Uniting Apedia & Nuc

[Spikedog]

I note a method of transferring Queen from Apedia directly to Nuc via newspaper method. She is not in Butler cage -just a direct unification with her crew/brood – Any advice/experience using this method before a grave error is made.

 

[Finman]

I cannot see, what are you doing

.

 

[Obee1]

I joined an apidea to nuc by spraying air freshener on both parts then tipping bees in together- leaving a frame out of the nuc and resting the brood frames of the apidea on the floor of nuc in the gap until emerged. Not very high tech but they did accept the queen. I did this as the apidea combs were full so queen was forced to start laying in the nuc frames.

 

[TryingToLetThemBee]

I cut a hole in a travel screen. Absent that cobble something out of a correx board. Probably no beespace but it's only a day or so. Q will go down and leave bees on the brood in the Apidea. What you do with that at this time of year is a separate quesion.

 

[Eyeman]

At the end of the Q rearing season I put all the Apidea frames ontop of the crown board with feeder hole open of a 3 frame nuc. Then roof goes on and 3 weeks later all brood has emerged from the Apideas and bees have united.

 

[Obee1]

View attachment 13456
At the end of the Q rearing season I put all the Apidea frames ontop of the crown board with feeder hole open of a 3 frame nuc. Then roof goes on and 3 weeks later all brood has emerged from the Apideas and bees have united.

I like this idea but the roof would need to have a lot of headspace. I have poly nucs with extensions to turn them into 14/12. An empty extension part could be used as an eke to create space to stand the apidea frames and a crownboard with little hole fashioned from correx. Genius. Thanks!

 

[oliver90owner]

A tiny group of bees may well not chew through a sheet of newspaper. Choose a better method.

 

[Eyeman]

A tiny group of bees may well not chew through a sheet of newspaper. Choose a better method

Who said anything about using newspaper!
If the 3 frame nuc has been Q- for 30+ minutes then no problem in acceptance of the Mini nuc frames above the crown board. Try and keep as many of the original Mini nuc bees on the frames and leave the feeder hole open.

 

[oliver90owner]

Who said anything about using newspaper!

Do read the first post in the thread! It helps!

Here is part of it ''via newspaper''. The rest is at the top of the page.

 

[user 6228]

A tiny group of bees may well not chew through a sheet of newspaper. Choose a better method.

is there not bees below the newspaper? may a slit cut in the paper also facillitate?

 

[sipa]

A tiny group of bees may well not chew through a sheet of newspaper. Choose a better method.

This method works perfectly well.

 

[Suzi Q]

I have just united an apidea with queen to a poly nuc, with newspaper. I used a poly nuc brood box to house the apidea, but have used ekes before. The bees chewed through the paper directly underneath the apidea, so far they have not bothered to remove the rest of the paper.

 

[Teemore]

I have just united an apidea with queen to a poly nuc, with newspaper. I used a poly nuc brood box to house the apidea, but have used ekes before. The bees chewed through the paper directly underneath the apidea, so far they have not bothered to remove the rest of the paper.

You may find it helpful to make sure the queen is in the main poly nuc and then put a piece of queen excluder under the apidea to stop her going back up into it. The apidea will be super insulated and the bees will tend to congregate there and continue brooding in it.

 

[masterBK]

Although the queen will leave the Apidea OK several dozen bees remain to look after the brood in it and quite often they build one sometimes two queen cells which if you don't check and remove them can result in a scrub queen and subsequent consequences.

 

[Suzi Q]

You may find it helpful to make sure the queen is in the main poly nuc and then put a piece of queen excluder under the apidea to stop her going back up into it. The apidea will be super insulated and the bees will tend to congregate there and continue brooding in it.

Yes, I've got a cut down piece of excluder somewhere but where it is I don't know! I expect I'll find it when I don't need it.

 

[oliver90owner]

is there not bees below the newspaper? may a slit cut in the paper also facillitate?

Agreed. I always make slits. But the only single occasion that uniting with newspaper failed for me was due to too few bees just failing to chew through. Not a failure of the method, just not enough bees and they clustered away from any slit. I have learned from that and have made sure I won't make that mistake again.