# General beekeeping > Queen raising >  Nuc as a cell raiser question

## Paul_

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.

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## prakel

Hi, we only use nuc sized units for queen rearing now. We do it differently to your plan but it's the principle that matters in this instance rather than the methodology. I just find it preferable to use a handful of nucs which can be actively cell raising or resting, depending on what's needed rather than one or two big units. Personal choice.

I'd personally not worry about getting the maximum take although a powerful nuc will do your twenty +/-. Looking at it from the mating end of the plan I'd aim to have maybe three or four batches of ten or so queens going through (having made maybe 14 grafts to begin); more potential drone diversity and plenty of wriggle room for getting out of problems with the weather and other general mishaps.

Several small batches also give you a built in opportunity for culling some, this is something I now believe to be even more important than selecting the mother.

A final advantage is that you'll be extending your practical experience of hands on queen rearing through the season, that's important because with our relatively short seasons it's hard to get hours on the clock.

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## Paul_

> A final advantage is that you'll be extending your practical experience of hands on queen rearing through the season, that's important because with our relatively short seasons it's hard to get hours on the clock.


Great point, thanks for the help.

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## madasafish

If you raise 20 all at once you'll need 20 nucs to raise 20 queens..

I only have 17 mating nucs..!:-)

You might enjoy reading this...http://tinyurl.com/y9u6ppbt

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## Poly Hive

Which is where mini nucs come into play.  :Smile: 

PH

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## Paul_

> Which is where mini nucs come into play. 
> 
> PH


I have 20 minu nucs. So I'm covered there. I'm starting to think I've got a poly nuc addiction

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## gavin

Hi Paul

A few observations that may help.  

Your overwintered double nucs will grow quickly and they may need more space to keep them from swarming before you're ready. But if you get into that situation then you have a great unit for raising queen cells once you remove the queen on a frame or two.  Remove their own cells in the double nuc and repeat after 5-7 days, then put in your grafts.  They'll be in a great state for raising queens and can't make their own.

One thing about your plan might be that removing the queen to a nuc with all the open brood risks taking away many of the nurse bees.  They'll be on the open brood but you could shake most of them back in, leaving the stock with the queen a bit too depleted.  A further thing about attempting to remove all unsealed brood is that you also risk taking away most of the pollen which is usually near the open brood.  Your cell raiser needs both lots of nurse bees and lots of pollen.  One more thing is that it needs to feel prosperous so either do this when there is a flow on or feed syrup before and during cell raising.  

I guess that means there are four things to get right for raising a good batch of cells:

- lots of nurse bees
- copious supplies of pollen (hence the discussion on pollen traps elsewhere today)
- the colony feels prosperous (leave it its flying bees and feed if necessary)
- no ability to make its own queens and (obviously) no queen or virgin walking about on those frames

That last point reminds me that queen-right cell raising also works well.  You could keep your two boxes together, rearrange everything with the queen below and one frame of young brood, a couple of frame of pollen and space for your frame of grafts above.  Some of us do this with double polystyrene nucs and it works well.  It is similar to the Ben Harden or the Wilkinson and Brown method.  Then all your nurse bees remain in the hive as does the pollen - and with the queen present the unit is stable.  

http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/benhardenmethod.html
http://www.nationalbeeunit.com/downl...ment.cfm?id=36

A double nuc is equal to a decent full hive (or a bit more) so 20 cells is possible but might be stretching it a bit.

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## prakel

The following article may be of interest to the op. It was Latshaw's mention of small cell builders on beesource forum that was instrumental in my own early experiments in this direction. 

*A 'Net Gain' cell building system, Beeculture, by Joe Latshaw. January 2017.*
www.beeculture.com/net-gain-cell-building-system

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## Paul_

Thanks,

Gavin, good tips - I'm planning my first graft early May, your point about swarming is well made. I struggled last year to keep the nucs in the box. That was one of the reasons I thought about using them for queen rearing to drain some of their brood into queen rearing process.

I think I'll use the suggestion about just putting the queen in the nuc with some young bees and brood then chipping out the queen cells - thanks.

Parkel, great article thank you for posting it.

