Hi,

This is my 2nd year trying grafting and I'm confident of a good year because my technique has improved greatly - I think.

I've been using my full hives to raise queens and this season I'd much rather use the the eight overwintered nucs I have, which are on double boxes.

I'm hoping less fiddling with the full hives will deliver more honey.

My plan on the nuc is to use one as a cell builder. My plan is:

1. separate the double brood box nuc with a queen excluder.
2. Move all the sealed brood to the top box and maybe add a few frames more so I can get four or five sealed frames.
3. Wait for them to emerge.
4. Remove the queen and any open broad.
5. Shake some extra bees into the queenless nuc.

That should give me a big nuc, full of nurse bees and no broad.

My question is - if I have the equipment of six national frames of bees how many grafts could I put in for optimal results.

I only need twenty queens and do this more because it's fun - I'm just not sure if I'll get poorer results if I put 20 grafts in (my max) than if I just do 10.

Any advice to this novice queen rearer would be welcome.