Grafting- First Steps
A month ago, I set out to raise a few queens using the Cloake Board method (suggest to me by Dave Pehling at the WSU extension office), where you create artificial queenlessness by moving the queen to the bottom super below a queen excluder in a strong hive with lots of nurse bees, take away the open brood, slide in the board, and give them young larva up above. Thinking they are queenless, they make queen cells pretty quick, and once they start, you can join the hive again, and they finish them off nicely.
Just before they hatch you move them to nucs, and I made 4 nucs from them this year (being just a beginner- and cautious). A problem with using plastic foundation , like I do, is that even if you get multiple queen cells on a frame, which you certainly do, there is not easy way to cut them out, so you just get one nuc per frame. I had plenty of nice queen cells- but only 4 frames.
One of the nucs has already failed- its entrance reducer fell off, and it succumbed to robbing. They apparently killed the queen- I don't know. In the other three, I see queens, but they aren't laying yet. I get antsy to look every other day, I don't think it cause much disruption, so its OK. I don't think its too late for them to mate, but I don't really know.
To amp it up a little, and on the inspiration of some folks in the Mount Baker bee group, I set out last week to learn how to graft queens as well. I have that feeling that I have a few really terrific hives- strong hives, with feral origins, and great producers of bees and honey. So I want to see if I can at least get some queens from these.
I bought all the raising queen books I could (there are tons- but a core of 5 or 6 that seem to be the canon), and read them. Super interesting- especially, I think, Doolittle's book on how this method all came about. I read RO's article on raising queens, which has the best info on the tools, and combined that with the Susan Colby article on using the Cloake board for grafting.
I went through all the steps, chose the hive I wanted to graft from, set up a queen rearing hive with the Cloake board, and on Saturday, drove my truck to the apiary that has my good hives, swaddled my truck cab in dark blankets so it was dark and hot inside, set up my tools and workspace and headlamp, and brought in two frames of fresh brood to try my hand at grafting. Its tiny work - it has to be dark, and hot so the larva are comfy.
I set up a thermometer and humidity gauge, and in about 5 minutes it got to 100 degrees F and 70% humidity. Pretty hot for a Northerner. I was dripping.
It took more than a few tries to get the tool to set the larva - which are REALLY small- exactly in the center of the cups- but eventually, I had it figured out. The Chinese bamboo tool that RO recommends works really well- I can't even see how one would use the other types (though I bought them to try).
I use Westerns, so I modified a frame to take two rails of cups, which works almost perfectly with the right vertical spacing. When done, I drove them home, swaddled in a damp pillow case, to put in my apiary there. I set them in the strong hive, added pollen and a frame feeder, and closed them up.
Expecting first-timer's failure, I was hesitant to check the next day to see if they had been accepted. More than a few I knew I had screwed up (not centered the larva), so I wasn't sure. But lo and behold- of the 24 cups, I think they accepted 12 or more. More than I had expected, for sure. It is VERY cool to do, and not that hard. I don't think my timing is right (mid-July)- and not sure what I will do with all of these queens if they mate- but I'll see if I can get them mated and producing, and replace some of my under performing stock.
Very fun! I look forward to more of this next year- beekeeping is consuming and fascinating, and there seems to be no end to what one can try, or do,even with a few hives. Hopefully I can look forward to being more independent to the California queens and packages that seem (to me) to do so poorly compared to the native swarms I catch.
Just before they hatch you move them to nucs, and I made 4 nucs from them this year (being just a beginner- and cautious). A problem with using plastic foundation , like I do, is that even if you get multiple queen cells on a frame, which you certainly do, there is not easy way to cut them out, so you just get one nuc per frame. I had plenty of nice queen cells- but only 4 frames.
One of the nucs has already failed- its entrance reducer fell off, and it succumbed to robbing. They apparently killed the queen- I don't know. In the other three, I see queens, but they aren't laying yet. I get antsy to look every other day, I don't think it cause much disruption, so its OK. I don't think its too late for them to mate, but I don't really know.
To amp it up a little, and on the inspiration of some folks in the Mount Baker bee group, I set out last week to learn how to graft queens as well. I have that feeling that I have a few really terrific hives- strong hives, with feral origins, and great producers of bees and honey. So I want to see if I can at least get some queens from these.
I bought all the raising queen books I could (there are tons- but a core of 5 or 6 that seem to be the canon), and read them. Super interesting- especially, I think, Doolittle's book on how this method all came about. I read RO's article on raising queens, which has the best info on the tools, and combined that with the Susan Colby article on using the Cloake board for grafting.
I went through all the steps, chose the hive I wanted to graft from, set up a queen rearing hive with the Cloake board, and on Saturday, drove my truck to the apiary that has my good hives, swaddled my truck cab in dark blankets so it was dark and hot inside, set up my tools and workspace and headlamp, and brought in two frames of fresh brood to try my hand at grafting. Its tiny work - it has to be dark, and hot so the larva are comfy.
I set up a thermometer and humidity gauge, and in about 5 minutes it got to 100 degrees F and 70% humidity. Pretty hot for a Northerner. I was dripping.
It took more than a few tries to get the tool to set the larva - which are REALLY small- exactly in the center of the cups- but eventually, I had it figured out. The Chinese bamboo tool that RO recommends works really well- I can't even see how one would use the other types (though I bought them to try).
I use Westerns, so I modified a frame to take two rails of cups, which works almost perfectly with the right vertical spacing. When done, I drove them home, swaddled in a damp pillow case, to put in my apiary there. I set them in the strong hive, added pollen and a frame feeder, and closed them up.
Expecting first-timer's failure, I was hesitant to check the next day to see if they had been accepted. More than a few I knew I had screwed up (not centered the larva), so I wasn't sure. But lo and behold- of the 24 cups, I think they accepted 12 or more. More than I had expected, for sure. It is VERY cool to do, and not that hard. I don't think my timing is right (mid-July)- and not sure what I will do with all of these queens if they mate- but I'll see if I can get them mated and producing, and replace some of my under performing stock.
Very fun! I look forward to more of this next year- beekeeping is consuming and fascinating, and there seems to be no end to what one can try, or do,even with a few hives. Hopefully I can look forward to being more independent to the California queens and packages that seem (to me) to do so poorly compared to the native swarms I catch.
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