Quote Originally Posted by fatshark View Post
Late to the thread ...

A couple of comments. The Thorne's Everynuc is pretty good. Best if you use Langstroths, but they convert it to National sized using an internal feeder. The walls and the roof are good and thick and strong. The entrance is too big and the bee space is a bit off at one end. Nevertheless, the bees do really well in them overwinter.

2 in 1 nucs are an accident waiting to happen in my experience. I made half a dozen or so a few years back, filled them with virgin queens (one each ... and bees!) and ended up with about 7 mated queens (of 12). Usually the queens manage to sneak over the divider (under the crownboard) and slaughter their neighbour.

My advice would be to dummy-down a normal 5 frame nuc - two frames and a dummy board are usually fine - and not worry about the queens running amok.

Looked after, a poly nuc should last ages and pay for itself in a season.
Thank you Fatshark.

Multi queen units in one box are an idea that sounds great, and even *sometimes* works great, but single units offer better flexibility. Have dabbled in this and will not do so again...you can get them in Europe with up to four in one.

The beef I have with them is that you have issues when one fails. You need to remake it, and the most effective ways of doing that are 'off stand'. With a failed single you just pick it up and refill with fresh bees at base, then after the appropriate interval return it to its position. With multiples containing a mix of fails and sucesses we tended to just end up with a partially occupied unit all season.

Also a 2 x 3 bar nuc? Why? It means too many visits to avoid them rapidly becoming congested and even very new queens wanting to swarm out. For a mating unit I can just about get it, but its an idea that sounds better than it works.

Also the fixed feeder slot in a Paynes...or others. Why do folk hate them and go hacking them out? Its a 6 bar nuc. If it needs more space then it needs a full hive, not two more bars. Failing that then one of their extension boxes. We find the fixed feeder very convenient and our main beef with Paynes box...and its a VERY minor beef not worth fussing about, is the lids are too thin.

In contrast they have sorted out many of the issues people gripe about in their new Langstroth version. However, though the box quality is excellent they have actually listened again to opinions and made the feeder a separate unit, which has bought us problems all of its own and we would have preferred it to have been a fixed unit as in the BS one.

Reasoning? Similar to the BS one, if 6 bars is not big enough it need properly promoting, not giving it a couple more bars that means you will likely be back into it in a week.

But the big thing is that it slides around. Unless the frames are TIGHT, when you move the nuc the feeder slides, even by a single beeway and you have a big problem. Bees go under the feeder (it does not reach the floor anyway) and up the side, the feeder slides back again and bees are killed...and can include the queen. Another good sounding idea that has serious complications in the real world. We are probably going to glue them all into place and fill the gap underneath with expanding foam. Took a while to figure out why a number of the nucs from last year in these, when moved to the winter site. immediately drew emergency cells. Dead queen due to waggling internal parts. Important to get it in proportion as it was only 9 out of 300, but if the feeder was fixed this would probably not have happened, at least not as many. The evidence was only spotted when clearing one out that was devoid of a laying queen going into winter......the coloured dot from the queen was apparent on a flattened bee between the feeder and the side wall.

Also, finding the queen in those, in particular with the highly mobile black ones, is an issue, as she will often be hiding in that void under the feeder. so you lift out the feeder, bees run all overt the wall, and the feeder, and it a bit of a PITA putting it all back together without killing any bees.

Everyone's solution is another person's problem.........

ps...this sliding around problem during moving....and the fact it constricts the nest, albeit by a small proportion, is why we never ever use dummy boards.