# Styro Mini Mating Nuc



## Ian

I like these little mating units except the feeder was simply a pain in the butt. So we cut the feeders out and was able to get 2 more frames in each unit. Two more frames for space made maintenance of these units easier. During cell transfer we can add a foundation frame during flows to help direct resources into usefulness. We lather creamed honey into one of the outside frames during dearth for feed. 
No more finding comb filled with honey built into the feed area and while realizing she's in in under there...


----------



## tpope

Thanks for the tips.


----------



## Matt903

Ian thanks for the info and the picture. I am in the middle of changing my queen rearing operation, considering going to some type of mini mating nucs. Right now I am all queen castles, but they take a lot of resources, especially as the operation is starting to grow, and I would like to begin to sell more queens. I can't decide on which type to go with, any suggestions you or anyone who uses mini mating nucs, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks and hope I didn't hijack the thread.


----------



## Ian

Cup full of bees, a cell, bit of feed and time. These minis work pretty slick


----------



## Ian

Aside from the raccoons and skunks,I find ants are the biggest problem when running minis. These small colonies can not defend against any kind of ant invasion. 
So moving the units up ontop of a stand allows for ant control. We dust the base, and we spray the pole. 
Those little buggers will even walk up a tree and back down onto leaf touching the minis and strip it of their resources !


----------



## Ben Little

There is a new beekeeping store in my area and they sell a german made mini nuc that you can remove the little feeder and insert 2 more frames if you want and it also has a super you can put on top if you want to try and over winter it, price is less than mann lake > http://www.golden-green.ca/bee-supply/mini-mating-nucs/galery/ I am going to try some of them out this year along side the mann lake ones .


----------



## Father Time

How are they in the heat? It can get in the upper 80s in TN in April and a few 90 deg days in may.


----------



## ruthiesbees

I struggle to be successful with mine. Have tried it with drawn comb in the 3 frames with a cup of bees and queen cell and have not had good luck. Once I moved one of my 2014 queens over to it to "hold" her, and they took off.

I'm using mine around June when the natural nectar flow is over. Do you only use your during the spring nectar flow?


----------



## Ian

Father Time said:


> How are they in the heat? It can get in the upper 80s in TN in April and a few 90 deg days in may.


Shade can help, I have many in the sun


----------



## Ian

ruthiesbees said:


> t to "hold" her, and they took off.


Try stocking the mini and setting them out away from other beehives, this way they have no choice but take to the nuc.
I place my minis down a mile of one of our back field roads. Then after a few days I will take them to my mating yards and place cells. I have had great luck


----------



## tpope

I love the stands. Thanks for sharing.
Does having brood in the frames help versus just drawn comb? How about honey filled? I have enough to fill my mating nucs left on a hive. I am trying to decide my best option.


----------



## Ben Little

I bought some pseudo queen strips to use in my minis, just hope it helps a bit to hold the bees in there to build a bit of comb while the cell is hatching


----------



## Juhani Lunden

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boK7I0Z-ppk


----------



## Ian

I set my starter up in the bottom box, lots of shook bees, with the capped brood frames (very little open brood) pollen frames beside the 2 graft frames , honey, foundation and a feeder. I like the starter in the bottom box because when set up typically there is a flood of fresh pollen that packs the bottom unit. I set them up a day before graft, with a solid board between the bottom and the Queen rite top. The third day after graft I'll merge the two using and excluder. 
The day we harvest the cells we hunt for emergency cells. The colony is then set up again to take grafts later that week. 

Lots of work but effective and simple. 
I have a yard of 10-15 starter finishers to handle the daily graft through the split. Then I send them all to the honey fields except for 2 which handle my weekly graft throughout the rest of the season.


----------



## AstroBee

Okay, off topic, but what's with the perfectly white bee suit? I thought you were a grizzled old beekeeper. My suit gets dirtier than that just getting out of the truck :lpf:


----------



## grozzie2

AstroBee said:


> Okay, off topic, but what's with the perfectly white bee suit?


