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Tiny queen breeding/rearing boxes.

18K views 41 replies 21 participants last post by  lakebilly 
#1 ·
Lauri recently posted photos of some tiny queen rearing hives she has built. Half the size of a five frame nuc I believe. I am just curious, is the reason for these just to make it so much easier to find the queen?
 
#3 ·
I think the resources is the biggest reason for using mini nucs. Last year was my first year raising queens and it does take a bunch of bee resources to make up the mating nucs. Its not really that hard to get 30 nice looking queen cells but, making up 30 nucs to get them mated in takes quite a few frames of bees.
 
#5 ·
The down sides are: not using standard sized frames, which prevents you from using your standard colonies for resources.(brood, stores) A large handicap in my book. Also, most are too small to feasibly use as a wintering box. They would also be much more likely to swarm if left to their own devices. I do see the value of them with large operations though..... Very efficient.
 
#6 ·
Queen production model where you can get tons of virgins mated then ship out. Large operations would be looking to take those mated queens and ship them almost immediately, rinse and repeat. Whitetail makes some good points, especially if you're wanting to grow out; virgin>mated queen>nuc.

An alternative to the tiny mating nucs is to set up a queen castle. You can use more standard sized equipment and get multiple queens mated in a small space.
 
#9 ·
The last two years I've used a bunch of baby nucs, but have found them far more troublesome, for my style of beekeeping, than the standard nucs.

The normal nucs i run are 3 deep frame nucs, run at 3 to a standard deep super. They go through the winter so after the initial set up no further bee reources are required. The opposite in fact, I have to remove bees and brood from them during the season, which gets made up into hives and sold.

The baby nucs though, most of which were on loan from another beekeeper, were set up with 250 mls each of bees and a queen cell, so it was possible to get a lot of them just from one strong hive. But from then on, they have to be run to a strict timetable, leave laying queens in them too long & they abscond or the queen simply dissappears. As I'm not dealing in large numbers, my order flow can be erratic and the baby nuc schedule has not suited me.

Large breeders needing a lot of queens in a small time frame, with minimal bee resources, could be served well by baby nucs. Likewise a small hobbyist with just a few hives, and wanting a few replacement queens or maybe a small number to sell, could do well with some baby nucs. Seems for me though, I'm somewhere is the middle, and my business which is selling boith queens, and hives, is better served by having all equipment standard, so as nucs get overpopulated, no worries, I sell them.

My 2 cents, but anyhow, baby nucs are an interesting thing to do I'd recommend anyone give it a go, just be ready for some intensive management..
 
#10 ·
"Intensive management" is the key here in my case. I am a firefighter on a 24-48 schedule. I can trade and take vacation days during the busy times but for most things I am going to need to miss ten days a month of "intensive management" so queen castles sound really good right now. Of course next year I might think differently ;)
 
#13 ·
I made up my own, they are Il supers deep, and 1/2 the depth of the hive, including the wall. this lets me set 1 or 2 of them on top a regular have to get them charged in the spring. Each one is then divided into 3 sections. 1 small feeder and 2 frames each. 500 bees fills one up nicley, which is about a cup of bees.
 
#17 · (Edited)
I've done a few kinds of mating nucs and really love the mini size. But mine are deep mini frames, not the shallows Mann Laks sells. With five deep mini's I get a decent sized mating nuc that is not hard to manage. (Equivalent to 2 1/2 deep full sized frames) Easy to find queens. Easy on my back since I have them at waist or higher level. After the last round of mated queens are sold, I simply combine a few nucs together with a single queen in a modified deep 10 frame box. where they overwinter just fine.



In the spring I feed these hives well until most frames are packed with brood and feed, then distribute to the mini box's just like any split. Wait 15-24 hours (Basically overnight) and introduce a newly hatched marked Virgin directly. I've never had one not accepted as long as they are introduced within a few hours after hatching. I'll do a feed frame front and back with three decently filled brood frames in the center. By the time the first virgin is mated and laying those cells will be empty and ready to accept her eggs. I feed a pollen patty on top so no pollen frame is necessary. They are pretty self sufficient after that.






These are the singles I made up last year..hanging in the raspberry patch

I made up about 30 doubles for this spring in standard nuc woodenware.
30 of these will give me 60 mini deep mating nucs:


Just being stored inside until time to use it:





I used divided deeps last year too and they worked well too.
 
