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Queen splicing

2K views 5 replies 4 participants last post by  tecumseh 
#1 ·
Hello

I'm new to splicing. I have spliced 10 larva 1 day old to 10 queen cups. I made sure that the larva was set in the queen cup the same way that i pulled it out of the wax. I then placed it in a queen-less hive. Then came back to check it 3 days later to find that there was wax pulled around all the queen cups.
But there was no larva. not the first one.
Did i do something wrong?
 
#2 ·
The obvious answer is YES, but it could be any number of things. Did you isolate the queen for 24 hours, then time the eggs to hatch time? Did you shake enough to sink the larva into the royal jelly, thus drowning it?
Did you shake nurse bees into the cell builder hive, or just use a hive that had gone queenless? Was it overflowing with bees to the point they couldn't all get in the box? There are many many things that go into grafting queens. Very few beeks get a take the first time. It usually takes a few rounds of practice before any success is achieved.
 
#3 ·
I think you mean, grafting/transplanting/transferring. Splicing would likely result in lots of dead larvae.

Just like Iddee said, there are lots of details, "The devil is in the details". Practice, practice, practice -- I still get failures, but more and more successes, as time goes on.
 
#4 ·
grafting yes... splicing no <evidently the first mistake is the language and we all need to be reading from the same book here.

might I suggest.. gives us a bit more detail of what you did and the materials used and then perhaps you success rate can be improved. don't be shy or act like the words cost by the digit... tell us everything you did.

please do not feel so bad in this first failure... I would guess almost everyone who tries this on their own without some help from someone who has done this before will suffer failure before they get the essential right.
 
#5 ·
Prep,
Well Lets see here. I brushed off 10 frames of brood. Then move the brood to the top box of the hive and put a queen excluder under the box. I then left it for 24 hours. After the 24 hours I made the top box into its own hive. The box was full of young bees. I left it sit for 2 days. 1 hour before I put the Graft in the hive I check it for any queen cell in this box I did not find any.
The graft,
I set a hive up with 3 frames of dark comb in the center of a strong hive I placed full frames of brood on the sides of the dark comb. I left the hive alone for 5 days then went back to see how much new larva was in the dark comb. I was able to get 10 larvas out of it with out any problem. While I was pulling the larva I keep a damp towel there to cove them so they would not dry out. I then place the new larva in the hive I had made up. I left it for 3 days and went back to check it. I found the cell cups were covered in wax about 1/3 of the way down a nice start of a queen cell. When I look closer there was nothing in the cups. =(
 
#6 ·
a snip..
I left it sit for 2 days. 1 hour before I put the Graft in the hive I check it for any queen cell in this box I did not find any.

tecumseh:
this unit was queenless for two days with young larvae (acceptable resources for making queens) and there were no queen cells?

lots of possible I would guess.... 1) if there were no queen cells then this suggest the unit still had a queen or 2) at two days any cells would be obvious to a trained eye but I am not certain if they would be obvious enough for a newer beekeeper.

what kind of cups are you using or are you employing a cell punch technique? <style of cups pretty much determines whether the cups need to be polished or not.

from the git go brushing off bees does not address the presence (or in this case the absence of) the queen. typically you either spot her directly and remove her or run the worker bees thru a queen excluder to sift out the queen.

may I assume that you were feeding ALL of the units above you described?
 
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