That looks like the vented suit from beemaid, I bought a couple last summer. They stayed nice and clean thru the last half of the season last year, surprising it was. Had them on yesterday putting on the first round of spring supplement, was the first nice day after 2 weeks of incessant snow. They have lots of 'relief flight' tracks on them now, the days of clean bee suits for us are over it seems....


----------



## Ian

AstroBee said:


> Okay, off topic, but what's with the perfectly white bee suit? I thought you were a grizzled old beekeeper. My suit gets dirtier than that just getting out of the truck :lpf:


Lol
I have a washing machine in the honey house. I wash all my employees beesuits every night. 
But ya, I buy my guys new suits every year, I use the old patched suits til they are unusable...grizzled looking beekeeper indeed ha ha , but not old lol


----------



## Ben Little

I need to raise 5-600 queens a year for requeening and nucleus colonies, what is the better way to invest my time and money ? With mini nucs or just putting cells into 6 frame nucs and pull the queens for 2 or 3 rounds ? The seasons are so short that it is hard to figure out what the best investment is. I absolutely hate imported queens but they are necessary for early splits rather than using my winter nucs. 
Maybe a mixture would be best ?? I don't mind investing in queen rearing equipment but I am tired of throwing money away on unnecessary equipment.
I don't have many mini nucs because I didn't have the need for them at the time but this year is my year to start rather than buy local queens, pollination season for blueberries is gone to pieces right now and I have to spend wisely. I usually have to replace the imported queens, so it's just a no brainer to stop buying them.


----------



## ABruce

May I ask about the timing and how you get the comb built out on these mini frames? Do you put new foundation in with the queenless nuc? Or when you add queen cells or? 
I assume you let the cell hatch then let the queen breed and start producing then catch her and transfer her, Can you keep such a small nuc going and then add another queen cell and do it again?

thanks


----------



## Ian

I love the minis because of the small amount of bees needed to maintain them, but I curse them too. If you are anything like me, you will have a hard time pulling a queen from a nicely started nuc.

Ben, you and I are a lot alike, 
My questions exactly

Maybe looking at this equation from a different angle as I did. We have a very short season. Bring those new queen into your operation with nucs. 

Split off your hives into 1 or 2 frame nucs , build them using cells. Manage them through the season which ever way you like, winter them, then in spring pinch off your old hive queens and drop a nuc into them. 

Get a multi queen unit going, yield enough honey to cover your costs. 

It's what I'm doing here :thumbsup:


----------



## Brad Bee

You guys ever over winter in the small mating nucs? I've got to figure out a way to have a sustainable amount of queens on hand. I'm tired of losing bees and I'm going to figure out how to stop that. I also don't want to get too large into bee keeping right now. I don't want more than 10 production hives, but I could easily handle 20-100 nucs. I just haven't figured out how to transition to that yet. I'd like to keep 10 hives or so making honey and make bees from the nucs. I'd rather sell bees than nucs, but I've got to make queens to do that and our flow is short enough that it's hard to make queens and have her head a nuc to sell that same year. Unless I mix and match frames of brood in the nucs and I'm not going to do that.


----------



## Ian

ABruce said:


> May I ask about the timing and how you get the comb built out on these mini frames? Do you put new foundation in with the queenless nuc? Or when you add queen cells or?
> I assume you let the cell hatch then let the queen breed and start producing then catch her and transfer her, Can you keep such a small nuc going and then add another queen cell and do it again?
> 
> thanks


These units build out comb extremely well if they have a bit of sugar on hand. Comb makes things easier. 

I cage my queens 18 days after hatch, which by then should have the nuc full of brood. The day after caging new cells are added.


----------



## Ian

Brad Bee, I have not wintered these small units but it sounds like an interesting project. As long as I can get them through until End of April to when I'll have a place for them.


