Worldwide Beekeeping
Beekeeping => Raising Queens => Topic started by: Yankee11 on March 07, 2015, 11:46:21 pm
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Well, got 12 of them made, also made mini frames to go in the mini mating nucs.
Gonna try them along with the queens castles.
(https://worldwidebeekeeping.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs13.postimg.cc%2F6x3carhxf%2F20150307_125434.jpg&hash=ec4b4d83b55a91f620a562ff065e5a99cfdee677) (http://postimg.cc/image/6x3carhxf/)
(https://worldwidebeekeeping.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs13.postimg.cc%2F4h1iwwzur%2F20150307_125534.jpg&hash=72b9a80ada63fc622928acbc69cce1527873e61b) (http://postimg.cc/image/4h1iwwzur/)
(https://worldwidebeekeeping.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs13.postimg.cc%2Ftocex62yr%2F20150307_125555.jpg&hash=e4f0c2c3d689a7ec99ab2835c0e4fd429bd63d82) (http://postimg.cc/image/tocex62yr/)
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You do WICKED nice work..
I have seen those, and considered them, but apparently lack the vision I need to see them in a light that would make them useful..
When I put a queen in a nuc and get her mated, she usually STAYS in that nuc until i combine it with a hive that needs a queen, sell it, Sell the queen, or decide to overwinter her in that nuc.
so,, question; What do you do with her once mated? Is it possible to leave her in that little thing until you need her or sell her?
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I doubt it.
I am just gonna use these to get them mated. Once mated successfully I will do something with them. I just wanted a way to get queens mated and returned before going to the trouble of making up the nuc and her not returning. Once she returns and I see eggs, then I can make up a nuke. If she does not return then I just dump the 2 cups of bees back into a hive.
I also thought if I find some queen cells in a hive, I could just cut them out and put the cell in one of these and put a couple cups of bees in with it, easy and quick.
Right now I have 20 nuc boxes and and 20 queen castle bays, plan on trying to raise a lot of queens this year. I'll use all 3 methods.
I also wonder if one of these mini nucs would be good to have in the truck or one in each out yard. Run across a queen cell, cut it out and drop it in the mini nuc with bees and come back in couple weeks and check. We'll see.
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Yankee, one thing that I found on using swarm cells.
They are normally found hanging down at the bottom of the frame.
They normally get smashed using standard depth boxes.
We used to make our nuc boxes deeper so they have room to hang down.
At the end of the year, I got tried of looking at the stack of empty nucs piled into corner.
So, I now try to use my standard boxes to do my queen rearing.
I place inserts or frame feeders in them to make smaller compartments.
So now, they can be used for nucs or for a regular size hive.
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I am interested to see how it goes.. are you putting foundation in those frames? How will you feed to get them drawn out? I imagine once drawn out it will be easier, but was thinking about it last night..
Just cant wrap my head around it.. Need some detailed imagery and Yankee descriptions.. as I said, I am looking forward to seeing how this works!!
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Im going to feed them with jar feeders on top covers.
As far as foundation. Im going to put foundation in some frames and starter strips in some.
I had this idea last night. I may go ahead and cut my foundation the right size to fit these mini frames. Put them in a regular medium frame and just tack the frame together, no glue. Put that frame in a regular hive and let them draw the comb. Thdn remove the frame take it apart and then put the foundation in these mini frames. Already drawn.
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I made some three frame minis based on the DCoates nuc boxes, three half frame deeps.
Took a deep frame and cut the top and bottom bars in half. These were wedge top split bottom.
Made these last year and took two of the frames and put them together with a strip of wood in between them, added a cut down piece of foundation and put them in a hive for them to pull out. I also had quite a bit of cut out combs left over, cut them to fit in side the frames. Took and cut the cells down to the "spine" of the comb, then placed the spine under the wedge and tacked it in place.
I will hunt up some pics of the comb that is in the hives from last year.
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I have used them, and am helping a guy get started now. We just tacked a 3/4 X 3/4 strip across the center of a medium and put 20 half frames in it. They are on 10 frame hives being drawn out now.
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Take a stroll around Velberts site and see what he is using for mini nucs.
He's in your neck of the woods and has good luck with them.
http://www.vlwbeequeens.com/home.htm
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Iddee,
That's exactly what my buddy and I talked about today. Putting a divider down center of a medium box and putting 20 of these mini frames and sitting it on a hive and let them draw out the mini frames.
