In the swing

[Jon]

Checked around the Apideas earlier this evening and have about 18 queens laying.
I have ten Paynes poly nucs set up as mating nucs as well with a single frame of bees and brood between the wall and an insulated dummy board.
There is a frame of stores on the other side of the dummy board.
One of these I set up 2 weeks ago with a ripe queen cell now has a laying queen.
I reckon these will make decent enough mating nucs.
You start with a frame of bees and brood and keep closed up until the queen has emerged, same as with apideas.
Once the brood has emerged you have about 2 frames of bees. When most of the brood has emerged you can move the frame of stores alongside so you now have a 2 frame nuc.
When the queen starts to lay, after a few days you swap the 2 frames of eggs/larvae for 2 frames of sealed brood and you should have a 5 frame nuc about 2 weeks later when the brood has emerged.

[mbc]

Checked around the Apideas earlier this evening and have about 18 queens laying.
I have ten Paynes poly nucs set up as mating nucs as well with a single frame of bees and brood between the wall and an insulated dummy board.
There is a frame of stores on the other side of the dummy board.
One of these I set up 2 weeks ago with a ripe queen cell now has a laying queen.
I reckon these will make decent enough mating nucs.
You start with a frame of bees and brood and keep closed up until the queen has emerged, same as with apideas.
Once the brood has emerged you have about 2 frames of bees. When most of the brood has emerged you can move the frame of stores alongside so you now have a 2 frame nuc.
When the queen starts to lay, after a few days you swap the 2 frames of eggs/larvae for 2 frames of sealed brood and you should have a 5 frame nuc about 2 weeks later when the brood has emerged.

Well done!
I'm not sure you're gaining anything with the jiggery pokery with the frame of stores and dummy board in the paynes box, I always think bees "feel more secure"* when set up with several combs, three are better than two and, not that I've tried it but I assume, two would be much better than one. If you observe bees in small units, they need quite a bit of flexibility to expand and contract their comb coverage depending on the outside temperature.

* I know its anthropomorphising, but bees that "feel secure" visibly thrive and its easy enough to observe that.

[Jon]

I am looking for ways to get queens mated with the minimum amount of bees.
the 2-3 frame nuc is an ideal unit if you can spare the frames of bees to set them up.
With a single frame nuc you can add a frame of emerging brood as soon as the queen has started to lay and there should be enough bees to cover it.
One thing I need to do longer term is keep more colonies as it is quite a drain filling apideas all the time.

[mbc]

Aye, but bees that feel "secure" will do a better job of getting a virgin properly mated IMHO

[Jon]

Mine are mating in 10-11 days average at the moment so no complaints there.
Nowt as secure as a well stocked Apidea!

[drumgerry]

It'd be interesting to calculate how many colonies are needed to support say 50 apideas or so (I reckon I can fill 10 from a couple of supers of bees). Can't you science-y type punters work out a formula or something?! I love to raise queens but I hate to drain my colonies of the resources that are going to get me a honey crop.

[gavin]

My highly scientific experiments this year (n=1) indicate that:

1 dbl brood colony - 7 Apideas fills = a fairly depleted mother colony which nevertheless will build quite strongly in the subsequent weeks.

There's usually a vigorous colony with hybridised bees which you don't want for breeding purposes. Unfortunately this year I chose unwisely and the rest of that colony has just been taken (thanks FD!) to our distant mating site for drone production.

[Jon]

I filled 8 apideas from a double brood colony a fortnight ago and took 8 more from it yesterday.
It has managed to fill 2 supers in spite of my attempts to deplete it.
This is a colony with a black queen which has mated with several yellow drones as seen in her yellow banded workers.
Temper is less than perfect so I am trying to knock it back a bit without great success.

Once the apideas are established the second and third cells to go in will be no drain on resources but filling them initially can be tricky.
Gerry I would say you could run 50 with about 8 colonies but it might take until late June to get them all filled without taking out too many bees.

[mbc]

Nowt as secure as a well stocked Apidea!

Three frames of tightly packed bees, presactly!