Some of the Irish suppliers have them GG. I have seen them at the trade stands.
Some of the Irish suppliers have them GG. I have seen them at the trade stands.
tks ill check it out
Its possible to use Keilers if you have the upper boxes
What you do is lift the frames up into the upper box and let them draw comb down through both boxes
Its might too late in the season now to work though
Its only worth doing if you already have Keilers because the cost of buying a Keiler and extension would get you something better
I've used little stand-alone mini-nucs this summer, DR, and I've decided they're absolutely horrible to work with. Whatever I use in future must be stackable and extendable - so, the Kielers will be good too. I have one unit. I'll use it next summer.
I've followed Busybeephilip's suggestion and made up nucs for the last two queens from the horrible little mini nucs, and cut out the left-over brood and fitted them into the Mini Plus frames, and gave them to the first queen I've moved over to a Mini Plus a couple of weeks ago.
Kitta
fingers crossed kitta
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My experience too, I have apideas, kielers and mini plus hives (those from abelo )and though I've used a few apideas and have put a few batches of cells through the kielers the minI plus is the future for me, I wont be bothering trying to overwinter any kielers but will hopefully have fifty or so mini pluses going into winter.
Do you use you mini plus mini nucs as doubles or singles?
Yeh, the mini plus boxes have got a bit of extra space for a bigger population of bees so better chance of survival through the spring. with small colonies the bees perish in the spring as old bees die off before the new young are born to replace them which is why you need a good strong pop of bees going into winter.
I use them as doubles (split box with two separate entrances )for queen mating and like to overwinter on single or double brood, this spring I had loads of frames of ivy stores ready to go from the double broods, I'd imagined they'd have turned it all to brood by the time the first cells were ready to go out but not so, maybe because varroa could have been hampering spring expansion.
On Sunday 8/6 egg laid in cupkit.
10/8 eggs inserted into Queenless colony builder.
13/8 grafts taken.
15/8 qc capped
20/8 cell moved to incubator
23/8 queen emerges.
25/8 queen inserted in Apidea
28/8 opened entrance to Apidea
8/9 no eggs
12/9 no eggs
22/9 no eggs
28/9 Eggs Eggs yippee.
Ah now what ?
Last edited by Greengage; 28-09-2017 at 02:57 PM.
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