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## madasafish

Paul
Look at using a Cloake Board. This is simply a QE between two halves of a two nuc colony . There is a removable board under the QE which enables you (if Q is in lower  nuc) to make upper nuc Q- to start Q raising and remove it after 24 hours to make upper nuc Q+ (The lower nuc needs r rear entrance or have a reversed floor.
(For FULL directions see D Cushman or even better http://theapiarist.org/cloake-board-queen-rearing/)

I used it last year to raise queens and it is VERY simple to use,much less stressful for the bees - and more importantly - the beekeeper.  (See also David Woodward's book Queen bee: Biology, Rearing and Breeding   which is modern and very well written.. and he describes the method as well)

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## gavin

I bought the David Woodward book and frankly I was disappointed by it.  It contains those unnecessary frilly bits which have been shown many years ago to be pointless.  Terry Clare was the first I heard, 9 years ago, saying this is unnecessary:

_'To increase the acceptance of grafted larvae it is important to 'prime' the queen cell cups once they have been attached to the cell bar ..... In a hive that has been prepared for feeding grafted larvae it is important to place the cell cups in the middle of the brood for one or two days prior to grafting.  Priming is essential if a high percentage of grafted larvae are to be accepted.'_

Nope, it really isn't.  What is essential is that the stock is in good condition and well fed, then you can get 90%+ of larvae accepted immediately in a rearranged queenright system as mentioned above.  He also says 'larvae to be grafted should be 12-24 hrs old and larvae older than 36 hrs after hatching are unsuitable.'  We reckon about 6 hrs old is a good guide, 24 hrs far too old and anything anywhere near 36 hrs is going to give really poor intercastes. 

As for the Cloake board, my two queen rearing partners used to use one but it requires several visits and takes time to prepare.  Over a couple of years we came to the conclusion that despite the extra visits it didn't give any better results than the simpler methods from Wilkinson and Brown and other methods mostly discussed on here (thanks Jon  :Smile: ).  No reason not to use the Cloake board method if you wish of course, it is just that it isn't necessary.  By far the over-riding influence on the success rate (as long as you are not clumsy with the young larvae) is the prosperity of the colonies.  At times last summer (during prolonged wet weather) even the young brood in the donor colonies was being abandoned and we struggled to get many queen cells to take.  A bit embarrassing as we were preparing for our queen rearing workshops at which we'd promised to have Amm queen cells available for the participants to take away.

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## Poly Hive

The most critical issue of all is weather which in queen rearing is often not considered. 

If it is cool or worse wet and cool then forget it. Wait. 

Now this is the problem with all these wonderful methods, they can be and often are inflexible. That in turn leads to very poor success rates due to having to offer grafts at the wrong time climatically. I once grafted for 12 days with virtually no success, the skys dried up the temperature rose and I had the best ever succeess. (32 from 36) It is for this reason that so many use shook nurse bees and graft. KISS

PH

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## fatshark

Just started reading Larry Conner's _Queen rearing essentials_ and he uses a nuc-sized cell starter. 

In a previous life I've run queen rearing courses where we started 50 cells in a single box - using a specially modified crownboard taking Nicot (?) cups - stuffed full of nurse bees. Acceptance rates were great - 45+ was not unusual. We then distributed these around the association to people with Ben Harden/Wilkinson & Brown queenright cell finishers. Finishing rate was less good, though I suspect some had the Q above the QE (!) ... however the real problems started when relative beginners tried to manage mini-nucs. I think the latter is probably the most difficult aspect of queen rearing on a modest scale.

And predicting the weather.

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## Paul_

> Paul
> Look at using a Cloake Board. This is simply a QE between two halves of a two nuc colony . There is a removable board under the QE which enables you (if Q is in lower  nuc) to make upper nuc Q- to start Q raising and remove it after 24 hours to make upper nuc Q+ (The lower nuc needs r rear entrance or have a reversed floor.
> (For FULL directions see D Cushman or even better http://theapiarist.org/cloake-board-queen-rearing/)
> 
> I used it last year to raise queens and it is VERY simple to use,much less stressful for the bees - and more importantly - the beekeeper.  (See also David Woodward's book Queen bee: Biology, Rearing and Breeding   which is modern and very well written.. and he describes the method as well)


I laughed when I read this for two reasons:

1. I have cloak board I bought from Thornes a few years ago and never used.
2. I have that book I bought from Amazon and .... well you can guess the rest.