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the mini frames
(https://worldwidebeekeeping.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs27.postimg.cc%2Fcbbmu9rm7%2FIMG_0572.jpg&hash=db871774bd3a8a6344cfecf1aee6dc04a39eb87a) (http://postimg.cc/image/cbbmu9rm7/)
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two frames put together, I like it this way because it can be interchanged with a single deep frame, no center bar to contend with. I did have to wire some of them together on the bottom, note the two nails in the ears on the top bar.
(https://worldwidebeekeeping.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs15.postimg.cc%2Fnw51etorb%2FIMG_0571.jpg&hash=bebe2a20c873360a7ffb04a189f1883b2120106d) (http://postimg.cc/image/nw51etorb/)
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So G3,
How do you separate to put the mini's into a mini mating nuc. Just pull from nails in the tabs?
That would eliminate having to have seperate supers to get them drawn.
Iddee,
Your bees pulling comb right now?
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Not 100% sure. Just put them on Sunday because they were bringing in pollen and nectar and/or sugar water full speed.
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Just pull them apart and the nail will pull right out of the end grain of that 3/4" plywood.
Best I could come up with to be able to slip a couple of them into a booming hive.
Hobbled down to the garage to get this mini and frames.....whew...enjoy!
(https://worldwidebeekeeping.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs4.postimg.cc%2Fc8e9ztfdl%2FIMG_0808.jpg&hash=fe1ab238252c5b86a2e58c89b959154047d61303) (http://postimg.cc/image/c8e9ztfdl/)
(https://worldwidebeekeeping.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs7.postimg.cc%2Fdrg1bvsgn%2FIMG_0811.jpg&hash=14fd73f6a3265b5b87eb4639d3f3d4740787b511) (http://postimg.cc/image/drg1bvsgn/)
(https://worldwidebeekeeping.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs17.postimg.cc%2Ftcxmh96iz%2FIMG_0812.jpg&hash=f2f9acb5936e1e464ea2f1ac3e1d087d59b06c65) (http://postimg.cc/image/tcxmh96iz/)
I did not see my cut sheet but think I got 14 out of a 4 x 8 sheet of 1/2" plywood.
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Hobbled down to the garage to get this mini and frames.....whew...enjoy!
Now, did your wife give you permission to DO something G?
Your gonna be back in the hospital with a swollen eye like Perry has in another thread if you dont behave! :laugh:
Those look pretty good, this gets more interesting all the time!
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Thank for showing those G3.
I renamed mine from Mini Mating Nucs to Honeyton Farms Honeymoon Cottages. ;)
Did yours work good. I can't wait to try them out. Got them together tonight. I made 12 from 2, 1x8x16. Total cost was 25 bucks for 12. Still have to make the tops though.
(https://worldwidebeekeeping.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs15.postimg.cc%2Fiihf2vb13%2F20150309_205259.jpg&hash=1dde1efb96b31692fe4a95a96375156cb2aed60d) (http://postimg.cc/image/iihf2vb13/)
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What? No finger joints?? :o
So your going to make up for that by making inner covers and tele covers WITH metal on them right? :)
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Lol, I did almost rabbit the fronts and backs.
Come on man, join us, mating queens on the cheap.
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Even I want to succumb to the peer pressure. Maybe in a few years....
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Lol, I did almost rabbit the fronts and backs.
Come on man, join us, mating queens on the cheap.
LOL No worries, those look good!
i use 5 frame medium nucs.. I have about 30 of them built at the moment. I am rolling this around in my head..
Currently i use the nucs to build new comb. I use them to supply new and growing hives with more bees and brood. I sell them, I overwinter them and sell them. I use them to raise queens in. AND I use them to HOLD queens for me to use or sell.. Putting a new queen into a hive using the newspaper combine method with a nuc on the top is also VERY handy.. so.. at this point, using the mini nucs "seems" like an extra step, but still considering the pros and cons!
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I renamed mine from Mini Mating Nucs to Honeyton Farms Honeymoon Cottages. ;)
Did yours work good. I can't wait to try them out. Got them together tonight. I made 12 from 2, 1x8x16. Total cost was 25 bucks for 12. Still have to make the tops though.
Honeymoon Cottages :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: I like that, might even have to steal it!!
Have not used them yet , made them late in the summer last year. Was working on the frames first and decided to stick them into a hive or two to see how they reacted to them.
One of my customers makes the flooring for tractor trailers and they have started a new flooring a couple of years ago, they are laminating a piece of fiberglass sheeting to the bottom on the flooring (which is 1" thick laminated oak boards). I dug some of the fiberglass sheeting out of the dumpster and had the idea of gluing it to the tops of the plywood to keep the water off and help keep warping down a little.
