Poly hive musings.

[The Drone Ranger]

For the first time last week I saw a drone with DWV. I'm hanging fire on varroa treatment till the first week of September when (if I'm lucky) I'll be taking off my heather honey.

Hi Drumgerry
The MAQS strips Greengumbo describes can be used with supers on apparently
I haven't had much to do with formic treatments but this one seems simple and safe

[drumgerry]

DR - my fears are probably unfounded but I've heard Formic treatments can lead to queen death and drone sterility! I think I'll survive till early Sept when I can bang the Apivar on.

[The Drone Ranger]

I think it can kill the youngest brood so probably not a good late treatment
The blurb claims the queen loss is not greater with the strips than without
I like Apivar because even with brood it acts over a 2 week cycle nailing a lot of varroa as they emerge

[fatshark]

drumgerry helpfully posted details of an offer for MB poly Langstroth nucs a couple of months ago and has already posted details of his Langstroth to National conversion.

I've blatantly copied some of his tricks to create a 'twinstock' double three frame National nuc. I want these for queen mating, testing queens before sale/distribution and possibly for overwintering ... I'm also not sure they're going to work for any/all of these so wanted to do a non-destructive (reversible) conversion.

I built a slot in frame consisting of a central divider board (6mm ply) and end panels from 15 or 22 mm ply. The latter are glued'n'screwed to the central panel only and seem secure enough, separated by the requisite space to take a National frame. Since these boxes have opposing entrances this means that there's some unused space at either end, the frames being offset by a couple of inches (look at the pics, that'll save me typing a thousand words). The end panel nearest the entrance needs some scrap 6mm spacer material on it because of some internal moulding of the poly box. I also added some 3mm strip to the top of the central divider - firstly to take the "integrated cover board" (er, sheet of polythene) and secondly to provide a little more space for the central frames to avoid crushing bees against the wall. I've used top bee space, added some runners and a scrap of 3mm perspex to cover the dead space at the end opposite the entrance. To avoid crushing bees during transit you also need to add a 'handle' to the perspex cover that stops the frames shifting one way and an additional filler at the other end ... I could have probably avoided this by better choice of wood, but all this lot came from the scrap box.

2.jpg 3.jpg 6.jpg 8.jpg 9.jpg

Since taking the photos I've (a) used the boxes successfully to check how well a batch of queens are laying and (b) drilled a 30mm hole through the end wall and covered it with zinc QE to convert what was the dead end space into a feeder that will take about 1.5 kg of fondant. Put the QE flush on the inside wall of the nuc otherwise the bees build brace comb in the hole ... don't use plastic, they're too thick and you end up rolling bees when lifting frames.

The boxes are in use again with my last batch of queens needing mating.

Good points of these boxes ... dense, high quality poly, removable floor, comfortably accommodate 2 x 3 frames (or seven at a squeeze without a divider), much thicker roof than the Paynes equivalent.

Bad points ... too many nooks and crannies to easily paint (I envy drumgerry's industrial sprayer thingy), 'feet' poorly spaced for a standard-sized National hive stand, entrance reducer a daft price from MB (and my correx botch is far from ideal). Finally, because of the need to have the divider reach the floor, it's not possible to stack one divided 'brood' box on top of another, for example to enable uniting of 2 x 3 frame nucs with a 6 frame nuc below. This would be useful ...

I'll try and remember to update this thread if I get bees through the winter in these ...

[Black Comb]

Nice work PG.
When you open up to inspect, taking the top cover off, do the bees from each side mingle and fight?

[fatshark]

PG?

No, no fighting at all ... the poly sheet is pinned along the central divider. You can open one side or the other. I just use the hive tool to stop it from folding back over.

With top bee space there's not too much propolis on the poly sheet. I have a standard brood box split in this way with bottom bee space. They tend to propolis the sheet to the tops of the frames over time. Once it's too messy I just rip it off and pin another in place.

[Black Comb]

PG, sorry, end of a long day.

Thank you FS.

[prakel]

...When you open up to inspect, taking the top cover off, do the bees from each side mingle and fight?

using various double and treble boxes without (normally) bothering with inner covers I've never seen any noticeable fighting between the different sides although I'm sure that they do mingle a little -to no great extent. One interesting aspect of their behaviour shows through when one side has become queenless; taking advantage of the open hive during a normal inspection you'll often see the queenless colony walk, in an orderly way over the division and join the queen right side without any visible issue whatsoever. Quite a spectacle to see.

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi Prakel
I hadn't thought about it before but I suppose the same is true when you use a Snelgrove board the bees have two queens but they don't fight when you lift the top box down
If you use a solid floor and make a vertical split then there is fighting when the top box comes off to inspect the bottom one because they are two separate hives

[prakel]

A good point there DR.

I've also heard of, but never witnessed, queenless bees in one side of a twin box abandoning their section, walking around the side and peacefully entering the other nuc by walking through the door*. In my experience (edit: when separated by cover boards) although a few might drift off the bulk appear to sit there until they simply fade away.

*I'd definitely be interested to hear of any personal observations of such behaviour from other members.