First Time Grafting

[simonforeman]

I have all the equipment and had planned to have a go at grafting this year but work got in the way. I now have some time and enough splits, nucs, hives to make up a packed nuc of nurse bees and capped brood to have a go.

Am I too late to have a go at a couple of rounds of grafting?

My plan is to try and over winter some nucs in poly nucs and also requeen a couple of hives.

Any tips at this stage of the year to keep in mind?

Summer has not got started here yet but looks to improve next week.... Fingers crossed

 

[B+.]

I have all the equipment and had planned to have a go at grafting this year but work got in the way. I now have some time and enough splits, nucs, hives to make up a packed nuc of nurse bees and capped brood to have a go.

Am I too late to have a go at a couple of rounds of grafting?

My plan is to try and over winter some nucs in poly nucs and also requeen a couple of hives.

Any tips at this stage of the year to keep in mind?

Summer has not got started here yet but looks to improve next week.... Fingers crossed

It's not too late but you'll find a reduced acceptance of grafts if your nectar flow slows down (you could always feed them).
I have my last graft of the season still in the cell raiser and got 27/30 so it can still be done. I don't think I'll raise any more this year though as I'll be switching focus to other things (I'm expecting a batch of 6 island mated queens from the NL in about a week).

 

[madasafish]

I have all the equipment and had planned to have a go at grafting this year but work got in the way. I now have some time and enough splits, nucs, hives to make up a packed nuc of nurse bees and capped brood to have a go.

Am I too late to have a go at a couple of rounds of grafting?

My plan is to try and over winter some nucs in poly nucs and also requeen a couple of hives.

Any tips at this stage of the year to keep in mind?

Summer has not got started here yet but looks to improve next week.... Fingers crossed

I started grafting this year and still am doing it..

Practise, practise practise.. Set it up so you have an easy to access gueen starter colony so you can check graft acceptance the next day- preferably without lifting supers off...
When starting out, I made loads of mistakes, but being able to start again after failure means I never was discouraged even after two consecutive absolute failures..

It really did not matter to me what the queens looked like as long as I got some.. It helps if the starter colony is fairly docile.

It has taken me 13 tries to achieve 60% acceptance, and a head magnifier and torch (but I am elderly with poor eyesight)

I will have to watch for wasps which can decimate mini nucs in 24 hours....in August.

 

[jeff33]

On top of that you get losses with pupae dying before being fully formed especially in mini nucs if bees can't keep them at the right temperature. You can also get losses during mating or queens absconding if left too long in an apidea. To give you an idea (I am only grafting since last year) out of 10 grafts I average 4 mated queens only. I usually have 7-8 takes, 2 or 3 will die b4 emergence and I lose 1 or 2 during mating. Good luck

 

[madasafish]

I use an incubator... we get occasional cold spells even in summer and QCs in mini nucs sometimes do not emerge. Even in the incubator, I lose approx 20% which do not emerge /have BlackQueen Cell Virus.

This year the cold wet spell in June coincided with my putting virgins into mininucs- approx half have not mated and are DLQs...Others locally had the same problems

 

[B+.]

On top of that you get losses with pupae dying before being fully formed especially in mini nucs if bees can't keep them at the right temperature. You can also get losses during mating or queens absconding if left too long in an apidea. To give you an idea (I am only grafting since last year) out of 10 grafts I average 4 mated queens only. I usually have 7-8 takes, 2 or 3 will die b4 emergence and I lose 1 or 2 during mating. Good luck

It sounds like you're putting the cell in the nuc too early Jeff. With mini-nucs, they need to be "ripe" (i.e. due to emerge within a day). You could also wrap some tape around the cell to prevent them chewing the side down. If they have young nurse bees, they should accept the emerging queen.
I don't do it this way myself. I introduce live virgins in Nicot cages for 24 hours. I only lost 1 out of 14 in the last batch I introduced this way. It helps to have spares in the incubator but, if I didn't, the nuc could just as easily be recombined above another mating hive. I use full-frame nucs - not because I don't have mini-nucs but because I want the queen to have the space to develop a proper brood nest

 

[jeff33]

Yes but I have bought the nicot cages now. As I was leaving the cells in my Q right finisher without protection I didn't want to risk them in there pass day 12, just in case I got it wrong. I have made my own mini nucs, they take 6 1/2 shallow national frames and can add more boxes on top. Incubator will be for next year.

 

[B+.]

Yes but I have bought the nicot cages now. As I was leaving the cells in my Q right finisher without protection I didn't want to risk them in there pass day 12, just in case I got it wrong. I have made my own mini nucs, they take 6 1/2 shallow national frames and can add more boxes on top. Incubator will be for next year.

No problem. You don't need an incubator. The finisher will keep your cells warm.
It's quite easy to pop a Nicot cage over a cell. I do it as soon as they're sealed. Mine go into the incubator but yours can stay in the finisher. All they are doing is keeping the cells warm. Of course, if you're using a queen-right finisher, you need to be careful that your queen doesn't swarm....so you really need to have a good idea how old your cells are. I find having a queenless cell raiser removes this concern, In my case, it's the same queenless colony that raises the cells all the way until they're sealed. They do an excellent job with no risk of swarming.
It's really a matter of thinking about what CAN go wrong and planning for that.

 

[tonyofarr]

Good advice as always B+, I did not get around to putting the nicot cages on my last batch of queen cells and when I went back to distribute them into mating nucs they had all been torn down. I am still trying to work out what happened, I don't think my dates were wrong but I am waiting for a queen to be mated in the next-but-one hive and I think she may have returned to the wrong colony.