reverse Doolittle double split

Skipping for joy!

I learned today that if you skip with 300 bees flying around your head, they skip with you.  We all go up and down together!  We zipped out early this morning to shake our 6 shakers and move our 6 cell builders to our new queen yard.  The bees that we have been messing with so far were up and waiting for us, though all the untouched hives were not flying yet.  We use the smoker always, but they still get pretty excited when they've been fussed with twice on consecutive days.  As I said, this is africanized bee country, though I don't think these people's bees are very bad, since they have 1800 hives here, they are diluting those african genes fairly well most of the time.
    We went right back to that first yard after placing our cell builders and made 24 more shakers and cell builders.  Then we helped a farmer find his dead cow in the desert, followed by a little siesta.  Our queen cell count was a little disappointing this afternoon.  We only had 238 accepted out of a possible 420.  The cell builders were a bit weaker than the ones from the previous day, though still pretty full.  Yonny says there is always a day like that, windier or drier, or the moon not right.  Who knows.  (or just because I did more of them, or because Yonny is using a different magnifier than usual...) Our goal is 1800 new queens, so we are a bit behind.  I have high hopes for tomorrow when we check the grafts we did yesterday.  That went so much better.  Today's graft went even better, I think.  
   Here's what I have learned so far about grafting.  If I can see the pool of royal jelly, but can't really see the baby in there, it is probably about the right age.  I don't try to see my tool pick up the baby and jelly, but have learned to gauge the depth of the cell, and sweep my tool along the bottom of it, just as you would if you were licking the ice cream out of a bowl with the tip your tongue.  The jelly sticks the baby to the tool (usually, sometimes you come out with just the jelly).  Once it is out of the cell you can see the baby on the tool, even under magnification it looks like a 1/16 inch long piece of hair.  I hear Melanie's voice in my head saying, "if you can see the segments, it is too old".  Then you push the tool onto the bottom of the cell so that it is curved, then slide the plunger while backing the tongue out from under the baby to gently push the baby and jelly off.  Yonny puts his on the edge of the cell, but I can't do that, and mine go in the center.   It is heaven when you get in a group of larvae just the right age, and don't have to hunt for them. Today, though, we had a hard time finding larvae the right size.  It was like the queens had stopped laying 4 or 5 days ago, and everything we could find was too old.  It is also important to graft quickly, since we have all that driving to do to get them in the cell builders, and the humidity down here has been 
4 %, all the way up to 9% today!  So, that's the news from today.  Tomorrow will be easier since we made double the shakers and cells builders so that Easter Sunday will be a bit easier.  I am in beekeeper heaven.  Thanks for reading,  T