# Well I’m going to be a daddy



## pokeyjeeper (Sep 5, 2013)

Not the kind of daddy you all were thinking as most of you know I'm a beekeeper among many other things and to keep costs down a beekeeper needs to be self sufficient I've been keeping bees going on 5 years now and had my ups and downs for 3 years now I've been wanting to learn to graft my own queen bees but things just have never fell in place a good mated queen will set a beekeeper back around $35-$45 each most beekeepers replace their queens every other year to graft queens you take a larvae that is about 3 days old remove it from the comb it's in and place it in a man made queen cup and place it in a cell builder that has young bees that the beekeeper put in it 3-5 days before without a Queen so I got everything ready last Monday with the cell builder and Friday afternoon I grafted 28 queen cups normally no beekeeper gets a 100% excepted I only need 5 queens and a friend of mine that I got the queen I grafted from said she would like some too I figured maybe I would end up with 10 or so well wrong I ended up with 27 lol so now I and my beekeeper friend are trying to find homes for all the queens I now have coming they will not hatch until the 29th of this month it takes 16 days for a queen to go from an egg to a queen here's a few pictures 







This is the cell builder 







This is the mother queen she is much larger than the other bees and has some yellow paint on her wings yet 







This is the grafting setup the small board with the black cups on it is the grafting frame the small red and white tool under it is the grafting tool







And this is the grafting frame with all the baby queen the yellow on the black cups is bees wax that the bees are building the cells with I'll get some pictures tomorrow of the completed capped cells this picture is about 24 hours after I grafted sorry this is so long but I wanted to try and explain everything I'm very excited about my new kids coming into the world soon


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## hassell (Feb 9, 2010)

Well done sugar daddy, thank's for sharing.


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## kiyote (Jun 15, 2014)

nice ! ain't that just the bees knees


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## pokeyjeeper (Sep 5, 2013)

Well I checked my new daughters today and they are capped off so 27 queens will come into the world in about 10 days


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## glenway (Mar 27, 2011)

Interesting, Pokey. Do you need anyone else to take some queens? I have some friends that sell their own honey, but I won't say anything to them unless you want me to.

Sugar Daddy it is now.


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## youngdon (Mar 10, 2010)

Way to go Pokey. Im glad they all turned out for you. My grandpa used to rent hives out to other farmers. There was always a piece of comb and honey on the table. Grandma would always cut us a square to chew on. 
How do they harvest bee pollen ? I used to take it in minute quantities and the vast majority of my allergies went away.


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## pokeyjeeper (Sep 5, 2013)

Glenway I don't know how many queens are spoken for at this time so don't say anything about them to your friends
Young don to get the pollen from bees there is a special box that a beekeeper puts on the hive it's called a pollen trap and the bees have to go through it to get inside the hive I've never had one bit like you I have used bee pollen for my allergies also another thing that works so raw honey from a beekeeper not the stuff that sell in the store


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## glenway (Mar 27, 2011)

OK, Pokey. A just reward in the making.


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## youngdon (Mar 10, 2010)

pokeyjeeper said:


> Glenway I don't know how many queens are spoken for at this time so don't say anything about them to your friends
> Young don to get the pollen from bees there is a special box that a beekeeper puts on the hive it's called a pollen trap and the bees have to go through it to get inside the hive I've never had one bit like you I have used bee pollen for my allergies also another thing that works so raw honey from a beekeeper not the stuff that sell in the store


Grandma used to say just that. Raw honey. Also she said sucking on the comb helped.


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## pokeyjeeper (Sep 5, 2013)

youngdon said:


> Grandma used to say just that. Raw honey. Also she said sucking on the comb helped.


Yes raw honey is not heated or filtered so there's lots of pollen still in it and the not heated part of raw honey is heating it kill the good enzymes that are in it honey has anti fungal and anti bacterial properties in it and is great to use on a wound as a wet dressing it's good for indigestion also a teaspoon a day will do good things don't get me started on what honeybee venom can do you guys will really think I need to be put in a nut house lol


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## youngdon (Mar 10, 2010)

You may need to go to the nuthouse but not over bee venom.


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