I was seeing the styrofoam mini mating nucs advertised for $25-40 and my grandpa’s voice kicked in my head “they make that in China for 16c”. I even went to a Chinese distributor (where I’m sure American companies purchase these) to get a quote. They still run ~$7 even in bulk and burn you alive on shipping. Ultimately decided just to build something. What you have here looks great!
I’d really like to know where to buy the heavier polystyrene in sheets (the core stuff you mention). I really like my Lyson 6-frame boxes, and they have toys, whistles, latches etc. But something similar could be built for less, particularly just the boxes. Thanks for posting.
;tldr; You get what you pay for.
I've got a few of the Lyson 6 framers, love them. 6 frames, follower, can be used for 2x3 for mating queens over the season, then 1x6 frames for wintering a tiny colony which we refer to as 'spare queen' in March. They have ventilation cutouts, and plugs to fit those cutouts. They came with assembled frames, and the big plus, top feeder. I paid the equivalent of $35usd each for them. We first saw them at Apimondia in Montreal and I ordered 5 to try them out over the 2020 season, they worked well enough I ordered 20 more for spring 2021. 25 of those units will allow me to mate 50 queens per round in the styro boxes, with more in the 4 ways.
For a mating nuc, if it's something you plan on using once in a season, then a jury rig box from scraps is probably ok, and, all the 'fiddling details' probably dont matter to you. We will place our first round of cells around May 1, then continue placing cells into the nucs thru till end of July. With the lyson, for the last round I move the follower to make it a 6 frame unit, then that colony stays in the unit till the spring. IMHO, the lyson units with the top feeder pay off in a big way when it's time to put on feed. If you want to see robbing in a big way, go thru a line of 20 or 30 tiny nucs where you have to lift off the lid to put in the feed during a dearth. You will see a frenzy at the little ones as the larger colonies realize there is syrup available there. With the lyson mini plus units, I lift the lid and only expose the top feeder for a few seconds while I pour in syrup, we dont expose the bees. We dont get a massive round of robbing starting. We are feeding the mating nucs all thru the season, so this is a big deal for us, and I credit the top feeders as playing a big part in our success rates mating queens. Between the styro and the 4 way boxes I have here, we did over a hundred queens this year, and only one of them was not mated and laying 2 weeks after placing the cell. That one was mated and laying a week later.
There are a couple of big differences I have found between my 4 way boxes and the little styro mini plus units. In the 4 way I have to look on 5 half size frames to find a queen. With the mini plus, while it's split, I just have to look at three, so it's much more time effient on my part. Likewise for feeding. With the mini plus, lift the lid and pour syrup into the top feeder to feed both halves. With the 4 ways, I have to take the lid off a bottle fill it and put the lid back on for each quadrant. Sometimes I have to fuss with unplugging the holes in the lid as they have got plugged up with propolis.
In getting things ready for winter, we have historically used jar feeders on the 4 way boxes, and those are a PITA to refill constantly. The top feeder on the lyson units made the job trivially easy, but also inspired me to try something different on one of the 4 way boxes. I use a shim for wintering, it's made of 1x2 and we pack damp sugar in over the frames using the winter shim, usually in early October. This year I put the shim on one of them in early September, then a pie plate with straw on top of the frames inside the shim, fed them by simply pouring syrup into the pie plate. No more fussing with lids and plugged holes on jar feeders, worked really well, going to do that with all of them next year.
Wintering mating nucs we have always had excellent winter survival, over the last 4 years, any mating nucs with a live colony on Nov 1 has had a live colony at the end of March. The timeframe we do have attrition is September and October, inevitably some of the small units succumb to wasp predation. With the little 6 frame units, in a case like that I can take the box and stack it on another one of the units then pour the feed to them. The bees will protect the comb over the winter, and in the spring expand to populate both boxes, so they will be populated again by the time we are ready to start placing cells. The ability to stack the boxes is a big help when it comes to populating or re-populating some of these units.
I guess where this long ramble ended up, for me at least, it's a case of 'you get what you pay for'. There is just no way I can assemble an inuslated box, 6 frames, follower and top feeder for the equivalent of $35usd ($50cdn) to get the functionality I get from the mini plus units. Not sure what this years price will be, exchange rates are volatile these days so time will tell. Either way, once I've sold 2 queens out of one of those boxes, I've recovered the cost of the box and all the feed in there, with a little left over, and I will still be able to do 3 more rounds in it.
FWIW, this is what one of the mini plus units looked like on Oct 12 this year, the day I took off the top feeder and closed it for the winter. It wont get opened up now till mid February which is when we start our first round of spring feeding.
And yes, $28 x 12 is more than I probably want to invest at present. Thanks.
