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Thread: New Colonsay queens! - MiniPlus now, or direct introduce (hopefully) tomorrow?

  1. #11

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    Quote Originally Posted by prakel View Post
    yes!

    Will help immensely to feed the receiving colony too. Also, it does no harm to leave the cage locked for a few days once in the hive before allowing the bees to release the queen -as I've said before, if they don't want to look after her in the cage they'll soon supercede her once she's released (if she gets that far).

    There's a nice trick buried in the following video, and yes it is practical and does work although in your present circumstances it would be better used to determine whether to allow release by the bees rather than doing so manually:

    https://youtu.be/Yg92q9hPIv8
    Matchstick trick - love it, thanks.
    Love the hives, too - Langstroth framed longhives? (I would so be filling the upper section with blankets.)
    Glad the licking is a good sign! Hoped it was. I'm getting reasonably good at reading bee body language, but not seen many of them in this particular situation yet, & it's kind of critical. As the video caption puts it: "shall we kill her or accept her?" (Ooo, choices, choices!)
    Very nervous of feeding them - they're tiny, and the apiary is thick with wasps (and other bees!). Looks like most of the stores comb I gifted to them was robbed out before they got big enough to defend themselves. Once she's out I thought maybe a bit of syrup to encourage her to lay. Can't wait to reunite them with parent colony.

  2. #12

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    Quote Originally Posted by gavin View Post
    ...So your MiniPlus and a newly created nuc should work but for slightly different reasons. The uniting of the MiniPlus with the larger stock is one thing that might prove a little tricky. If you place it over newspaper on top of the bigger colony the MP frames are quite likely to continue to be used for brood or honey.

    Letting a newly created nuc settle for a while is to bleed fliers (older workers) back home and to let the stock come to terms with its newly queenless state. You need to have enough young bees in it to start with, and I reckon an hour is about the right time to let it settle without wholesale loss of bees back home. For the same reason I would not block in the nucleus immediately it is made up.
    Three times this season I've made up nucs and so many bees have abandoned them that brood has died. Two queens were endangered, one of them failed, possibly because of the ordeal (as well as being 3 years old). One was a bit of an experiment with enticing bees onto MiniPlus frames, but discounting that one it was still two very distressing fails. The second one was just recent, intended as the second Colonsay host.
    Though, come to think of it, both that and the previous queen-in-Paynes fail were combs from the same queen, so it may just be something about her.
    And uniting MP frames to Nationals is definitely a PITA. Did it last year, using a Paynes eke over a Paynes. They did indeed stuff all the MP frames with bulging capped stores, & I ended up feeding them fondant all winter for the sake of a simpler spring. Not greatly impressed with MPs, for my ways of working; I'm thinking of making up some National shallow nuc boxes instead.
    Still swithering! I guess pretty soon I just need to get out there & do something, then watch & hope.

  3. #13

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    Quote Originally Posted by prakel View Post
    Probably too late in the far north(!) but down here where we're still deep into the most protracted main-flow i've ever known I'd be tempted to go down that route and then split the mp off and add another queen to that in the hope of overwintering it. But we've got plenty of time left here -if anything it's the first 5 or 6 months of the year that cause us issues
    I like that possibility.
    It is very late - flow very patchy here by now, and cold the last two nights - but as Murray always says, they'll draw comb late if you feed them enough. And I have 2-3 more queens in my apiary now than I want to have in the spring, but I'm absolutely rubbish at deciding to kill them. Much rather give them a chance & hope someone needs them next season.
    "protracted main-flow"????! ....beekeeping really is a whole different world down there, isn't it?! My ideal is to never feed syrup, and only ever take surplus honey: I've been trying for 6 seasons & I'm still not sure it's actually possible here in (the cushy Central Belt hinterlands of) the north. I'm far too stubborn to stop trying yet, though

  4. #14
    Senior Member prakel's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Emma View Post
    Three times this season I've made up nucs and so many bees have abandoned them that brood has died.
    I've always liked the method of shaking the chosen combs free of bees and then placing them over an excluder for a few hours to allow the bees to repopulate (with comparative youngsters). Not suited to large scale work, perhaps, but still a sound method.

    Quote Originally Posted by Emma View Post
    And uniting MP frames to Nationals is definitely a PITA. Did it last year, using a Paynes eke over a Paynes. They did indeed stuff all the MP frames with bulging capped stores, & I ended up feeding them fondant all winter for the sake of a simpler spring. Not greatly impressed with MPs, for my ways of working; I'm thinking of making up some National shallow nuc boxes instead.
    I'm a big fan of the mp's and have developed a system of working them with homemade 'back-up' boxes which fit directly on top of a standard nuc box; useful for all sorts of tricks but it's taken me a decade to get to what now appears to be quite a seamless method.

    I like the idea of shallow nucs, one of my uncles used that system for years. Not as economical as deep nucs once established, but very handy in other ways.