----------



## Ben Little

Ian said:


> I love the minis because of the small amount of bees needed to maintain them, but I curse them too. If you are anything like me, you will have a hard time pulling a queen from a nicely started nuc.
> 
> Ben, you and I are a lot alike,
> My questions exactly
> 
> Maybe looking at this equation from a different angle as I did. We have a very short season. Bring those new queen into your operation with nucs.
> 
> Split off your hives into 1 or 2 frame nucs , build them using cells. Manage them through the season which ever way you like, winter them, then in spring pinch off your old hive queens and drop a nuc into them.
> 
> Get a multi queen unit going, yield enough honey to cover your costs.
> 
> It's what I'm doing here :thumbsup:


I have 2 of the 6 frame nucs from Lewis & Sons and I like the idea of having a 3 queen system making honey and since I don't winter indoors, I am going to use 2 of the boxes to make them 12 frame nucs, the sloped bottoms are too big of an opening for my taste, so I will make a pallet for them instead, with drain holes like my other standard 4 ways.
It may sound funny to some but I think that the extra 2 frames and the configuration of them will be better than just wintering a single hive outside in a 10 frame box. I have wintered nucs for a few years and I had better survival with a 4 over 4 over 4 configuration , they were all fed to capacity and my 4 over 4 still had food in them but just didn't have the mass of bees I liked to see in the spring, since my nucs are the michael palmer style, they require a super for each, I like the theory of the double nuc but if I need to use one of them, I have too many bees left in the box because the bottom is joined together, so I think the 6 frame box will fix my problem and let me put 3 together instead of 2. 
I don't know who came up with the idea but I like it. I have 1600 feet of lumber that should be ready to be made into 400 of the boxes so I can run a couple of hundred, I am getting a wax dipping tank made so I don't have to worry much about rot. Freight cost is a killer when ordering for me, so I will invest some time into making them.
I think I will still run some mini nucs to have mated queens for a quick fix but I like your idea Ian, I do believe that wintering the nucs and dropping them in to requeen is a solid option and they would make a nice replacement for deadouts.

Thanks !


----------



## Ian

I find myself getting caught in that "hive number trap" all the time. 
Right now I'm steady at 1200 hives, so I went and made a bunch of nucs with surplus bees (that my patties made) with the notion to execute exactly what I posted above...
Yet here I still sit, and count 1500 hives in my shed instead of 1200 hives plus 300 queens and re-enforcements...
And here I have 200 hives for sale ! , and I'll be nursing some old queens along this summer ,
If I want this strategy to work I'm going to have to execute my plan at least one year. 
Fresh queens is the key


----------



## ethanhogan

Ian where did you purchase you mini mating nucs and supplies??


----------



## ethanhogan

Also, once you get up to around 100+ mini mating nucs, at the end of the season do you guys shake these bees into nucs with a queen and over winter in a Nuc, or just cut mine them all into single deeps??


----------



## Ian

Check out www.beemaid.com

I buy my mini's from Mike


----------



## Ian

I use hatch boxes like this to finish up the season. Brood hatches out, and I then Prime the frames with syrup to make them ready for next season


----------



## snl

Ian said:


> I use hatch boxes like this to finish up the season. Brood hatches out, and I then Prime the frames with syrup to make them ready for next season


One breeder I know, leaves a queen in each box with his, overwinters them, then when he goes to plant cells the next year, he pulls the queen, loads these into his mating nucs and now has a mating nuc with bees and brood. He sometimes adds add'l bees to the nuc, but the brood anchors them.


----------



## Ian

Sounds like a winning strategy 
I have winter length here that might not allow such a practice but I think maybe I'll try this next fall


----------



## ethanhogan

I am in zone 5 so I will be similar to Ian's method for overwintering!


----------



## tpope

snl said:


> One breeder I know, leaves a queen in each box with his, overwinters them, then when he goes to plant cells the next year, he pulls the queen, loads these into his mating nucs and now has a mating nuc with bees and brood. He sometimes adds add'l bees to the nuc, but the brood anchors them.


I have my mini frames on a hive so that I'll have brood and honey available for my queen rearing. Thanks for sharing!


----------



## Juhani Lunden

snl said:


> One breeder I know, leaves a queen in each box with his, overwinters them,




The smallest ones are labourous, beacause of constant loading and unloading. Somewhat bigger, like the ones in picture, can easlily overwinter in severe winter conditions. I usually overwinter them two story high. No treatments for over 8 years.