#18 · (Edited)
Here's my starter hive too. I started out with five frames in a ten frame box, using a follower board to keep them corralled. Fed them syrup and pollen patties. As I freshened this colony regularly with new frames of capped brood and young nurse bees, I did not have to take out empty frames..there were none! No reason to remove frames they had filled with stores, so I use a follower board to keep them crowded, but could expand the interior to fit my freshening or manipulations (Getting the graft frame in and out) They all stay on one side of the board and really never cross it if it is empty. They will cross it to get to a feeder though. Works very well. When I eventually filled it, I gave them a long deserved virgin and let them form a nice colony for overwintering. They were happy bees:)





I don't know why that one empty frame is in there..disregard that please.

Her is a box I brushed a few frames of bees into. I let it sit a few hours in warm weather and the older bees fly back to the old hives and scooped what was left into the mating nucs. If I was really picky, I'd run these bees through a queen excluder to remove any drones, but I had no problems this way.



Heres a photo of new 2012 virgin, just installed. Can't wait until spring! New ideas and all:)

 
#21 ·
Yellow paint, dude. That may or may not be a clue. One must be observent (spelling) when keeping of the bee:)
Whoa their cowgirl. Put down the gun and the rope. You called it a virgin and I ask you if it is really is one. Didn't look like one to me so I asked. Henceforth you go and edit your post putting in a date and more info. I bet if you ask any of the breeders that handle thousands of queens a year not one would guess that that is a virgin. Not one. Surely not myself. If it was you do a heck of a job raising queens and need to get of that high horse more often and start raising them for sale. Could buy a lot of feed for the price of a virgin that fine. Nice queen indeed.

Secondly the color scheme is not a federal mandate punishable by five years in jail. We happen to use the yellow every year. Two reasons...... The yellow is the easiest to pick out among the five colors. The contrast..........specially when you put a blue dot on a dark queen with dark bees its just about worthless. The queens rarely last beyond 2 years (occasionally 3) any longer so the color sequence is less important than it used to be. Do you really mark them before their mating flights?

Hive tool now back in holster.;)
 
#22 · (Edited)
Sorry, I was joking, but I guess that was lost in the text.
Why does this not look like a virgin?
Here are a few more, right out of the incubator, and actually out of little crummy cells:












This last one is a second generation Glenn Carniolan daughter. I feed them my Lance Armstrong special recipe pollen pattys. (Joking again)

And yes, I mark them with paint right after hatching. Great returns. No problems.
(By the way, that is wood stain on my fingenails)
I'd like to mark them with the disks, but they certainly must be way too cumbersome for the virgin to have successful mating flights. If anyone does this I would like to know.

Marking them saves me so much time in finding them faster, later, I would still do it even if it had a slight impact on mated returns.
 
#23 ·
I'm sure most of the breeders in the US would be more than pleased if 90% of the virgins came out looking that nice. She was surely not short on RJ going into day 4 was she. :applause: $28.50 a piece is what I'm thinking. Maybe $30.99 Keep up the nice work. If you sell some let me know. Might want to try a few and test them ourselves. Not dinks please. After posting pics like that you might be up for a charge of false advertising if you did.
 
#24 ·
Lauri,
When storing your mating nucs in the off season, what is your method of protecting them from wax moth larvae damage. Very innovative designs by the way :thumbsup:
 
#26 · (Edited)
First of all, here is my gene pool for most of those large virgins you saw posted above. I collected this swarm near Mt. Rainier in 2011 and most of my grafts are from this queen. I got five distinct colors of daughters from this one queen. A lot of diversity to work with.


Here is the link to a thread where I describe how I cut down my frames:

http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...vs-10-Frame-Pros-and-Cons&p=886888#post886888




And I store my nuc box's empty. I store most of half deep frames inside hives with bees. I have the others exposed to the light and cold. It freezes here regularly so No real problems with wax moth.

The box's are standard nuc box's. No need for plans. Just divide them. I fir out the bottom and staple a bottom on it with entrances on both sides



Here's the bottom and one entrance. I had some cedar planks that were too split for any other use. They worked fine in this application. Gave the queen a bit of a landing ramp, although it is not necessary.


Here are some with a standard migratory top. I cut down 10 frame tops from 16 1/4" to 12" for a generous overhang to keep out the rain.
 
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