Graft (and run)

If I want to graft from my mates brood frames 18 miles away, into EzBz cups or similar with homEmade wax cups attached. How long are they viable outside the hive, or in other words, how long do I have to get them home to my rearer hive and any good ways to transport in car? Temp, humidity, insulated box, heater? Any wisdom?

Seems to me you have a couple of options ... graft there and bring them back, in which case I wrap them in a warm, damp, tea towel and put them in a polystyrene box for insulation. 18 miles should be no problem at all. Alternatively, you could take a swarm box to your friends and get the cells drawn out there, then bring them back once drawn (or part drawn) with bees for protection. Both approaches work fine.

I've tried both ways as suggested, with the wrap method it did not work. Maybe the towel was to dry, the weather to hot, but acceptance was poor. The following week I took the swarm box. Popped the frame of grafts in with the the bees and then took them home. That worked OK.
Give both ways a go, maybe I did something wrong. its certainly easier to transport just a frame.

Swarm boxes. 24 hours then transfer the "takes" to the next stage...

susbees said:

Swarm boxes. 24 hours then transfer the "takes" to the next stage...

Click to expand...

There is a good design of starter box here; http://beeman.se/index-f.html
perfect for taking to a friends apiary to put a frame of graffts in and taking home.
The problem with the damp towel method is that even for the few minutes those larvae are away from nurse bees, they will suffer. Its quite extraordinary how many visits and feeds properly looked after queen cells get and even a ten minute pause will effect their viability or even the quality of the finished queen.

Forget the fancy stuff - like running around with frames of very young larvae, or even worse, freshly grafted larvae.

KISS principle here. Transfer a frame with a patch of eggs to your home apiary, then graft over the next three days or so at your (relative) leisure. Or, as someone said take the bees to the grafting. Organise the bees around the grafts.

Get a frame with 4 days larvae (approx 3 mm long) from breeder and graft into cell cups. Place the frame in the starter box and leave in dark and coll place over night.... from POG's site.
The guy on the vid recently posted said bees never use eggs 4 days old for producing queens........
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I use the Nicot system as my ageing eyes and shakey hands do not lend themselves to grafting... however I have taken a frame (1/2 as advised on D Cushman's site) + Nicot chamber with cells full of ( less than 3 day old!) eggs , driven for 45 minutes,and transferred cups to queen raising frames and straight into a top q- prepped hive for finishing and sealing.( not using a starter colony)
The Nicot chamber successfully worked holding eggs on a 45 min car journey.
The chamber and cups with eggs were placed in an insulated box with a wet sponge in the bottom over a warmed thermo block ( no idea what they are called.. but often used frozen to keep carp fishermens beer cool!)
25 cells set and sealed
19 hatched ( or as the Danes would say CREEPED !)in incubator and transferred to mating nucs
another 45 min car trip to isolated mating apiary
14 mated ... used to requeen existing colonies and make up nucs to overwinter.

These were with Amm last season, I do not have a comparison for "untravelled" eggs, but similar results obtained with A m lingusta raised and mated at the orchard apiary
not exactly a good year for queen rearing... but shows that eggs can be moved carefully without too much in the way of losses... drying out and chilling seems to be the biggest dangers

oliver90owner said:

Forget the fancy stuff - like running around with frames of very young larvae, or even worse, freshly grafted larvae.

KISS principle here. Transfer a frame with a patch of eggs to your home apiary, then graft over the next three days or so at your (relative) leisure. Or, as someone said take the bees to the grafting. Organise the bees around the grafts.

Click to expand...

It will depend on the ambient temperature but on a good summers day I would just bring a brood frame back in a poly nuc box or similar and put it straight into a hive until ready to graft. I graft in the drivers seat of the van, am slow enough and would say its's easily 20 minutes to half an hour from start to finish. I'v had no major problems with acceptance related to time of exposure.

24H is not a pb.

Graft it, put a moist towel around the frame in a cool box.
Drive to home. Keep it moist in a towel and put it in your fridge.
Then put the frame the day after.

I'm doing 600km to graft some strain.

Larvae don't care about temp below 34°.

The key is moisture and that you graft your larvae with a drop of a mix of mineral water and royal jelly.