Changing national to 14x12

Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum

Help Support Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

hornett

New Bee
Joined
May 19, 2010
Messages
22
Reaction score
0
Location
Bridgend-South Wales
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
2
Sorry to be boring ,as this question has probably been asked 100 times, but can someone advise me on the best way to change my national frames over to 14x12, or were i can get the information on the forum. Thanks Buzz
 
Many different ways, but last year I found a Bailey change an effective way of doing it, or incorporate it into any anticipated Artificial Swarm manoeuvre.
 
Has there been much discussion about the best way of moving a nuc from National deep to 14x12?

Without the bee-power to spare for drawing a set of new frames, and absent any pre-drawn 14x12 frames, my supposition would be that those (Burnett) frame extensions might be helpful in that situation - even if they aren't thought particularly worthwhile for established colonies or keepers.
 
block of kinsgspan under the shorter frames?

or a slightly more elegant solution - 3-4 pieces of wood (9cm) and a piece of varroa mesh. make a 3 or 4 sided frame as wide as the nuc with mesh across top that sits under the frames and blocks entrance so bees don't end up under the mesh.

could even just use mesh bent to shape (which could be trimmed progressively as frames removed).
 
My thinking is that one would be best to defer any deferrable comb-building for as long as possible (so that it could then be done by a strong colony).
Thus the idea would be to keep the nuc's original comb in use until (at least) the rest of the box had been colonised.
So any part-solid-raised-floor bodge could be in situ for months rather than weeks...
The advantage of the frame extensions looks to me that they could be left even until the following year(s) to swap out. There should be less pressure to remove them, no floor-block needing to be removed and reduced from 5-frame to 4-frame size (and so on), less bee effort wasted on brace comb, etc and so I'd expect the nuc to be more productive, more quickly, using the extensions.
At £15 for (10) extensions+foundation, they look as though they ought to be worthwhile for the already-drawn frames of a nuc (or two), in reducing beek hassle and colony growth disruption.

I'm sure there are better ways for shifting strong colonies over, but if those extensions have any valuable function (maybe debatable!) then it strikes me that it would be for use with nucs.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top