Those 1 x 8 boxes look really good!
Now, did your wife give you permission to DO something G?
Your gonna be back in the hospital with a swollen eye like Perry has in another thread if you dont behave! :laugh:
Those look pretty good, this gets more interesting all the time!
Well the cast came off and the staples came out yesterday 3/9/15, foot is tender and feels funny but was told to start exercising it and even putting a little weight on it. Truth of the matter is, I am scared to death to put weight on it!! Just too physicked out to do it. What a brain game for sure!! Yes I hobbled to the garage when she was upstairs on the phone but got caught crawling up the stairs with a wood box!! O:-) ;D :) :)
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I have broken too many bones in my lifetime. So I know what your talking about. It is a Hard thing to do.. Like getting back on a horse when its bucked you off, (And it put you in the hospital).
I think your going to be using it sooner or later or you will go insane! I know I did!
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""or you will go insane! I know I did!""
Now we know what happened. :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
You stepped in that one with both feet, lazy.
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DOH! :-[ Great, now everyone knows....
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Nice work Yankee. :eusa_clap:
I’ve made a bunch of mini mating nucs a few years back. Probably about your size. Mine held 4 half medium sized frames. Being nearly half mediums, they fit inside a normal box in 2 rows with a divider down the middle for combing up in a full sized hive. Mine was homemade, but I think Mann Lake may sell a similar setup.
(https://worldwidebeekeeping.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs10.postimg.cc%2Fa6woyht8l%2FP1100134.jpg&hash=fc64585f44b2386ee5a79794fe87f46c1b96c05f) (http://postimg.cc/image/a6woyht8l/)
I also experimented with combing up these mini frames in custom nuc boxes that held a single row of about 14 of the little things. I then stacked these nuc building boxes about 3 deep and dumped a swarm into them. Sorry can't find a picture in the archives of that right now.
I kind of preferred the custom nuc boxes for building the combs myself. In those nucs, the queen would end up running all over the whole box laying on those little frames. It gave me a wide variety of frames to pick from when populating the mating nucs. When I just used a standard box in a normal lang setup, I ended up with mini frames that were more monotone; or similar to each other. Like all honey as shown here:
(https://worldwidebeekeeping.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs10.postimg.cc%2Fkm7gl5ft1%2FDSC_0021.jpg&hash=d3fd3ebce586d40c644ec6426084e02a8fb1ca17) (http://postimg.cc/image/km7gl5ft1/)
I’ve since trashed my mini mating hardware and just went back to mediums for mating. I only do this in small volumes (mostly personal use) and the medium nucs provide more other advantages to me than dealing with the mini stuff...which is basically just useful for queen rearing. The medium frames can be left alone for a while longer and the frames of brood can be easily moved into nucs to overwinter, or boosting honey hives.
It just depends upon what your main goals are. The little frames definitely have an economical value if you’re raising a lot of queens and they do work.
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How did you keep the queens from crossing the center divider on the top pic?
Nice work btw..
Those honey frames would be quite valuable when you put a new mini nuc together with new bees.
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The box in the photo is not a mating nuc, it’s just a comb builder. It’s a standard sized medium box with a divider just to hold the frames in place so I could use a full sized hive to comb up those little frames. If I installed it as a super, the queen rarely, if ever, went up and I ended up with solid honey frames. If I installed it in the brood area, then the queen went from one side to the other laying eggs which I could then use to populate my mating nucs (just 4 frames per little box. Not in photo) with a variety of frames: some with capped brood, some with eggs, some with pollen, some with honey.
I found that when you first try to populate the little mating nucs, it’s handy to have some brood in the frames to keep the bees in the little boxes. Hence it’s nice to get mini frames combed up with more than just honey. Once the mini nucs are up and running, they work good. However sometimes it can be a chore to a achieve functioning population in there when you start out with blank frames and you're just a novice beek like me.
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TYVM, that explains it, and makes perfect sense! Nicely done!
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Thanks Logic, that will help me get these up and going.
So, it sounds like maybe you kept bees in yours all the time? What I hope to do is just use them for getting the queens mated. Once mated I returns I return borrowed bees back to hive I borrowed them from.
Did you just leave these mini frames in a full size hive until you needed them to put in the mini nuc. That actually makes more since. Just have them inside a full hive and remove them when you need the mating nuc them return them afterwards. I guess since mine are mediums, i could set the medium box below the queen excluder instead of above it.