The weather is suppose to be rain in forecast next ten days, so I built the cell starters and grafted and put the cells in the starter, all in one day. If they don't take, I don't think I lost because the weather will alter any grafts I was going to do anyway.
I used jzbz cups and homemade wax cups. I used Chinese tool and took me a few tries to get the hang of it, but thought they grafted nicely. I chose the smallest larvae that I could see with a jewelers glass and they were next to the eggs. (Very cool.)
One cell starter is 2 ten frame mediums that had no queen laying in them for 4 days. They were Queen right but just excluded.
The second starter is 5 of the deep frames that she was laying in, but not much as they were the outer frames of pollen and honey. But much smaller in numbers. I gave them some pollen patty strips on frames and top feeding syrup.
The queen and 5 frames of brood including the one I grafted from are in 5 frame nuc with 5 frame foundation on top.
Hope all is good, if they are accepted, should I leave them to Finnish or move to queen right hives. I have 2 that are good and strong.
Almost forgot, 15 grafts in each starter.
How did your grafts turn out? d2
What Don said.
Jim
I ended with only 7 queen cells from that graft. I split one of my strong hives and put them in either a 5 frame nuc or one of my mating boxes that I built. Six days later, I performed a walk-away split and ended up with 9 cells that I was able to cut off, some frames had more that I could not cut off, to leave them with only one because, they were too close together or on the wire. So, I could not get any more off.
The weather has been raining and cool, even frost one morning, so I have not even inspected, to see if they all emerged. But even if I did, it is not time to see larvae yet. Getting close though.
I will keep you posted as, I expect 19 hives going in may and have another strong hive to do more grafts in May.
You are doing pretty good to get 7 cell to take. Good job
Jim
After an inspection, I found 10 queens that may or may not have mated. Some had eggs and others I could not find eggs, but did see her. Some were from grafts and some were from a walk-away split 6 days after the graft. I had some that were either all dead at the bottom or absconded, probably due to the fact that I made some really weak splits, because of the number of queen cells that I ended up with and got greedy, so after 16 hopefuls, I ended with 10. I still have a super strong hive that I have not split and will use their brood frames to build some of the weaker 10 nucs up a bit.
Don't do no grafting myself, but any way you shake it 10 out of 16 isn't bad. d2
I grafted my 4th batch today.
I grafted 96 larva.
I have one queen left so I'm going to start a nuc tomorrow.
I can't raise them fast enough for folks.
I made a thing to use the nicot hair roller cages and use jzbz cell cups.
I'll post pictures tomorrow of the setup.
Sounds like folks are keeping you busy. I would love to see the pics. I made little dowel rods that the cups would push into and roll cage fit over the dowel ends. The dowel also has a drilled hole sideway so I can wire it for hanging on frames.