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[busybeephilip]

Jon, why not just use the doulble up system with the old apideas that have raised 2 or 3+ queens sold and put a final queen cell in them in the autumn about 2-3 weeks before the drones are due to be kicked out, instead of uniting the bees from the apideas in the autumn. They will have a supply of fresh young workers suitable for overwintering. Of the 100 or so apideas even if 50% are mated and survive this will give you an early supply of queens for sale in the spring and the only extra cost would be feeding.

Even 4 strong apideas could be united to give a viable colony for overwintering in a 2-3 frame standard nuc box

[Pete L]

Hi Jon.....I may sell one or two, but generally i use all of them, some for replacing dud queens in full size colonies and the rest for making up nucs, and doing splits on the stronger double brood colonies in spring. But the system can easily be scaled up to over winter several hundred queens, and i am heading more that way each year, so maybe more to sell, but not for £10 each..lol.

[Poly Hive]

There are more ways of doing nucs than the proverbial cat skinning. The issue is always "the cost". Mini nucs to produce laying queens are wonderful things. They reduce the cost in bees if there is a failure. They reduce the cost whether the cost is real or merely perceived it is there. So rather than make up a full nuc, that is three good brood frames and two good stores I have in the past done this.

BTW not my idea but one a BF friend uses often. One frame of stores with pollen, one frame of brood to which cell is attached, one frame feeder with a pint or two of light syrup. Two or three well covered brood frames shook in. The frames being shook have had their resident queen pinpointed by excluder so no risk of shaking one in. In the event of failure the loss is a few hundred bees and a Q cell. When successful my friend unites in a box of brood and bees in time for the unit to develop some and give a super of heather on the moor. Cost now in credit. Returning to our unit, they would probably struggle to get up to wintering strength in the more northerly areas so probably uniting on a couple of well covered sealed brood frames would get them through winter.

A strong five or preferably a 6 fame poly nuc with a good slab of fondant on top has a very good chance of overwintering.

PH

[Jon]

Phil.
That is pretty much what I was doing combining bees and brood from 3 or 4 apideas into a double unit with 10 frames.
I intended to overwinter a lot more but people kept buying queens right into October which left me with fewer than I intended.

PH. Re using nucs to rear queens, I set up about a dozen of the Paynes polynucs in June, each one with just 1 or sometimes 2 frames of bees and brood. A thick insulated dummy board was put at the edge to keep a well insulated unit. I got 2 mated queens out of most of these and whatever queen was resident in August got to overwinter. I have only lost one of them so far.

[Calum]

This year has been good but I lose most or all of the queens in apideas during a harsh winter.
Overwintering nucs is probably the better option if you can find enough bees to make them up.

Hi
I tried overwintering in apideas - it was unsatisfactory. - never doing it again.
Mini Plus is just minimum size at least for German winters. On a double mini plus is for me optimal.
6 frame colonies are about the least hassle they are big enough to overwinter, and there is no issue of transferring frames to hives with different frame dimensions (I hate rewiring miniplus frames into larger frame sizes)- they also build up of their own accord without any help, they just need a larger hive in time.

Between myself any my apprentices we will sell 60-65 colonies this spring - most are now booked. these were just colonies raised throughout the year as swarm prevention & varroa control. The only real cost is frames foundation and feed. I think we spent about 1800€ on that, but the return is about 9000€ so no complaints.

It is interesting for me about the value of a queen - the prices are about the same as Germany (5€ unmated- 45€ mated with fore and family name) esentially they cost virtually nothing just a but of time and a bit of fun for the beekeeper & a lump of fondant for the apidea.

I'd recommend any beekeeper fill every hive he has with bees for overwintering - if you raise 5 or 20 queens there isnt any more work in it, and flood the home market with home bees that are best adapted to the locality. Where there is an over supply of bees, proper selection of good quality queens diminishes as an issue.

[Jon]

http://beesandnucs.com

Was this not the guy from Weald Farm discussed in many threads on BKF for idiosyncratic business dealings with regard to bee supply. (he said politely)
Might want to be careful with a domain name which could easily be confused with this one.

beesandnucs, nucsandbees which came first the chicken or the egg.

[Adam]

Even 4 strong apideas could be united to give a viable colony for overwintering in a 2-3 frame standard nuc box

I did just that late last summer. 3 or 4 mini-nucs where the brood had emerged added to a frame of brood from a strong colony (plus a queen of course). They were flying well on Wednesday. That's almost a free nuc of bees.

[Adam]

Rather than overwintering autumn queens, which is always trickier than spring/summer queens anyway due to logistics of building viable populations, successfully overwintering full stop should be the goal. If people don't lose so many bees, then they won't need so many in the spring.

I wonder why we accept such high winter losses as normal. I don't see why it should be any more than, say 10 to 15% throughout the country as a whole and it's usually double that.
Generally you need the following and the bees will get through

*Decent hive
*Decent Queen
*Enough food
*Little varroa

The main issue beyond our control is the queen - you do get the odd duff one.

[gavin]

*Decent hive
*Decent Queen
*Enough food
*Little varroa

* decent cohort of healthy young bees raised in the autumn (comes automatically with 1-4 of course in most situations)

[Adam]

* decent cohort of healthy young bees raised in the autumn (comes automatically with 1-4 of course in most situations)

Agreed - and veering of the thread a little (well, a lot) I think that some beekeepers leave varroa treatment too late in autumn so the colony can't clear the viruses in time for winter.