UK bred Nuc discussion

[planbee]

OK, thanks, I never thought, perhaps he meant 16 to 18 sides?

John

 

[Poly Hive]

Biggest BB in the the UK is the Glen with 15 national frames.

Obviously your Dutch person was meaning a double BB.

PH

 

[planbee]

OK, thanks.

John

 

[mikethebee]

All this talk about rearing nucs with home produced queens is not going to work "I will repeat we don’t have the weather......"
Mission Mr Clegg and Uncle Tom Cobly it will take a bloody long time to know how to produce 1,240plus nucs from 66 breeding boxes?
You will neve know unless you put the money on the table and buy me out, and I am ready to sell.
If you club together you might be able to afford it.
The table has been sat at already with V good offers so be prepared to deal with others not so tolarant, good natured, genrouse,polite as me
all the best mike

 

[Norton]

Hello,
Just want to make some comments about some of the previous posts here and elsewhere:
It was suggested on another forum that Mike burnt his hives because of a problem with disease - We know this to be incorrect and he stated this at the time. If it were true why would he talk about it and post photos of the process. At the end of the day he is a person that makes his living from beekeeping and of course is going to react if some idiot, that doesn't know what they are talking about, makes incorrect statements that could harm his business.

Mike's nucs are only as good as the queens he puts in them. These he imports, as he has found out that queen rearing in the UK just isn't viable for most of the time. It might look good on paper to rear queens and sell nucs in the UK, but there are many difficulties - even here with our sunny climate we cannot produce queens in quantity on specific dates. If you look at the situation with Batsis this year you will see that they have had terrible problems in filling orders - mostly due to cold and rainy weather in Greece.

It has also been stated that imported queens are often superseded or turn into drone layers-even though I don't think that the comment was meant to harm business, the way it was put suggests that this problem exist ONLY in imported queens and not at all in UK bred queens - again we know that this is incorrect and that there are similar problems worldwide and these are probably a combination of chemical build up in combs, Varroa/virus related and environmental pollution by gender bending chemicals.
Roger Patterson has been talking about this for years.
Have a good weekend. We are forecast to have 36c tomorrow!
Best regards
Norton.

 

[Poly Hive]

Now Mike.

what is being discussed is not rearing packages and or nucs on your scale.

Producing nucs with UK mated queens is as you know perfectly well more than possible.

When I ran my 80 odd colonies, and yes by all means chuckle, I also had some 25 mini nucs running and produced some 50+ queens.

I don't for a minute think the weather has changed so much in the intervening 8 years that getting queens mated at all is impossible.

I am about to start queen rearing in te next two weeks so will post here or blog the progress so the impossibility or not can be proven. If I was a beting man though I would suggest the odds are in my favour.

PH

 

[Mission]

Mike and Norton, you are both respected in the bee keeping world. Nortons queens are held in high regard and Mikes ability to supply 1000's of nucs cannot be matched. NOBODY is suggesting it can be done anyother way at this moment in time.

Poly is right, what we are discussing is the possibility of lots of us rearing nucs on a small scale. Overwintering them and making them available as early as April. Its a pilot to see if it can be made to work. It's not a threat to either the importation of queens or Easybee.

We are told by you guys (the suppliers) that it cannot be done. What is happening now is that many of us are challenging that opinion. Maybe it cannot be done on a large scale, but as a small scale operation? Enough of us feel that it is worth a try. Which ever way you look at things - peoples opinions are changing and people are becoming more interested in the possibility of lowering the dependance on 3rd party businesses. Small scale production is a very viable option.

You guys may be right and we may fail. But I would personally know I tried and failed, rather than thinking I had an idea and never tried it. As you can see from this thread enough people are willing to give it a try.

 

[Polyanwood]

I would like to have a go at rearing a couple of overwintered nucs to sell to the beginners when they finish their course in May 2010. I want to do one Langstroth and one National. Are there good plans for nucs I can buy that will take into account my very limited woodworking skills someone can post please? (thinking it is beggining to look like I will have to plead with husband otherwise!)

 

[Mission]

I would like to have a go at rearing a couple of overwintered nucs to sell to the beginners when they finish their course in May 2010. I want to do one Langstroth and one National. Are there good plans for nucs I can buy that will take into account my very limited woodworking skills someone can post please? (thinking it is beggining to look like I will have to plead with husband otherwise!)

I have a design for a 6 frame Langstroth nuc that I made from 12mm ply. I found you could build 2 from a single 8 X 4 sheet. I overwintered 2 colonies last year with them. I have 2 swarms in them now as well. I am also building 4 or 5 more this weekend. I will glady send you the details if you want?

Jay.

 

[taff..]

I'm very new to bee's but even I can see a small flaw in this sentence

All this talk about rearing nucs with home produced queens is not going to work "I will repeat we don’t have the weather......"

if we didn't have the weather for ANY queens to mate then we wouldn't be seeing as many swarms, I wouldn't have bought an overwintered nuc, the fella i bought that nuc off wouldn't have already sold 9 other overwintered nuc and wouldn't have orders for 10 spring nuc's, there would be NO nuc for sale ads on this forum or the BBKA one.

people are not talking about raising 100's or 1000's of queen's but just a few each.

 

[Norton]

Its a pilot to see if it can be made to work. It's not a threat to either the importation of queens or Easybee.

We don't feel threatened in any way and hope that you are successful - after all the more beekeepers there are the better it is for all of us.

If you overwinter a nuc and then sell it on that's it, it has gone, you could also split it instead of selling it and add an imported to queen to one of the splits and double your money in a month. There is always a good market for good quality queens and nucs and I only wish I could supply more - but as I've said - it looks easy on paper but in reality is much more difficult and risky especially in the UK with the unpredictable weather. You might get lucky with a some batches but also expect some total failures.

