[enjambres]

You are asking about several different scenarios.

For routine protection of the queen during inspections and manipulations a quiet box is just the thing. I teach my beginning students to use one from the get-go. I find them to be helpful whenever I am doing any kind of manipulation. Once the queen, and the frame she is on, is removed and safely contained within the quiet box, I can work more confidently to get what I need done. You can easily make one of these. You can use a nuc box, but a better solution is a proper quiet box that is slightly deeper than a regular box or a nuc boxes of standard depth. The extra depth adds a measure of safety and ease if there are festooning bees or burr comb.

For a push-in cage to immobilize the queen on a frame for short periods, you can easily make a 3.5 inch -4 inch square cage from a piece of #8 bee-proof screening. I make one for all my students and recommend they always keep it handy when the hive is open (I always do in my own yard because you never know when the need for it will come up.)

Or you can buy one of the round needle cages with woven threads that is used when doing queen marking. These are smaller, but sharper-pronged and you need to have a deft hand to apply one safely. I use these only when I will be marking a queen on the frame and need to immobilize her. I use homemade push-in cages if I just want to trap her but am willing to allow her to move around a bit.

For separating or isolating a queen to create brood break that's long enough to be mite-suppressing a more complicated set-up is needed. I've never attempted that as it seems like there are easier, less-disruptive ways ways to control mites.

All in all, though, the quiet box is my mainstay. I never have a frame out and propped against the hive, or hung on brackets. My frames are always in a box of some kind, or in my hands en route to one. I find this keeps things calmer, prevents robbing and buys me time to work as gently as I like to do, which inevitably also means more slowly. I do not subscribe to the slam-bam, get-in, get-out style of beekeeping. My girls don't like that very much.

Enj.

 

[enjambres]

ClareKate:

That's the same video where I learned about quiet boxes. And I am pretty unskilled in carpentry, as well.

Do you run all mediums? If so I think you could easily make one by buying a to-be-assembled deep wooden nuc box, and putting it together. Staple screen over the bottom for a floor, and then go to Home Depot or Lowes and buy enough 2" by 1" wood to make the two side runners and get them to cut the pieces to the exact dimensions of the long side. (They will do the cutting for free, I've discovered.)

I use a piece of black woven polypropylene weed barrier cloth for the cover (I think it's more breathable, anyway.) Buy a wooden dowel as a weight for the free end and attach it using a staple gun.

For the solid top, a piece of plywood would do. I don't use power saws, but have good luck with small hand saws cutting reasonably straight edges. Hinges are nice, but not necessary.

One of the unanticipated side benefits of beekeeping is that I have begun to be bolder about making things from wood. Last fall I trimmed down several dozen MannLake follower boards to fit my Betterbee boxes, taking off about 3/16ths inch from each side, a job several experienced woodworkers predicted would be tricky, even with power tools. I bought a thin dovetail hand saw, marked each side and stuck the boards upside down in a vise and had at them. The first few were nothing to brag about. But by the end of the job I was whipping right through them with quite satisfactorily straight edges.

The only snag would be if you run deep frames, as I do. For that reason I had to pay a woodworker to make my quiet boxes deep enough.

In a pinch you can just use a nuc box as a quiet box, even though it doesn't have enough extra depth to be safe for deep frames with queen cells or big festoons of bees. The idea behind the routine use of a quiet box vs. frames in the open is too valuable to let anything stop you from trying it out. I think you'll find it makes a difference.

Enj.