How late will you graft

[keith pierce]

I topped up my apideas again a few days ago with new virgins and queens cells ready to hatch. I have now made two strong colonies queenless this evening and am going to graft into them a few days days time. I am leaving it for a few days so they will get natural queens cells started as well. I will then split the hive down into nucs .Depending on how many cells I have excepted. I will make another few colonies queenless so they will hold onto their drones and this should give me mated queens end of august .

[Jon]

I intend to graft until end august as well.
I am finding it tricky getting grafts started at the moment especially with queenright colonies aka Ben harden system.
I am getting maybe 8/20 started and I usually get double that.
The last 3 weeks have been brilliant for mating and we are getting the second cell into the apideas at the moment.
We had Terry Clare at the apiary this evening so he saw a few fine looking Irish queens being taken from the apideas.

[Beefever]

I think I will graft again in August as things didn’t go to plan last time. Of 18 cells – I gave 6 away, put 6 in 3fr nucs(Vince Cook style) and 6 in Apideas to replace the queens removed an hour before. Only one of the Apideas worked as 5 of them have got their own queen cell in???? All cells emerged.

[Adam]

I was tempted to do another batch at the weekend and then decided that I have done enough for my needs. I still have spare queens and don't want to find myself with loads I don't know what to do with. Some mini-nucs are just about ready to be shaken out in front of bigger colonies as the brood in them emerges.