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Thread: 1st grafting attempt

  1. #51
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Sound good. Very few queens flew and mated this past week.
    Fingers crossed for better weather.
    If they start to lay, put the excluder on and leave them to lay at least 10-14 days in the apidea.
    It's a bad idea to remove them too early as they can be rejected or superseded quickly.

  2. #52
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jon View Post
    Sound good. Very few queens flew and mated this past week.
    Fingers crossed for better weather.
    If they start to lay, put the excluder on and leave them to lay at least 10-14 days in the apidea.
    It's a bad idea to remove them too early as they can be rejected or superseded quickly.
    Think its a wrap for my queen raising this year.

    Final one removed from home bodged apidea and put in a mates nuc.

    So a nice wee experiment for next year and learnt a lot in the process. Everyone should give it a go.

    I think from 12 grafts I got 3 cells drawn with two queens hatched

    The queen-right raising method worked a treat and I was very pleased my home made poly mating nucs did the job. Will do a bit of revision on the design for next year but hoping to have queens going all summer next time round. Thanks for all the advice especially to Jon and DR.

  3. #53
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by greengumbo View Post
    Think its a wrap for my queen raising this year.
    You always did remind me of that actor fellow McGregor from Crieff (younger and more handsome of course), and now you come out with media darling quotes like that to add to my confusion!

    You'd have enjoyed Mike Brown's hour-long description of his history in queen raising, and all the ins and outs of the Wilkinson and Brown queen-right method on Saturday. I have notes somewhere.

  4. #54
    Senior Member prakel's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by greengumbo View Post
    .....and I was very pleased my home made poly mating nucs did the job. Will do a bit of revision on the design for next year but hoping to have queens going all summer next time round. Thanks for all the advice especially to Jon and DR.

    This can become quite a labour of love or a living hell of hair pulling and stress. What started for me as a cheap way of increasing mating nucs with frames that could be interchanged with the existing mini-plus hives has now turned into an obsession. Amazingly, my best ideas always come after the close of the queen rearing season!

    It'll be interesting though to see the faces at the local bee auction when all of the passable prototypes arrive there for distribution!
    Last edited by prakel; 26-09-2013 at 10:02 AM.

  5. #55
    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by greengumbo View Post
    Think its a wrap for my queen raising this year.
    Same here. Just back from a few days in Cornwall. Traffic not too bad so enough time to check if my queens were mated. 2/4 had eggs , one had polished cells and the other was being robbed out These were grafted on the 28th of August. At least one of the queens was mated on the 22nd as she was running around trailing the 'evidence'. Interestingly, these are in three frame nucs and the queen is laying on the inside wall of the central frame - presumably the warmest spot. Final check on Sunday when I'll rearrange them into two 6 frame nucs for the winter.

    Grafting success was pretty good. Mating success less so - either good or a total flop for different batches.

    Like GG, I've learnt a lot (again ... ) not least the benefit of fat dummies with an integral feeder to give 100-200ml or so of syrup daily to encourage them to draw the cells out irrespective of the flow.

    Finally, next years OSR just showing in the fields surrounding my apiary. Top banana!

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