Wooden grafting tools for left and right handed, pair

01 · WHAT YOU GET

One is left-handed, the other right-handed

You buy two tools, but only one of them works for a given hand. The other is its mirror image: it serves whoever grafts from the other side, or stays as a spare if you learn to graft with both hands. In an apiary where a left-hander and a right-hander take turns, the pack settles both in one purchase. If you graft alone and you are right-handed, count on one working tool and one spare, not on two identical ones.

02 · GRAFTING

A rigid spoon, no tongue and no plunger

This is not a Chinese grafting tool. There is no flexible tongue that gives and no spring to eject the larva: the tip is a flat spoon that slides under the larva and its jelly, entering from the open side of the C, and lifts the whole thing without turning it over. In the cell cup the larva is not pushed out but released by contact, resting the spoon on the base and drawing it back. That is why many breeders prime the cups first with a drop of diluted royal jelly.

03 · COMPATIBILITY

It ties you to no queen-rearing system

It is one of the few items in the category that belongs to no closed system: the same spoon works with moulded wax cups, with Nicot plastic cups and with JZBZ cups, and with any bar or cell-cup frame. What does decide things is the method: if you rear with the Nicot Cupularve or the Jenter system without grafting, you move the cup rather than the larva, and no grafting tool is needed.

04 · BEFORE YOU BUY

The rigid tip gives you direct feel, but it forgives less than a flexible tongue: it asks you to get the angle right and not to scrape the base of the cell. Practise on larvae that will not go into production before you run a batch. Rinse and dry the tip when you finish, and never sharpen it or re-bend it: you would change the profile that holds the larva. The tool makes the move easier; acceptance depends on larval age, nurse bees, humidity, temperature and timing.