----------



## BernhardHeuvel

I run 200 mini mating nucs (Apidea) and 250 Warré hives as mating nucs. I use the mini mating nucs for spare queens and for sale.



Juhani Lunden said:


> The smallest ones are labourous, beacause of constant loading and unloading.


I don't load and unload them all the time. I start all my hives, and the mini nucs, too, with mated laying queens. Just a cup of bees and an old queen, that was sorted out from the production hive. In Spring that is. She may be old, but sure she will lay enough eggs for a mini. This way, a failure is almost impossible. In contrary to starting them with only a ripe cell. 

Once the broodnest is going in that mini nuc, and it has enough pollen and honey, I swap over the old queen into another mini nuc to start. The ready mini nuc receives a ripe cell. This way the young queen emerges into a solid and nice broodnest with all: young bees, pollen and honey. That makes sure, that you get quality queens. (In contrary to old bees, no comb, no pollen, no honey...).

Once the first sets of mini nucs are up and running, you can take out one drawn frame with bees and comb and all from three mini nucs, to make another mini nuc. Ready to go and receive a queen cell. No more loading necessary.



Ian said:


> we cut the feeders out and was able to get 2 more frames in each unit....
> No more finding comb filled with honey built into the feed area and while realizing she's in in under there...


The Apideas do have a queen excluder between brood area and feeder. So no queen can get there. I leave the feeder in, even if they fill it with honey combs, because this way I only need to look through three frames instead of five to find the queen. Much quicker. 



Ian said:


> I wash all my employees beesuits every night.


What is a bee suit? Time to get decent bees, no suit necessary then.



Ian said:


> Brood hatches out, and I then Prime the frames with syrup to make them ready for next season


I didn't have much luck reusing old mini nuc combs. You can't easily scoop the bees into the mini when starting, because the comb is in the way. That means you need too much time to load those minis. The Apidea is great, because you flip them over and load the bees from below through a drawer. That's super-quick. 

Mini nucs (Apidea from Switzerland especially) are producing great queens if you care for plenty of young bees, pollen and honey. Spare queens all the time at hand. That is priceless.


----------



## BernhardHeuvel

I always keep in mind, what Brother Adam said: a young queen has to be born into paradise. Into the plentifulness. :thumbsup:

Apidea crammed with bees and honey.









Young bees and a functioning broodnest are guarantees for a good queen.









Two poles and two boards make a bench, where I put the Apideas onto. 









Side by side, but entrances facing the other sides alternately. Also I use entrance marks as shown in another thread, so queens coming back from a mating flight better find their way home. 









This is a transportation rack, that is how they send the queen to mating stations or onto an island for mating. Can be used in your own mating yards, too. You can buy them ready to go. See an example pic: http://www.holtermann-shop.de/images/product_images/popup_images/6192_1.jpg









Loading Apideas.









The Apideas are loaded through the bottom. Simple slide the bottom drawer back and fill in the bees. Apideas is flipped over onto it's roof to do this. Pretty handy. Can't be done with drawn comb, though.









My daughter and me working some Apideas.


----------



## BernhardHeuvel

Most professionals in Germany use the MiniPlus system. I stick to my Warré hives calling them "MaxiPlus", because the Warré hives are slightly bigger. 

Anyway, they produce high quality queens since there is more honey, more pollen and more bees in those units. They can care for a young queen much better than in a mini nuc.





































Better wintering, rapid Spring buildup and you can split them like mad to make new mating units. Wintered on two stories, split into half leaving eight combs for each unit. Later you take four combs out of eight to go into a new mating nuc. You use them similarly like the MiniPlus system.


----------



## Juhani Lunden

BernhardHeuvel said:


> I don't load and unload them all the time. I start all my hives, and the mini nucs, too, with mated laying queens. Just a cup of bees and an old queen, that was sorted out from the production hive. In Spring that is. She may be old, but sure she will lay enough eggs for a mini. This way, a failure is almost impossible. In contrary to starting them with only a ripe cell.


I meant loading in spring and unloading in autumn.

Sometimes only two rounds in one Finnish summer...


