michael Bush has an article on raising A Few Good Queens.

Mind you, this assumes you can cut the cells out.  If you're using plastic foundation, usually kind of hard to do.

Yeah I'm using plastic foundation but I have 10 foundation-less frames that I use sometimes that I could cut from

[Oldbeavo]

Sort of nice idea but may have some draw backs
In spring I grafted some cells, checked them at 48hrs, 13/20 had taken, not claiming to be expert.
So on day 10 after grafting I go to get the cells to put them in the carry nuc, I have 1 hatched and 5 pulled down, 7 still OK.
Ring my queen rearing coach and ask what is going on, explanation, I grafted a larvae that was too old by a day and so hatched a day early and proceeded to wreck my work.
Found young queen and put her into a nuc.
So if you cut a strip of 3 day old larvae, make sure there isn't a 4 one in the strip. Or take them out on day 9.
If you graft too young it is not an issue as the queen is a day late.

[Donovan J]

Sort of nice idea but may have some draw backs
In spring I grafted some cells, checked them at 48hrs, 13/20 had taken, not claiming to be expert.
So on day 10 after grafting I go to get the cells to put them in the carry nuc, I have 1 hatched and 5 pulled down, 7 still OK.
Ring my queen rearing coach and ask what is going on, explanation, I grafted a larvae that was too old by a day and so hatched a day early and proceeded to wreck my work.
Found young queen and put her into a nuc.
So if you cut a strip of 3 day old larvae, make sure there isn't a 4 one in the strip. Or take them out on day 9.
If you graft too young it is not an issue as the queen is a day late.

Yeah I've been reading up about this and taking larvae that are too old can seriously mess up your operation. This is why I thought the nicot system would bee easier

[TheHoneyPump]

Queen rearing takes calendar discipline. They will wait for no man, beast, or conditions.  When she is done she is ready and will emerge in the morning a few hours after sunrise.
Avoiding catastrophe is fairly easy. Do so by checking the cells while they are developing in the cell builder.  You will adjust your batch calendar based on the day that cells are capped.  Not the day you grafted them.  If they cap a day (or two) early, adjust your calendar to take them to the nucs a day (or two) early.  Opposite if they are capped later.
A different grafting system is not going to fix calendar misses.  Being knowledgeable about the stages of larvae and queen cell development, how many days of each stage, and observation of what stage is currently present; then adjusting calendar to what is seen - That is what fixes misses.  The trigger dated is the capping date.  I harvest and place cells 5 days after I see the beginnings of the capping.
(Setting aside the laying cage.). The Nicot components work very well at adding some flexibility.  For example when unsure about when the queens may emerge what I have done is cover them with the roller cages.  I put honey in the groves of the end cap.  Catch 7 young nurse bees and stuff them in the cage. Then slip the cage over the ripening cell.  The virgin emerges, is groomed and cared for by the bees in with her, and she goes to the cap to feed.  Works great.  It is a way to avoid catastrophe.  It is also a way to cull for initial size, color, and deformities before committing a mating nuc to her.  Much better results (fewer losses) from having her emerge directly into a nuc though.

For consideration, hope that helps!

[Donovan J]

Queen rearing takes calendar discipline. They will wait for no man, beast, or conditions.  When she is done she is ready and emerges in the morning a few hours after sunrise.
Avoiding catastrophe is fairly easy.  Do so by checking the cells while they are developing in the cell builder.  You will adjust your batch calendar based on the day that cells are capped.  Not the day you grafted them.  If they cap a day (or two) early, adjust your calendar to take them to the nucs a day (or two) early.  Opposite if they are capped later. 
A different system is not going to fix a calendar miss.  Knowing the stages of development, how many days of each stage, and observation of what stage is present, and adjusting to what is seen - that is what fixes misses.  The trigger dated is the capping date.  I harvest and place cells 5 days after I see capping.

I see. I've been learning about the calander system and when things should happen and when to adjust the calander to certain events. I'm learning that grafting is all about timing, timing, and timing. I'll continue to learn about grafting through the year

[van from Arkansas]

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

[van from Arkansas]

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