  5. #15

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    Quote Originally Posted by prakel View Post
    I've always liked the method of shaking the chosen combs free of bees and then placing them over an excluder for a few hours to allow the bees to repopulate (with comparative youngsters). Not suited to large scale work, perhaps, but still a sound method.
    Doh. Of course, yes, beautiful. Let the bees figure out who belongs where, within the safety of the nest. Thank you.
    I'm pretty much doomed to small scale, finnicky detailed work. There's no future in it, but I'm irresistibly drawn to it.

    Quote Originally Posted by prakel View Post
    I'm a big fan of the mp's and have developed a system of working them with homemade 'back-up' boxes which fit directly on top of a standard nuc box; useful for all sorts of tricks but it's taken me a decade to get to what now appears to be quite a seamless method.
    OK, that's inclining me to stick with them a bit longer. I have done a bit of fiddling around with setting MP frames into standard supers, and they do fit really neatly cross-ways inside a Paynes eke, but that kind of mid-season bodging always leads to lots of bits ready to fall out of place at just the wrong time, & usually involves inexact bee-spacing & hence lots of wasted propolis & wax, and a certain amount of swearing on the part of the bees when I yank things apart.
    I've a decent hope of getting a woodworking bench set up this winter, for the first time ever. Planning a bit of a kit-building fest in the quiet months, & I could try to figure something similar... do you have any pictures, please?!

    Quote Originally Posted by prakel View Post
    I like the idea of shallow nucs, one of my uncles used that system for years. Not as economical as deep nucs once established, but very handy in other ways.
    "Not as economical" - how so?
    And - any chance you could describe the kind of shallow nuc box design your uncle used?

  6. #16
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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  7. #17
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Emma View Post
    Three times this season I've made up nucs and so many bees have abandoned them that brood has died.
    Ideally you need to move the nucs to a new site a couple of miles away to avoid losing bees to the parent colony.

  8. #18
    Senior Member prakel's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Emma View Post
    I've a decent hope of getting a woodworking bench set up this winter, for the first time ever. Planning a bit of a kit-building fest in the quiet months, & I could try to figure something similar... do you have any pictures, please?!
    Previously we've used the same methods with mini-plus and our own extra small mating nucs which are approx half lenth bs shallow, after much thought we've now commited to moving our mating nucs onto half length langstroth mediums and getting everything in uniform boxes but we'll use the same system.

    The following photos are of the extra small mating frames but the idea is the same.

    060 (2).jpg

    1. one of the extra small frames, showing the individual mating nucs in the background.

    2. a shot of the comb drawing box sat on top of a 5 frame bs nuc, these boxes get combs drawn and filled with brood, they don't need to be used, the little boxes/mps are quite capable of getting by without them but they add a back-up component to service the mating nucs. They can also be used for taking combs from over populus mating nucs.

    If you're building them for use with the mini-plus then the base box which contains the standard combs that you use (BS?) needs to be wider than a standard 5 frame BS nuc....a 'sale' national brood box makes a very tidy nuc by simply cutting down the end pieces to the required width and then re-cutting the tenons on the rails.

    3. like you I prefer not to give raw feed to mating nucs so these boxes are also a way of getting store combs drawn on the flow too, in this instance I was meant to go back the following day with a couple of extra frames but other things demanded my attention elsewhere...

    019.jpg

    014.jpg

    005.jpg


    Quote Originally Posted by Emma View Post
    "Not as economical" - how so?
    And - any chance you could describe the kind of shallow nuc box design your uncle used?
    I say not as economical once established because they're liable to demand slightly more management in times of both boom and bust my own observations have also suggested that the deeps do build up quicker -their height better fits their length; once again it's that magic formula of 2(height):3(length). But, I agree that that the shallows are nice boxes to use for mating nucs and they're an ideal depth frame to get populated above a box of deep frames at the start of the season.

    My uncle's boxes were simply a mixture of 3 and 5 frame shallow nucs consisting of floor/brood and cover. Nothing remotely complex. I'd bet that he found the 5 frame ones easier to handle though.
    Last edited by prakel; 12-08-2016 at 08:50 AM.

  9. #19

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    Push in cages made from epoxy coated varroa mesh (Thornes)
    cut with scissors make into box takes 20 mins to make one
    These are big enough to cover some sealed brood some empty cells and some honey
    Queens can feed themselves when the cage breaks into stores along the edge
    Attachment 2725

    you have to release queen after a few days but she is safe and can lay a few eggs
    Last edited by The Drone Ranger; 12-08-2016 at 09:10 AM.

  10. #20
    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    I've used the same sort of approach described by DR, but using commercial Nicot push-in cages over emerging brood. They work very well. For belt'n'braces security I usually hold them in place with an elastic band around the frame. When you go to release the queen after a few days you'll find they've often burrowed underneath the sidewall and released her themselves ...

    00037.jpg

    Pic from Nicot if you can't tell from the watermark ;-)

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