late start grafting.

10framer · April 14, 2014, 12:58:44 AM

i made 22 grafts yesterday. i'll check wednesday to see how many are capped. clover is just opening good. i expected the flows to start a couple of weeks sooner.

BeeMaster2 · April 14, 2014, 07:02:08 AM

Are you grafting 3 day old larva? That is what it would take to have them capped by Wednesday. You may want to wait a day.
Good luck.
Jim

RHBee · April 14, 2014, 06:03:33 PM

Rob,
Why did you call this "late grafting"? I thought queens could be raised anytime during a flow. Actually, I thought that the best queens were summer queens. More drones to mate with and a greater chance of survival due to more stable weather. I want to requeen in the fall so if anything I'll be attempting to raise queens in mid summer.
Just curious.
Ray

10framer · April 21, 2014, 11:41:21 AM

jim, they were capped wednesday, i thought they capped on day 8. i had about 50 percent success (i suspect the frost tuesday and poor larvae selection cost me a few).
ray, i had planned on starting a few weeks earlier but cold, rain and late blooming has held me back. I don't have a shortage of drones by any stretch of the imagination.
i don't know if i ever remember seeing so many drones in every hive. that and the series of two pound swarms (kind of small in my opinion) makes me think the bees are predicting a bumper crop.
sure looks like everything is going to bloom at one time and i'm not sure if that's good or bad. maybe privet will come in late and last into june.

BeeMaster2 · April 21, 2014, 12:08:21 PM

Quote from: 10framer on April 21, 2014, 11:41:21 AM
jim, they were capped wednesday, i thought they capped on day 8. i had about 50 percent success (i suspect the frost tuesday and poor larvae selection cost me a few).
ray, i had planned on starting a few weeks earlier but cold, rain and late blooming has held me back. I don't have a shortage of drones by any stretch of the imagination.
i don't know if i ever remember seeing so many drones in every hive. that and the series of two pound swarms (kind of small in my opinion) makes me think the bees are predicting a bumper crop.
sure looks like everything is going to bloom at one time and i'm not sure if that's good or bad. maybe privet will come in late and last into june.

50% :th_thumbsupup: you are doing pretty good. a lot beter than me.
Jim

RHBee · April 25, 2014, 06:09:17 AM

Rob, As I understand it, good quality queens can be raised any time during a flow. I was actually thinking of raising summer queens for a total requeen and fall splits. Supposedly, young queens are less swarmy in the spring.

10framer · April 25, 2014, 04:20:55 PM

ray, i think the swarms i've caught have all come from hives that i split and took the queens from. i think this year the bees are just feeling swarmy for whatever reason. it could be because they're all second and third generation open mated queens and all the locals have survived by being swarmy. last year i did early splits and had no swarms that i knew of and my original queens from the previous year were marked. this year either it didn't work or i have bees close by that keep landing in my bee yard.

capt44 · April 27, 2014, 05:02:59 PM

I use a timing box to know how old my larva is.
I got the plans from Fat Beeman.
You can literally raise thousands of larva from one timing box.
I take a frame with eggs from the center compartment and move it to the outer compartment and place a colored thumb tack on the frame.
I come back in a day and if the eggs are hatched I have 1day old larva in which to graft from.
This takes all the guess work out of figuring out the age of the larva.
I wet graft using the german grafting tool.
I use the unused frames with larva to repopulate the nucs and timing box.