Thanks for the nudge.

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## Paul_

> ... however the real problems started when relative beginners tried to manage mini-nucs. I think the latter is probably the most difficult aspect of queen rearing on a modest scale.


The grafting bit was easy for me, the mating nucs are the painful bit. I have got the Lyson mini nuc now that are bigger and easier to fiddle with. If I make enough queens I want to overwinter a few in the mating nucs. 

Reading the beesource thread I like the idea of running a queenless nuc and feeding it a frame once a week to keep it going. There is a tip there as well to drop in a frame of eggs a few days before the graft to get them in feeding mode, not sure how true it is but seems harmless.

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## madasafish

> The grafting bit was easy for me, the mating nucs are the painful bit. I have got the Lyson mini nuc now that are bigger and easier to fiddle with. If I make enough queens I want to overwinter a few in the mating nucs. 
> 
> Reading the beesource thread I like the idea of running a queenless nuc and feeding it a frame once a week to keep it going. There is a tip there as well to drop in a frame of eggs a few days before the graft to get them in feeding mode, not sure how true it is but seems harmless.


As opposed to me who finds grafting virtually impossible (old age .varifocals) and managing mini nucs relatively easy (learned from Association apiary and my own mistakes).

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## Jon

I use a double nuc system quite a bit as well.
If you remove the queen from a nuc in May, you can run it queenless right through until August as long as you add a couple of frames of brood every week to keep numbers up and prevent the development of laying workers.
You need to check these added frames weekly and remove any queen cells the bees start on them.
Adding a frame of pollen from time to time helps as well.
I put in a frame of grafts and remove them to an incubator 5 days later when the cells are sealed.

The Wilkinson and Brown paper mentioned above is here

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## Poly Hive

MAF? I use varifocals but asked the ASDA optician to make grafting glasses for me. They were intrigued and novelty for them is pretty rare I suppose and the end result is excellent for a mere £40. 

PH

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## madasafish

> MAF? I use varifocals but asked the ASDA optician to make grafting glasses for me. They were intrigued and novelty for them is pretty rare I suppose and the end result is excellent for a mere £40. 
> 
> PH


Just had new varifocals and told optician about bees so my nearsight vision has now got an element of magnification built in..

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## mbc

I've read prosperity and weather are critical to success and I disagree.  Use a strong queenless cell starter amply fed for a while before hand and during cell raising and it matters not a hoot what conditions are outside the hive, give them everything they need inside the hive!
(Maybe it is easier when conditions are ideal, my point is that you can still achieve near optimal queen rearing conditions inside the hive by adding pollen and syrup liberally and confound natures attempts to thwart us)

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## madasafish

> I've read prosperity and weather are critical to success and I disagree.  Use a strong queenless cell starter amply fed for a while before hand and during cell raising and it matters not a hoot what conditions are outside the hive, give them everything they need inside the hive!
> (Maybe it is easier when conditions are ideal, my point is that you can still achieve near optimal queen rearing conditions inside the hive by adding pollen and syrup liberally and confound natures attempts to thwart us)


That is true. But locally I found bees in mini nucs combined with bad weather (and I mean cold, wet windy and occasional frosts) make queen emergence sometimes risky if you have few bees  i.e a mini nuc as opposed to a 5 frame nuc - and queen mating  very risky.  But you could argue the latter is a permanent risk. My experiences are that starting raising before May is locally a big gamble and usually a waste of time . But on the other hand starting early means the beekeeper has a chance to relearn skills not used for a year..and which may be rusty...

I usually start last week April and expect to fail - and am not disappointed :-(

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## Paul_

> MAF? I use varifocals but asked the ASDA optician to make grafting glasses for me. They were intrigued and novelty for them is pretty rare I suppose and the end result is excellent for a mere £40. 
> 
> PH


That's a good idea, I'm okay at the moment with my reading glasses. A headlamp made the World of difference and a timing box so I don't have to hunt for the larva.

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## Thymallus

Worth looking at Dentists Loupes. I have a 2.5X with a light very similar to the picture below. Use it for all sorts of things. There are higher mags, but the focal distance on the 2.5x is just about right for picking out larva etc and the light is excellent....around £50 on fleabay.
s-l1600.jpg

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## Poly Hive

Well mbc you and I will have to disagree but my experience over the years is that good weather and good success go hand in hand and rain and cold = failure. 

