Author Topic: How do you set up your queen castles.  (Read 5452 times)

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Offline Yankee11

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How do you set up your queen castles.
« on: March 06, 2015, 02:03:09 am »
My state inspector showed me how to fill a cup/jar with nurse bees to do a sugar roll mite test.

This year I'm going to be raising a lot of queens. I will be using queen castles with 2 frames in each bay. I have read it only takes a cup of bees
to support a queen until she gets mated. So here is my question.

Could a I get a cup of bees off of a frame with open brood on it (nurse bees), then dump them in a queen castle bay and insert the queen cell or virgin queen.  Or do I just need to remove the whole frame from the hive with the brood and stick it in the queen castle bay.  Was thinking this would disturb the mother hive the least by just removing a cup of bees.

Offline Yankee11

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Re: How do you set up your queen castles.
« Reply #1 on: March 06, 2015, 08:41:57 am »
After posting this last night I found a pdf plan for a 3 frame mini mating nuc. I think I will make up a bunch of these. 1 or 2 cups of nurse bees and some syrup and I should be good to go.

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~reute001/Plan%20files/pMini%20Mating%20Nucs.pdf

Offline tefer2

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Re: How do you set up your queen castles.
« Reply #2 on: March 06, 2015, 08:55:32 am »
I don't know if I would build a whole bunch before testing out a few different designs.
I would have a concern about syrup and robbing with only a few cups of bees in there.
We have better success using five frame nucs to do our queen rearing.
A robber screen and enough bees to protect the box.
Weak nucs are the first to get robbed out.

Offline LazyBkpr

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Re: How do you set up your queen castles.
« Reply #3 on: March 06, 2015, 09:24:02 am »
agreed...
   I have watched vids and seen pictures of mini nucs, from two standard frames down to tiny, tiny little hives that fit in your hand, with small frames in them..   As i understand it, the SOLE purpose of that little hive is to get a queen mated and returned..   But by the same token, i would think they would want to store some resources..
   I have honestly never tried in the small boxes like that. I have helped a fellow that uses 3 frame nucs on a regular basis, and I use a 5 frame medium.. but I also use mine for brood factories and comb builders, so I get more out of them than just the queen.
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Offline Lburou

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Re: How do you set up your queen castles.
« Reply #4 on: March 06, 2015, 10:56:36 am »
...I would have a concern about syrup and robbing with only a few cups of bees in there.  We have better success using five frame nucs to do our queen rearing.
A robber screen and enough bees to protect the box.
Weak nucs are the first to get robbed out.
I've had a problem with small NUCs getting robbed too.  I like Velbert's design .  He made a couple for me with deep, half frames.  The crackerjack feeder is the best thing about his hive.  I've only had one weak hive robbed out using this design.  I do use robbing screens now though.  Here are the plans. 

All that said Yankee, I'm moving to queen castles for the interchangeability of the full size deep frames.  Wintering NUCs in Queen castles this year and so far 5 of 6 are alive (the sixth should have been a fall loss).   HTH  :)
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Offline Yankee11

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Re: How do you set up your queen castles.
« Reply #5 on: March 06, 2015, 12:23:12 pm »
I'm not gonna make a bunch at first maybe 10 or so and give them a try.

These would only be used to get the queen mated. Once mated (successfully) then I can make up the nuc.

Ive got about 20 full deep queen castle bays I'm gonna use also.  Were gonna run 2 cloake board hives this spring. May have a lot of queens to get mated. :D

Offline Papakeith

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Re: How do you set up your queen castles.
« Reply #6 on: April 06, 2015, 03:39:58 pm »
I'm planning on converting my queen castles to three frame instead of two.  A master beekeeper came and gave us a talk and claimed better results when there were three over two.  I won't try to paraphrase what she said cause I'd only butcher it anyway.  Suffice it to say that she convinced me of the possible benefit so I'll give it a go.
I'm starting to think that the bees are keeping me...

Offline pistolpete

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Re: How do you set up your queen castles.
« Reply #7 on: April 06, 2015, 07:34:56 pm »
In our region we get very low night time temperatures well into the summer.  Small Nucs just can't keep brood warm over night.  Something to keep in mind, especially if you're at a higher altitude.
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