2nd grafting attempt

[Knucs]

Thanks to many of you, 6 out of 10 cells sealed this time. Using a 5 frame Queenless deep nuc. Frame of pollen/honey next to graft frame, sealed brood/emerging other side, frame of honey against 1 wall & frame of open brood other wall. Shook about 4 frames of nurse bees in. Frame of open brood put in 2 days prior to graft, which I'm told gets the nurse bees primed for making lots of royal jelly. Now I'm thinking I should remove that frame of open brood when graft gets put in--- no competition forfor grafts getting jelly, & I won't have to keep going in to destroy new queen cells that keep popping up every few days, right?? At this point, I'm only interested in using the nuc as both the starter & finisher but any tips for this setup? Oh, & this time I tried wet grafting, seem to get larvae off better, also fed home made Pollen patties & 1:1 sugar water this time. Please critique.

[Knucs]

My 2 favorite grafting tools.

[Perry]

6 out of 10 is pretty good.
I would agree on pulling the frame of open brood I think, it makes sense, but then I've never really gotten into grafting and raising queens so I could be wrong.

[iddee]

You may find a helpful hint or two here.

http://doorgarden.com/2011/11/07/simple-honey-bee-queen-rearing-for-beginners/

[Knucs]

Thanks iddee,

That's a good link with nice info. I found it very helpful prior to my 1st attempt, it was the last thing I read before jumping in. Perry, you should give it a try, you'd probably be great @ it & I'm sure you'd find room in your new work area for an incubator when you go all out.

Those 2 tools, 3 X reader glasses and a 20ga needle bent back & filed a bit.

[mgstei1]

I would remove that frame that had open brood on it as it may have a queen cell on it and they are easy to miss if your're not careful. If she gets out all your cells will be toast unless you put them in a queenright hive above a queen excluder or an incubator. Look carefully on all the frames as if a rogue queen is hatched out her 1st mission is to wipe out any other queen cells.
Your cells look great and its always great to see RJ in the cup after they are capped. Well fed queens do best.

Great job!!

[Knucs]

Now they are drawing comb on the cells so I put a foundation less frame in next to it & I stopped feeding them 1:1. Any other suggestions?

[mgstei1]

Think incubator. Frees up the bees for another batch, careful watch, fun for kids, no chance of a rogue queen.
Nice cells, now to get em bred and laying! Thats true success!!

[tecumseh]

cells become harder to raise in the latter part of the year.  6 of 10 is more than acceptable but I normally remove anything that looks like brood frame from the starter box.  my primary mechanism for getting cells started is a closed 5 frame starter box.  I normally only get one graft from this but on occasion I have gotten two.  the finisher can take many shapes but quite commonly by the fall of the year I simply do a paper combine with a queen excluder and simply place the starter + cells overtop an adequately populated hive.  typically I graft about 36 cells per starter box.