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Thread: Stupid Question.. If I want to get started...

  1. #1
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    Default Stupid Question.. If I want to get started...

    What are the little plastic cups called? I was looking at both Thornes and Maisemore trying to price up getting going on the queen raising front and I couldn't figure out what it was I actually want.

    I thought I'd go the simple route to start with and that method seemed pretty straight forward, stick a couple of wooden bars in a frame, stick the little plastic cups into some holes and graft some larvae into them.

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    Hi
    this is the page you want to look at in Thornes
    I can recommend getting a chinese grafting tool aswell.
    Or maisemore
    Thornes has both Jenter (my personal favorite) and nicot systems. But judging by their product description they have not worked out how the jenter works (the unribbed yellow sockets are placed in holes in the bar and mate to the ribbed ones for easy transfer/removal from bars)!
    Last edited by Calum; 08-06-2011 at 04:33 AM.

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    Hi Nellie,

    You can make it easier on yourself and buy the Cupkit system that comes with 10 sets of bits or you can buy the bits on their own if you just want to graft. I have a contact for a company that I will post when I get to my other computer. You may find them cheaper than Thornes

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    Buzzy Bee shop has the best prices.
    I always use them.

    http://www.buzzybeeshop.co.uk/page9.html

    I haven't used cupkit but those who have used cupkit and have done grafting usually reckon grafting is far quicker and far less hassle.
    We had a grafting session on monday evening and some who tried could not even see the small larvae so it is maybe horses for courses.
    I can graft 20 larvae in 10 minutes, no queens to catch and cage or anything like that.
    It is something which gets better with practice. last year I was having 10/20 started on average and this year it is more like 18/20.
    The critical thing is the state of the colony the grafts go into. If the colony is wrong it will not start cells irrespective of whether they began as cupkit, or larvae on the end of a paintbrush.

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    Hi Nellie,

    Jon beat me to it. I also use the Buzzybeeshop.
    I have used both the Cupkit and Jenter system as well as grafting. The Jenter was one of the original older systems. I found it a bit fiddly with too many bits. For grafting I had to use a magnifying headband I grafted into wax cups as well as the Cupkit cups. I found it was less hassle using the Cupkit cups than making your own wax cups. By far the easier breeding system for my situation is the Cupkit system. All of the systems will work so it is what you prefer. The Cupkit system does have a few tweeks you need to know about to get it to work. The first is you need to get the hive scent on the frame. My first attempt I left it in the donor hive for a few days after spraying it with sugar solution. The queen did not lay readily. As the system gets older and used more the queen seems more readily to lay. When you have finished using the frame don't clean it the bees will do this for you. It is recommended to leave the queen in the frame for 24hr. In my experience the queen does not lay in this 24 hrs but I still check for eggs and usually leave a further 24hrs if no eggs are seen. It is easy to check for eggs.( I use the yellow cup holder to lift the brown cups out the back of the frame when checking). I then leave 3 days and again check the eggs have hatched and the bees have place a little brood food in the cup. I then take these 1 day old larvae using the yellow cup holder and place these on the brown adaptors attached on a frame and place in a queenless colony. I usually do 10 cells at a time but you could potentially produce up to a 100 queen cells if you have enough colonies. The fully formed cells are easy to detach from the queen frame and inserted into an apidea.
    Last edited by Jimbo; 08-06-2011 at 09:43 AM.

  6. #6

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    I tried grafting and Cupkit system and I found Cupkit easier, quicker and with a higher take rate. Grafting was cheaper though, which was just the cost of a tool and a strong head torch but there was the faff of making the cups from wax....

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    You can just purchase a set of 10 cups and holders for about £5.00 and graft straight into these without the faff of making your own wax cups which also need to be made fresh for best results

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jon View Post
    Buzzy Bee shop has the best prices.
    I always use them.

    http://www.buzzybeeshop.co.uk/page9.html

    I haven't used cupkit but those who have used cupkit and have done grafting usually reckon grafting is far quicker and far less hassle.
    We had a grafting session on monday evening and some who tried could not even see the small larvae so it is maybe horses for courses.
    I can graft 20 larvae in 10 minutes, no queens to catch and cage or anything like that.
    It is something which gets better with practice. last year I was having 10/20 started on average and this year it is more like 18/20.
    The critical thing is the state of the colony the grafts go into. If the colony is wrong it will not start cells irrespective of whether they began as cupkit, or larvae on the end of a paintbrush.
    That looks about right. I was going to try path of least resistance. The cartridge system is ok, but I worry about time to get back and let her out again hence preferring to try grafting. The 30 queen kit plus a grafting tool or two looks a reasonable place to start.

    I'd originally intended to try and keep it really simple this year by taking Nucs from Artificial swarms but the way things have panned out this year has made me regret somewhat that I hadn't taken the plunge sooner.

    Might be a step too far for this season but I'll certainly be going for it next year.

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    Nellie,

    I would recommend you just give it a go. I was not successful at first but it was a great learning curve and I enjoyed it. There is no greater feeling when it all comes together and you can repeat the process year after year.
    You are right if you just buy a pack of the cupkit cups the yellow adapters and the brown cell frame adaptors plus a graft tool you can't get it any simpler. All you need is a queenless colony (Keep feeding with syrup when you have placed in the larvae on the frame)
    The fun then starts all over again when you have all these queen cells and you wonder what to do with them!

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    I'd considered that and was even budgeting for 5-6 mating nucs/apideas.

    I'd put this off because I thought it was really difficult, or at least intimidating and that I needed much more experience before I tried raising queens in any kind of organised manner and that therefore taking splits from Artificial swarms into Nucs was going to be a straightforward route to go down. If I'd taken the plunge then knowing what I know now; that it's not actually that difficult, I'd probably be in a much better situation that I am at the moment where 50% of my colonies will do well to build up for winter.

    Live and learn as they say.
    Last edited by Neils; 08-06-2011 at 09:42 PM.

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