Beesource Beekeeping Forums banner

Single box starter/finisher/breeder timeing box and or single deep horizontal cloake

2K views 5 replies 4 participants last post by  Michael Palmer 
#1 ·
Any one have any experience with these?
Basically split deep- queen right one side, queen less the other and or divided with an QE and cloake board.
I ran a nuc QL free flying starter finisher last season and was thinking about a 5 over 5 cloake for this year.
However the lack of lifting and what seems to be faster easier management of this set up is intriguing and I can't realy use more then 10 cells a week
 
#3 · (Edited)
#4 ·
Hmmm still crickets?
Found this, same size, little different concept
Grafting one bar/week into a single divided into a breeder side and a free flying starter-finisher side will yield about 13 excellent cells/week. Every two weeks the sides are switched.
and from Eva Crane
Brown Furniture Table Shoe

caption reads
"AUSTRALIA, 1967, NEW SOUTH WALES, Queen rearing hive. L. space for 8-frame colony (frame of young brood next to queen excluder). R. space for 4 frames newly-capped brood; queen cells; newly-capped brood; pollen and honey."
 
#6 ·
i run a "breeder timing box" similar to the photo. Three combs on one side of the excluder, and six on the other. The queen goes on the three comb side. By moving a brood comb from her side to the far side of the excluder, and adding a new dark worker comb on her side, and against the excluder. I can time the age of the larvae for grafting. One change I would make to the box in the photo. The entrance shouldn't be on the queen's side of the excluder.


Hmmm still crickets?
Found this, same size, little different concept


and from Eva Crane
View attachment 46413
 
#5 ·
Some years ago I made a 3-partition Timing Box after seeing a FatBeeMan video about them ... but never warmed to using it in practice - so I made a couple of 'Vertical Cloake Boards' from 1.5mm rigid polycarbonate to slip in-between the divider/QX's and the adjacent frames.





Tried that for 2 seasons, then finally gave up playing with it.

In my opinion, nothing beats a vertical Cloake Board arrangement - and for small numbers, I much prefer to use a divided Cloake Board with two 5-frame nuc boxes over, which allows me to use a relatively small colony below the board, with just one functional nuc box above it - with as few as 8 q/cells being drawn at a time.

I've recently made a nuc-sized Cloake Board (AND a Hopkins case !) to fit over a 5-over-5 stack, as I'm becoming more and more enthusiastic about the 'nuc stack' format. :)
LJ
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top