Six good grafts from one good Cell builder !

[@DraganDjordjevic81]

As always! Great job 👍👍👍

[@HaselorHoney]

Thanks for sharing and you have had some great cells this year 🐝🐝

[@rogierdikkes]

Learned a valuable lesson today: 10 days ago I grafted and placed the cells in a builder that I made out of a hive that was misbehaving. Caged them but thought: let's leave one cup uncaged and place on another frame so i won't have to deal with the hive too much. Since that day it's been raining and last few days it thunders the moment I think about going to the hive. Now it's day 10 and I need to go in with pouring rain with bees from hell... tomorrow forecast is even worse and my agenda is booked. Next time I bank them in a hive without open cups. Got 1 hour till sundown, wish me luck. 😂

[@richardnoel3141]

Beekeeping can be real tough at times!! It’s never easy!!sounds similar to Our weather all this summer!! Good Luck

[@rogierdikkes]

@@richardnoel3141 yeah, im a couple 100km north. (Netherlands). It's been so horrible this year.

[@anne-christinemarcou4481]

HELLO, GREAT JOB!...LOVE THIS HOBBY & MISS THIS. BEATIFUL APIARY & GREAT B.HIVES!!

[@route-249]

You also have the opportunity to mark your queens when you run them through the incubator. I use an incubator also. I have never used the dribble approach though, good idea. I have used an introduction cage and have done the direct release with some spray, but not with syrup. Great idea, I always like having more tools at my disposal!

[@andyprutica7978]

Hi Richard when you used apivar how you treated the minipluses? i gat about 20 and i want to overwinter them. any other recommendations will be really appreciated. thank you

[@richardnoel3141]

i used to cut the strips in half. work out the surface area if your frames in each mini nuc and cut up accordingly.

[@rodneymiddleton9624]

First!!! Nice looking acceptance. Beautiful big cells. I'm going to graft next year. Great job!!!

[@kimberesford2444]

Hi Richard, how soon after making your queenless splits are you introducing a virgin? I’ve had a far better than expected success rate with my last batch of grafts and find myself with a backlog of queens in the incubator. (35 so far this week and another 20ish due out on Thursday.) They can sometimes fly of the frame when they’re a couple of days old so I’ve started opening the roller cage and giving her a squirt of syrup just before I release her onto the frame which stops her flying and causes the bees to clean her up and hopefully accept her. It remains to be seen how successful these later introductions are though, do you have any experience of this and what’s the longest time you’ve successfully held a virgin in the incubator for? All the best Kim

[@richardnoel3141]

Best to run virgins in in hives that are 12 to 24 hours from being made in my experience. The syrup method seems best at this stage. Bees are confused so it’s like the colony swarming in some respects and they kinda expect to see a virgin running around! 4 days. I have a backlog too! Banking a load of queens this morning to hopefully hold them over in good condition for a while! Best of luck!

[@kimberesford2444]

I think I’m going to try banking some too Richard. Am I doing right in putting a couple of attendants in each cage and place them in a queenless colony?

[@richardnoel3141]

@@kimberesford2444 you don’t really need attendants if you have a really strong nurse bée colony of a queen right colony with an excluder and put the queens above the excluder. Many just put on a super and put the queens in above in an empty super box. Put in an I dilated sheet above the queens or just use a deep crown board. I found that works really well

[@kimberesford2444]

Thanks Richard I’ll give it a go 👍

[@campdavidsonfunctionaltrai8583]

How many days do you wait to check on the virgins? 2 weeks?

[@sentimentalbloke7586]

Warm and rainy kicks a lot of plants into a second blooming ( clover is a good example), its not as good as the main bloom but it all helps.

[@madu_murni_peisir]

sir,how old that your Queen cells put in the inkubator?

[@aleksandarj472]

How many days can virgin queens be kept in a cage without being released for mating ?? From your experience? Have a nice day.

[@richardnoel3141]

Hi, if she’s well fed in a colony that’s preferable queenless with lots of food and nurse bees easily a week. But you need cool nurse bée colonies

[@madu_murni_peisir]

sir,how old that your Queen cells put in the inkubator?