PH

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## mbc

I've always taken the view that even in a poor season I can keep myself and my bees productive by cracking on with queen raising, granted not as productive or successful as in a good season and granted, open mating is in the lap of the gods but progress can still be made.

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## Thymallus

Might not your different geographical locations and strains of bees used have more bearing on your respective queen rearing success than the weather? I understand it rains in Wales all the time  :Smile:

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## busybeephilip

> Worth looking at Dentists Loupes. I have a 2.5X with a light very similar to the picture below. Use it for all sorts of things. There are higher mags, but the focal distance on the 2.5x is just about right for picking out larva etc and the light is excellent....around £50 on fleabay.
> s-l1600.jpg


For grafting.... I am short sighted so i simply remove my varifocals and can see up close perfectly for grafting with no magnification needed :Smile:

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## Paul_

I was thinking about starting to graft mid May but folks locally tell me they start end of April - I wonder were people here start?

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## madasafish

End April

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## fatshark

Weather-dependent ... in time so emerged virgins have access to mature drones. In previous years (not Scotland) I've done it successfully from the first week of April until mid/late September. Up here it's a much narrower window every year  :Frown:

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## Paul_

> End April


Yeah, in my little queen rearing spreadsheet if I graft the last week of April they are ready to go early May. I also have space for two more rounds if I want - although I think I'd run out of nucs.

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## Jon

I usually start grafting in the first week of May.
I make sure I have drone comb in my drone producing colonies by the middle of April at the latest.
Drones need to be two weeks from emergence to be at peak fertility.
If you graft on say 5th May your queens will be emerging on the 17th May and could take mating flights from the 23rd or 24 of the month.
You need to count back 24 days (drone development egg to emergence) plus 14 days (maturing) from the 23rd  and it will be in or around that date when you want your queens to start rearing drone brood.

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## madasafish

> Yeah, in my little queen rearing spreadsheet if I graft the last week of April they are ready to go early May. I also have space for two more rounds if I want - although I think I'd run out of nucs.


I found that my early queens had lots of potential homes to go to#.. so mating nucs with laying queens tended to need to be requeened quite quickly.

# my own requeening, friends who needed queens, acquaintances who needed queens, friends of acquaintances etc...  the bee grapevine is very efficient.

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## Adam

I tend to use a queenright queenraising method - a demaree - with the brood and grafts in the top box above a queen excluder and a super or two, with the queen in the lower brood box with excluder above. As I don't have a massive demand I generally do 10 grafts at a time, separated by a couple of weeks. This means that if the weather is bad for mating for one batch, it's usually ok for the other. I wait until there are a fair number of drones being produced in other colonies before I start queen-raising. Having said the above, if I have a colony that is queenless for any reason, it can be pressed into service as a queen-raiser during the season.

Adam's rule of thumb: If we say that a full-sized colony can comfortably raise 20 good and well-nourished queens, all things being equal, is that 2 queencells per frame of brood, so a prosperous 5-frame nuc would do 10?

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## Poly Hive

Umm.. no. A full colony has a far greater population than a "prosperous nuc" So my dodge is to use the starter box as only a starter, and it is a box of shook young bees which can cope with 20+ grafts happily and then use Q+ units to finish the cells off. 

PH

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## Paul_

My nucs are all on Paynes with extenders, I'm going to take the queen out with three frames and then condense all the remaining bees into one nuc box. I'll see if it can handle 20 grafts, if not it's no biggy - I'm not going to run out of eggs and bees for another go.

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## Adam

A paynes nuc with extended is a 12 frame box so the same size as a normal brood box. So to condense you will need to remove 7 frames thus allowing one for the grafts. One of the frames will usually be full - or highly loaded - with pollen. They will definitely be squeezed in! Note that they might be able to _handle_ 20 grafts, the question is whether they can adequately feed 20. You will quite possibly need a feeder on top - say 1/4 litre per day - until the grafts are sealed and in order to ensure that the graft frame is not full with drawn comb by the time the queens are ready, which makes removing them more difficult, you might need to take another frame out and put in one of foundation or partly drawn comb to give them space to work.

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