[jkellum]

Has anyone successfully ordered a small batch of these through alibaba. You can find them as low as 5$ there in small quantities. I only want to order 20 or so and really dont want to spend the 23$ each that mann lake wants for the small foam mating nucs. Its either this or i build my own small mating nucs and build a bunch of half medium frames. I like the Mini Plus type hives they use in europe. You can super them up and overwinter them as small colonies but i cant find that type on alibaba either.

 

[jigsaw]

Do you have a link?

 

[jkellum]

Here is a link to a search on alibaba. https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_en&CatId=&SearchText=mating+nuc

 

[msl]

my experance has been with shipping, its cheaper to order form ebay... the whole "shiping bridge" set up they have lowers the cost
figger on about $100 shipping per case when bought on aiaibaba and they allways seem to quote you a hire price per peice then the add

off season... oct, nov they are usaly around $12 shipped on ebay, this time of year around $16

 

[jkellum]

yea i knew shipping would be a killer they are just gonna be bulky in case quantity. Im using deep queen castles now to handle my mating but would like to have some minis to have some extra mating space. Im still on the fence I might just build out a few medium supers worth of half frames and build some mating nucs to use those.

 

[Absinthe]

if you find it on alibaba look for it on AliExpress that is usually where someone buys a whole load of them and sell them at a profit, but the price won't be too bad relative to Alibaba. Then you can try Ebay, that's where people buy stuff cheap from AliExpress and sell them at a profit

 

[jkellum]

i forgot about aliexpress. in all seriousness i will probably build my own based on half medium frames.

 

[JConnolly]

Im still on the fence I might just build out a few medium supers worth of half frames and build some mating nucs to use those.

That ended up being the route that I took. I converted to 8 frame (because geezer back) so I had an excess of 10 frame medium supers. I converted one of them to a quad mini with half frames, will most likely convert another.

 

[jkellum]

I think i have decided to just add some of the mann lake grow out boxes and frames to my next order. Rolling my honey sales into new medium supers for next year, Deep supers of honey are just killing my back. I used these last 2 years to get my deep frame count up for this years nuc growth. Im gonna give my nucs drawn combs to build up before winter and then use medium honey supers for next year.