Overwintering queens in min nucs

[Ian123]

Quick question
Last year i had a double apidea brought through winter and well populated.
Whats the best way to take Q from this to transfer to new hive.???

No need to faff about building up...(safe) option, paper unite the whole mini to a standard 5 frame nuc....Ive not tried it on a full hive but nucs it works a treat

 

[madasafish]

Mike, old thread I know, but did your queens come through last winter okay, if so which was the best nuc set up of the ones you used.

The best mini nucs I have are based on the Fatbeeman You Tube videos : approx 1/3rd of a Lang frame - I modded mine to take 6 frames and made them in poly

 

[Ian123]

Ive only ever overwintered the keiller minis, when people start talking about extensions or double boxes for other types i wonder why not just get them into a normal five frame nuc. Unless of course you run out of nuc boxes and ive done that!!!!!

 

[Hivemaker.]

I modded mine to take 6 frames and made them in poly

Thank you, Mike...my wooden ones are three and five frame, three in the individual boxes for summer use and five in the quads for all year round use, also use split supers which take 24 of the same size frames, twelve each side.

 

[Wingy]

Looking at doing this for next winter. I’ve used a polystyrene case (that frozen meat is delivered in) divided it into 2, inverted another box to use as a feeder. Now just need to cut some frames down.
I’ll try to add some pictures when I’ve finished it. Best thing (if it works) is minimal cost.

 

[Michael Palmer]

I start out with 512 - 4 mini-frame mating nucs. On the last catch, first half of August, we unite them, selling the extra queens. This year, we're wintering 110 queens with 16-24 mini-frames. Between May 28 and June 10, we'll break them down into 4-frame mating nucs. The queens...tested by our winter...are used for re-queening production hives, or sold. High demand for these wintered queens.

Planning to have about 600 this year. Huge demand for queens...including north and south of our borders.

 

[For want of a better word]

I start out with 512 - 4 mini-frame mating nucs. On the last catch, first half of August, we unite them, selling the extra queens. This year, we're wintering 110 queens with 16-24 mini-frames. Between May 28 and June 10, we'll break them down into 4-frame mating nucs. The queens...tested by our winter...are used for re-queening production hives, or sold. High demand for these wintered queens.

Planning to have about 600 this year. Huge demand for queens...including north and south of our borders.

Well done.....

for me producing 30 overwintering native queens was hard work ( now in polly nucs ( 6 frame Masies & Paynes).... earlier season queens were put into standard Nationals.
How many queens are imported into the USA annually?
UK runs in at about 16000?????