Queenless mini - nuke

[BKF Admin]

Hi Reiner,you say the queen working 5 frames,I assume you have the gold box Apidias? its just that most of mine only take 3 frames as the feeder cannot be removed.

 

[Mike a]

Thanks Reiner

As this is my first year queen rearing I'm hoping to raise one may be two batches of queens/mini colonies per mini mating nuc this year. Starting the first batch in the next couple of weeks depending on the weather before moving them out of the mini nucs along with the mini top bars tied into 1 or 2 frames of a 4 or 5 frame nuc before giving them to a new member with basic instructions.

I have bought 6 swi-bine mini mating nucs so far and if all goes reasonably well I may buy more then start all over again for those who want to requeen September time.



*Edited to remove an error on my part*

 

[Hivemaker.]

Mike
i would advise you not to try and keep the queen in the swi-bine mini nuc's for the length of time you describe,you will be better to get them out as soon as you have seen the brood pattern is okay and into a five frame nuc with young bee's,the swi-bines work well,but the bee's will abscond,or start queen cells if you try to keep them in this small nuc to long,queen exclude the entrance when the queen is mated,also be careful not to put to many bee's into the nuc initially,they are likely to abscond.

 

[Mike a]

Mike
i would advise you not to try and keep the queen in the swi-bine mini nuc's for the length of time you describe,you will be better to get them out as soon as you have seen the brood pattern is okay and into a five frame nuc with young bee's,the swi-bines work well,but the bee's will abscond,or start queen cells if you try to keep them in this small nuc to long,queen exclude the entrance when the queen is mated,also be careful not to put to many bee's into the nuc initially,they are likely to abscond.

Hivemaker your spot on. I'm not starting with an egg in the swi-bine...
I should of said from capped queen cell (day 10-12) to queen laying.
Sorry if I confused anyone reading this thread.

*Edited my earlier post*

 

[Hebeegeebee]

Rainer,
I had quite a lot of brood in a couple of mini-nucs so that was used up with the newspaper method. I also have some wooden larger ones where maybe newspaper is more appropriate. Your water/thyme mixture is something I haven't tried - yet!
Thanks

 

[beekeeping4you]

Hi Hivemaker,
Have you tried fondant,bee's pull foundation absolutely fine with this,and fast as well.
Not tried yet, could'nt get it locally, so it was easier to order a pallet (800 kg) of Apisuc
candy from Belgium.
As you say candy is not much good,to hard i imagine and less water content.
Yes, we found out long before the pallet was empty.
You really do have a short season by the sounds of it, with only one queen mated per nuc.
That's why we have 40 Apideas and 10 Segeberger. (We bought them years ago when you paid for one Apidea what is now Euro 7.50)

Hi admin,
The Apideas we use take three frames and the feeder can be removed by pulling it out straight upward. Maybe you have to break a propolis seal? If you have original Apideas pull out sliding floor completely and push/press out feeder from underneath. What does a gold box Apidea look like?

Hi Mike,
moving them out of the mini nucs along with the mini top bars tied into 1 or 2 frames of a 4 or 5 frame nuc - keyword 'mini top bars' - do you have them in Segeberger or Kieler mating boxes? If yes, we tried the supers for six additional top bars on our Segeberger and got ten mini top bars and lots of young bees - enough for 5 frames - no bees had to be added, they build up troublefree and overwintered on 8/9/10 Langstroth frames.
Do you keep all your colonies in TBH?

Hi Hebeegeebee, newspaper is generally o.k., I still use it when uniting bigger units. Details of water/thyme in next post if you wish.
Regards
Reiner

 

[Mike a]

Hi Mike,
moving them out of the mini nucs along with the mini top bars tied into 1 or 2 frames of a 4 or 5 frame nuc - keyword 'mini top bars' - do you have them in Segeberger or Kieler mating boxes? If yes, we tried the supers for six additional top bars on our Segeberger and got ten mini top bars and lots of young bees - enough for 5 frames - no bees had to be added, they build up troublefree and overwintered on 8/9/10 Langstroth frames.
Do you keep all your colonies in TBH?

Regards
Reiner

So far
2x Swi-bines and 4x Kieler's and I'll buy more Kieler's if I want to expand as they seem easier to manage, slightly larger, sloped sides, removeable feeder for two new bars and I prefer the entrance disk over the sliding panel.

Starting several full sized TBH's this year, two of which will be from 2.5 Lb packages which I ordered last year and the rest will be stocked from queen rearing this year if all goes well.

I showed a friend your movie yesterday and his response was " why... , how... , why don't..., ...., ...., Wow...., thats awesome !! "

 

[BKF Admin]

Sorry its the spam filter,it does a whois lookup and if it finds a website is registered to the posters email address it blocks the url.

Its self advertising and not allowed.