My fine motor skills are horrid due to a genetic problem named essential tremor.  The tremor is bad enough I can no longer write cursive so must print if I want to read it myself.  So, I have to have my hands braced for any fine work.  The Chinese tool is hopeless for me.

I spot the larva I want to graft.  I lay a 1/4 inch thick three inch wide board on the comb just below the larva to brace my hands on.  I knock the side walls of the cell  out of the way with a dental tool.  I pick the larva up with a modified plastic drinking straw.  The straw is modified by whacking the last inch off at a gentle angle such that the tip is about 1 mm wide or a bit less.  Whack it with a sharp knife or a single edge razor blade.  Black works best as the larva shows well on black.  Smaller diameter straws work best also as they maintain their shape better and do not develop a curve on the tip as fast.  I use black plastic foundation.  Do not know if it would work on wax foundation.

Center the larva in the bottom of a JZBZ queen cup and put a stainless tool with a spoon shaped end that fits the curve of the JZBZ cell bottom right behind the larva.  Pull the straw leaving the larva centered in the queen cup.  I made the stainless tool out of 1/16 inch diameter stainless TIG welding filler rod.  Heat it red hot, whack it hard with a hammer on an anvil until the shape is close and hone to final curve.  You can get that rod at any welding supply shop.

I graft larva before they are C shaped.  Some are close to a u shape with the top of the u wider than the sides.  I would judge everything I graft is well under 24 hours from hatching just looking at their relationship to nearby eggs.  They are bigger than eggs by maybe a factor of two.  Generally the right sized larva are next to or very close to eggs.  I am slow, only one larva a minute at best and less on a bad day.  I discard about one in three as I feel I may have damaged or turned over the larva.  If the larva are not real well fed, and real young ones often are not, it helps to mist the larva lightly with plain tap water just before picking them up.

I will admit I killed several hundred larva trying a bunch of different tools and techniques before getting to where I am today.  If the bees want to raise queens I get a very high take.  Showed my son and grand daughter (age 14) how to do it this summer and they got 100% takes on their first attempts.

It helps to light the comb with a flood light of some sort.  My eyes are not great.  Trifocals a long time now.  If you can see well enough to drive you see well enough to graft in my opinion.  I have done it wearing a veil but that is tough and slow so now I brush the bees off the frame and go inside to graft.  All in all I consider grafting the easy part of raising queens.

I move them ten days after grafting or day nine if the weather forecast for day ten is rain.  I have not seen any difference between moving on day nine versus day ten.

My biggest frustration is new starters starting a bunch of cells which look great 24 hours after grafting and then they stop feeding and destroy most or all of the larva over the next 24 hours.  Often I find if I get a poor take or they destroy most of the cells replacing all the grafts after 48 hours works.  I only raise a few queens so do not keep starters going long term by adding a frame of sealed brood or a big batch of new young bees weekly.  I let the starters finish the cells, but again I only raise a few queens.  I find a starter can easy enough raise six or eight queens all the way to ready to move to mating nucs.  I sometimes put another set of grafts in the same starter on day seven.  If they did well on the first set they will do well on the second and third sets in my experience.  I have not pushed it past that.  Not a good way to do it if you need 100's of queens but works for small amounts.  My starters are generally four good deep frames
 of bees but not overflowing with bees like the directions for starting 50 grafts.  One comb will have honey and pollen.  A couple of combs of sealed brood.  Open brood is a big negative.  If you make the starter up with any open brood wait until it is sealed and make sure you look for queen cells and grub them out before putting grafts in.  I have tried feeding sugar water and/or pollen sub and seen no difference in results.  Perhaps because I am only raising a few queens at a time?

Dick


" Any discovery made by the human mind can be explained in its essentials to the curious learner."  Professor Benjamin Schumacher talking about teaching quantum mechanics to non scientists.   "For every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong."  H. L. Mencken

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