In the swing

[mbc]

Nothing against them but the Apidea works well for me and I got them for under £18 bulk buying from Swienty.

I got my kielers for about half that price.

[Jon]

I am not a fan of the Kielers apart from the price.
You pays your money etc...
When you consider the price of a queen and the fact that one unit can produce 2 or 3 in a season the efficiency of the equipment used has got to be the main thing.

[mbc]

Admittedly the apidea is a better quality bit of kit than the kieler, I've reinforced the entrances on my kielers with car body repair kit as my bees proved quite capable of chewing away the thin poly around the entrance. The car body filler fix was done a couple of years ago though and seems to have done the trick. One or two of my apideas are getting a bit long in the tooth too and need a little grass or some such to keep the bees blocked in at the bottom of the entrance. Nothing lasts forever, though I have some seriously old cedar supers which are still going strong despite being antique.

[Jon]

If you do the math, an apidea bought at £18 used for 5 years can produce 10 queens sold at £30 each. profit £282

A Kieler bought for £10 can produce 10 queens. profit £290.

But it took a few more bees to fill it each year so that probably wipes out the £8 difference!

[fatshark]

… The other thing I intend to trial is the Payne poly nuc as a mating nuc with just a single frame of bees and brood pushed against one of the walls with an insulated dummy frame.
Take a frame of sealed brood plus the adhering bees, place it in the nuc and add a ripe queen cell.
Keep closed until the virgin is out, same as with an apidea.
…

Why are you keeping these closed until the Q emerges? Are they in the same apiary and so you want to ensure you still have enough bees?
I'm doing my first round (actually second, but the first was the association course) now, with the queens going into 3 frame nucs today for mating. However, I'm moving them to another apiary as I ended with very unbalanced boxes when I did this last year in the same apiary.

[Jon]

The one I have set up at the moment is in the same apiary.
You lose less to drifting once they have a queen.
With apideas, if they are opened before the queen emerges the cell can get chilled as a few tend to abscond. if there are queenright colonies or apideas in the same area.
I think it is better to have them concentrated in the apidea making heat until the queen is out.
I usually put in the cells 24 hours from emergence so they don't have to be closed in for long.
The Payne nuc has an open mesh floor so no problem with ventilation.

[Black Comb]

Is there any way to stop the bees building comb around the cells in the cell raiser?

[fatshark]

Black Comb … they tend not to build brace comb until the cells are sealed in my experience. You could always cage them. My cell bar frames have space above the cells - mainly to put the cells into the warmest area - and they usually build brace comb there. I cut it out periodically to give them some more to do.

[drumgerry]

So would I be right in thinking you just have a single row of cells in your frames Fatshark? Up to now I've had two rows = 20 cells. Do you use two frames of 10 each? Or just graft the 10 at a time? (I'm assuming you're using Nats which may be completely wrong of course!). I have had the brace comb problem as well and usually have to do some very delicate surgery on the sealed cells with a sharp knife before they'll fit through the wee hole in the Apidea plastic cover.

[drumgerry]

And if your German's any good this vid might be of interest. I watched it in complete ignorance of what they were on about! Interesting and very organised queen rearing depicted. My favourite bit is when they chuck a virgin queen into a pot of honey before letting her climb out on to a finger and letting her walk into an Apidea! Anyone tried that?! (it was your description of having the space above your cell bar Fatshark that made me think of this vid)