By John Berry
Like most things beekeeping there are innumerable ways of raising cells and one method is not necessarily better than another. My method is not really suitable for large-scale cell raising, but certainly worked very well for me raising around 1500 cells a year.
I mostly work with full depth boxes with gauze stapled on the bottom, wooden runners to provide some ventilation, and a simple sack and lid on top to keep the bees in when necessary (also great for collecting swarms). It can also be done using a standard hive as long as you have some sort of ventilated shifter to go underneath when transporting the bees.
For cell cups I use the longer lugged cell cups and stick them onto cell bars with melted wax. Two bars per cell frame and around 20 cups per bar. For many years we made our own cells from wax, dipping shaped wooden dowels (soaked in water) into just-liquid wax. They worked very well and were stuck onto the bars the same way, then cut off with a knife, but I find the plastic cups easier to handle and harder to damage.
Preparing the Hive
Into the cell box goes one frame of pollen, one frame containing young brood, one cell frame and one frame of honey. Into this you need to shake all the bees from one full brood box. There must be enough bees to cover the four frames and plenty left over to beard within the box. I do this mostly by collecting bees from a nice quiet healthy hive when I am requeening.
If I just need a few cells, or at the very start, I will move a strong hive at home at least 10m away from its position. I leave the three needed frames behind and shake about half the bees, but it will gain a lot of returning bees as well. Bees gathered into the cellbox are simply shut in with the sack and taken home, where I place them somewhere away from queenright hives (these will suck a lot of your queenless bees away). Then I simply lift the lid back a few centimetres and fold the corner of the sack furthest from the frames back to create an entrance.
You can successfully graft within a few hours of this preparation and many times I have collected bees during the day and then grafted late that afternoon, but the best results are the following day. You can graft up to three days afterwards, but don’t expect such good results and make sure you destroy any cells which they will be raising on the brood.
Not much can go wrong, but some hives will always do a better job than others. I never collect bees without first finding the queen, but most of my cell raising is done in autumn and you get a surprising number of hives with two or more queens at that time of year.
The Grafting Process
These days I graft exclusively with a 000 sable paintbrush (not synthetic), usually available from a good art supply shop. I was taught to graft by my father using a grafting wire, which I could spend half an hour explaining how to make, but the 000 is a huge improvement. I have grafted with a vintage grafting spoon which was an interesting exercise, but once again the 000 is better. I know a lot of people who use a Chinese grafting tool. I have tried and failed with this and have no intention of ever trying again.
I like to graft from dark frames because it’s so much easier to see the grubs. My father always grafted with the sun over his right shoulder sitting on a bee box, but I prefer to do it indoors using a lamp with a soft white light and for the last few years I also have worn some 2x glasses from the Two Dollar Shop.
The smaller the grub the better the resulting queen, but if you graft a very small (under one day old) don’t expect as high a take. It has been said by many people that you cannot graft eggs, but I have done it with moderate success. There is no real point in it though, other than proving it can be done.
With grubs I normally get around 80% success, but it does vary and one year it didn’t matter what I did I struggled to achieve 50%. The next year everything was back to normal.
When I first started work at the age of 15 we were having a lot of problems with what we thought was black queen cell virus, but in the end we discovered that old Mr Taylor who made the wax cell cups didn’t like bees and when the smell of the hot wax attracted them he would get the fly spay out. Removing the fly spray removed the problem.
Handling Cells
Two days after grafting (graft Monday, check Wednesday) you will be able to count how many cells are successful, although you can expect to lose a small percentage before 10 days. You can requeen using these two day old cells and we often did. There are several advantages, with the main one being that they are almost indestructible. This was important when a lot of our apiaries were a long way up some very rough, unsealed roads.
If I was going to use them I would do a quick count, then simply flip the corner of the sack back over and seal them in with the lid and place on the back of the truck, preferably with a bit of padding underneath. The box could then be opened and used as needed.
If the cells are going to be left for later then you need to go through and cut out any cells on the frame of brood. For a long time the practice was to remove this frame of brood when grafting, thus forcing the bees to put all their effort into the cells, but the reality is you just end up with a whole lot of demoralised bees that do a very poor job.
If there is no honey flow then you might feed a little bit of sugar, or even stir some of the honey and pollen together in the frames. If there is more than a trickle of fresh honey coming in then it’s a good idea to place a frame or two of foundation in at this stage as this will help stop them building burr comb all over the cells.
You can next use the cells at eight, nine and ten days after grafting. At this stage they must be handled very carefully to avoid damage to the queen’s wing buds. A queen that cannot fly, cannot mate.
On day 11 they will be starting to hatch.
When all the cells are used up I usually use the old bees to make up a spare division and then shake a new lot of bees from a suitable hive and the process starts again. Any leftover two day cells can be brought home and put back where they were to continue raising them.
Keep it Simple
This system uses, mostly, gear that you have lying around and there is no need for incubators and other fancy stuff. When grafting you don’t need to cover things with a damp tea towel or work in a sterile environment. Just try and keep everything from getting too hot or cold and work as quickly as possible.
When grafting I tend to use minimal or no smoke. It is a good idea to put the cell cups in at least a few hours before grafting, but if you are desperate, forgetful, or both, then I have grafted straight into cold cells with good results.
Grafting Technique
I find it much easier to show some someone how to graft rather than to write about it, but here goes…
Grafting uses very fine movements, but with the brush you basically need to slide the bristles down beside the grub and when correctly positioned they will then bend and splay out underneath and you just lift it up.
To place in the cell cup you work in reverse as well as giving the brush a twist as you remove it. Try and keep the grub as near the tip as possible. Dark frames are far easier to see the grubs in.
Well fed grubs are much easier to pick up than hungry ones. Very small is best, but slightly bigger is easier. Grafting is a skill that takes practice to gain proficiency, it is also something that some people will be better at than others. I am perfectly adequate, but my sister and some of my nieces leave me for dead when it comes to speed and I suspect they get slightly better results as well.
You will get better results at times when hives are naturally prone to raising cells, such as spring swarming and autumn supersedure. If you end up with some cells that are smaller than you like I recommend opening the worst looking one to see if there is still surplus royal jelly left in the bottom of the cell. If there is, it had enough food and they will all be fine.
Don’t discount using two-day cells. Apart from being almost indestructible they can also give you a complete brood break, making many varroa treatments a lot more efficacious.
One day I’m going to cover selecting breeders in-depth, but if you only graft from your quietest, best producing, healthiest and, these days, hopefully varroa tolerant hives, your bees can only improve.
I learned how to graft from my father, but I also had my skills honed with what was, I think, a three-day course at Flock House Farm Training Institute in the Manawatu in 1976. It was also an invaluable networking opportunity as beekeepers were pretty thin on the ground in those days.
And wouldn’t ya know it, I still have some photos from the occasion…
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