Best regards

Norton.

 

[Roy S]

I must admit I very reluctant to stick my head above the trenches here.....BUT.....what is this trend for current year queens? What is wrong with buying a nuc with the previous years queen in it?, there seems to be a mentality growing within beekeeping circles, or so it seems for replacing queens far more regularly. I just may be grabbing the wrong end of the stick but thats the way it seems to me at times.

I would much rather have a nuc that has proved it can deal with a british winter, the other thing is by replacing queens early how can people check what the queens longevity is like?

This year my aim is to get back into a hobby I've sadly missed for the last few years, one of the most satisfying parts of it for me was being able to make up a few nucs for other local BKA members for the following spring.

I'm sure that if more people overwintered nucs then the winter loss issue could be dealt with. For people wanting to start in this hobby later in the year after they've done a basic course, there would be newly made up nucs with current year queens available later in the season too.

Please dont throw too many bricks at me, it seems we want the roughly the same things just that some people have more patience and tollerance than others, and hey chaps lets not forget....we're all beekeepers arent we? (a nicer cross section of society I've yet too meet!)

I hope something can come of this, I'll throw my hat in the ring for the challenge by all means.....good luck

 

[BKF Admin]

I have a design for a 6 frame Langstroth nuc that I made from 12mm ply. I found you could build 2 from a single 8 X 4 sheet. I overwintered 2 colonies last year with them. I have 2 swarms in them now as well. I am also building 4 or 5 more this weekend. I will glady send you the details if you want?

Jay.

Would you like to edit your post ?

 

[Poly Hive]

Correct.

PH

 

[Chris B]

I totally agree with the idea of an overwintered queen in nucs for sale in spring. Maybe they are more likely to want to swarm, but that's preferable to a new queen that fails after a few weeks laying.
I'm making a few dozen nucs (sorry already sold) over the next few days by taking queens out of suitable production colonies with enough frames and bees to complete the nuc. The remaining queenless colonies will be united to make cell raisers and receive grafts from breeder queens. When the queen cells are ripe I'll split the cell raisers back down to smaller units for mating. I'll be making a small increase to cater for early failures and winter losses and I reckon I'll still get a reasonable honey crop. I reckon this is a decent strategy for anyone whose primary aim is honey but doesn't mind selling a few nucs too. You could do it with 6 colonies probably.

 

[BKF Admin]

Sounds like you are on the ball with your plans Chris,good luck.

 

[BKF Admin]

It has also been stated that imported queens are often superseded or turn into drone layers-even though I don't think that the comment was meant to harm business, the way it was put suggests that this problem exist ONLY in imported queens and not at all in UK bred queens - again we know that this is incorrect and that there are similar problems worldwide and these are probably a combination of chemical build up in combs, Varroa/virus related and environmental pollution by gender bending chemicals.
Roger Patterson has been talking about this for years.
Have a good weekend. We are forecast to have 36c tomorrow!
Best regards
Norton.

Norton please dont rubbish my post with facts !!

You are right, it's not just an imported queen problem,we have the same problems in the uk with some homebread queens.

 

[gavin]

Here is the way I raise queens with minimal woodworking skills and minimal spare equipment. It was described to us by Chris Slade on the Irish list and is very suitable for raising a few nucs each year.

Make:

1. A Wedmore National split board (really easy) (or Langstroth or whatever).

http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman/natsplit.html

The three nucs version is a good choice, and Chris (I think) puts mesh in the bottom of each partition which helps keep the nucs fed and warm, but mine are solid.

2. Vertical plywood dividers of thin plywood shaped for the brood box in question so that three bee-tight chambers are created (I made a cardboard template first), each with an entrance facing a different way.

3. A flat (no rim) crown board to make a bee-tight seal on top. With or without feed holes, as is your preference.

Now, the bees. Three possibilities.

1. Keep your chosen colony a bit cramped in its one or two brood boxes to encourage natural queen cells.

2. As above but put in marked frame(s) of eggs from a queen you wish to breed from.

3. Force queen cells another way. I think this is from Ted Hooper's book. Build up a colony on two brood boxes and a couple of supers. Rearrange so that you have from the floor: brood box with old queen and spare combs plus the left-overs, Q excluder, two supers, another Q excluder, the brood box to raise the Q cells, crown board. In the box to raise the Q cells you want the frames with eggs and young larvae, a good frame of pollen splitting these frames, and stores. The nurse bees flood up to this box and the distance from mum usually encourages the development of Q cells.

So, you have Q cells. If you did #3 immediately above, just swap the top Q excluder and box for the Wedmore split board and the box with dividers. Then move frames into the box to make 3 small nucs, each with a queen cell frame, sealed brood and stores. If you didn't, you need to rearrange the colony now, so that the old Q and spare frames are in the bottom box, and the top one makes a similar set of 3 nucs.

As some bees will return to the old box on the bottom of the pile, make sure that you shake in additional young bees when you make up the nucs.

You can look in roughly when you expect the queens to hatch, and then leave well alone for a fortnight. Sometimes all three mate and come into lay, sometimes fewer. You can easily requeen the bottom box if you wish to do so, and take away and build up the others. I have overwintered bees in that top box, but I'm not sure how reliable that would be.

No grafting, little messing about, more or less natural swarming urge, little woodworking, three maybe 6 nucs per strong colony per season.

best wishes

Gavin

 

[Mission]

Would you like to edit your post ?

Hi Admin, sorry but you lost me on that one? Do I need to edit it??

 

[Poly Hive]

Personally I failed with three nucs in a brood box.

The end result was the two times I tried it that one nuc picked up all the bees from the other two even if all three mated successfully.

Just a heads up.

PH