I bought another 50 in February. Order from Swienty. There is a great Sterling/Euro rate at the moment. Mine worked out at less than £16 each including the carriage from Denmark.
Some of us are using Lyson MiniPlus nucs instead (or at least I will be once they arrive). Again, cheaper in bulk and sometimes with a bit of haggling. Cheaper per queen mated than an Apidea and with a top feeder as part of the unit. Several people have said that wintering is easier in these boxes (after the partition has been taken out) than in Apideas, with one BKF poster saying that his winter losses were the same as larger hives.
Abelo for a UK supplier, also sold by Icko in France (if you can get them to talk to you!) and Wilara in Lithuania where prices are particularly keen at the moment.
There is another design of MiniPlus for sale without the partition and with only entrance, be careful you get the right one if queen rearing is your aim.
On the size of the gene pool, it depends. If you are planning continually bringing in breeder stock then the number of queens used now doesn't matter too much. But be wary of restricting the diversity. In general 50+ colonies are advised in a breeding group and you should spread queen raising around several to many of your better queens.
If, for example, you graft only from one queen all summer and requeen all your stocks with that line (mated with a diversity of drones) then there will be only a maximum of two different alleles at each gene for each drone in your population next year. Drones come from only the genes carried in the queen's own cells, and none of the genetic variation she carries in her spermatheca gets used for drones (they come from unfertilised eggs of course). This is very likely to lead to serious inbreeding.
Thing is, there are quite a number of groups working with Amm in Scotland Ireland and Wales and we could work together with regard to the genetic material.
Just been on Icko's website for the first time - never heard of them till reading this thread. Some nice stuff on there. Especially liked the title for the mini-nuc part of their catalogue - "The nucleus of fecundation". Great stuff! Can't we have a category on the forum for discussing the "The nucleus of fecundation"?!!
Have you got any Lyson kit yet Gavin? If not take a sample first.
PH
Last edited by Poly Hive; 16-04-2015 at 04:07 PM.
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