----------



## BernhardHeuvel

Hah, I am glad being a bit more South and in a warm climate, even compared to the rest of Germany. But on the other hand we have too many people here, no wilderness at all. Makes life not easier for the bees.


----------



## Ian

>>What is a bee suit? Time to get decent bees, no suit necessary then.<<

Lol sure thing man, I guess your one of those "you wear a bee suit,?" Beekeepers. 
I work my hives everyday, I pull a veil overhead because I don't like to get stung in the face. I hire teenage kids, I get more work out of suited beekeepers than non suited beekeepers... naturally 
I like using those hooded jackets, quite comfortable. 



>>didn't have much luck reusing old mini nuc combs. You can't easily scoop the bees into the mini when starting, because the comb is in the way. <<

Bernhard these minis have drawers underneath which slide open to allow stocking from underneath. I just pour the bees in. It's nice using drawn comb.


----------



## Ian

To stock the minis I try to shake in at least a couple cups to get them going. While working the yards I'll shake off some surplus strength from boomers. I use a planter pot, hole cut on one side. Simply tap tap tap a few frames into the pot then shake the bees out of the planter pot through the hole into the mini. 
Very quick and slick


----------



## AstroBee

Wow, great thread. Fantastic pictures too. Thanks to all who have contributed.


----------



## grozzie2

BernhardHeuvel said:


> What is a bee suit? Time to get decent bees, no suit necessary then.


Right up until you hire an employee, at which time it becomes required by law that employees are provided with appropriate protective equipment. Not providing bee suits for employees working hives opens one to huge liability concerns.


----------



## Ian

grozzie2 said:


> Right up until you hire an employee, at which time it becomes required by law that employees are provided with appropriate protective equipment. Not providing bee suits for employees working hives opens one to huge liability concerns.


I guess I work the law and practicality lol


----------



## ethanhogan

Ian are the minis with the drawers from mike at bee maid and does anyone have any us sources for these? I have looked but all are from over seas. Ian are you using mann lake styro minis, apidea, or beemaid? Or all of the above ? Ha


----------



## grozzie2

Ian said:


> Brad Bee, I have not wintered these small units but it sounds like an interesting project. As long as I can get them through until End of April to when I'll have a place for them.


I built my mini's a little differently last summer. Divider in a deep with 20 half size frames. I've got follower boards that let me set it up as 10 frames on one side, or split the side to make 2 units of 5 frames each. To build them out, middle of July last year I did a shook swarm. This is what they were looking like a few days later:-



I didn't bother with foundation, just starter strips on the half size frames. We built a 1 inch shim for this setup, and in October I packed the shim with damp sugar. For the first winter test, I left them set up with one colony on each side of the divider, 10 mini frames for each. We started our spring bee work this week, and both sides have a viable colony working in there. Next winter the experiment will be to keep it split 4 ways, and have 4 queens in for the winter.

I wanted a little more room than the tiny minis for each unit, I think they will hold longer and I cant always work in a tight schedule. I was also thinking the larger frames makes it feasable to try wintering these units, and so far it's worked. We often find a drone layer when we do the first round of checking brood in March, in years gone past that's been a death sentence for the colony because we cant get mated queens at that time of year. Going forward the plan is, we'll always have some spare laying queens in the 4 ways, so that's a problem that just goes away. A happy side effect of wintering a few in these units, they will already be populated with bees and brood when it's time to start planting cells.

The only real problem I had getting this setup going was to get comb in the foundationless mini frames the first time around. I set the box on top of a fairly strong colony to start, but they didn't go up and start building comb. ofc, with the odd size frames, it wasn't possible to bring up a bait frame. After wasting 3 weeks that way I got frustrated, and did a shook swarm from that same colony into the setup with a feeder on. they went to town and started building comb like gangbusters at that point.


----------



## Ian

ethanhogan said:


> Ian are the minis with the drawers from mike at bee maid and does anyone have any us sources for these? I have looked but all are from over seas. Ian are you using mann lake styro minis, apidea, or beemaid? Or all of the above ? Ha


I actually have no idea. Mike at www.beemaid.com will help you out for sure
They are tucked away. I just call them my minis


----------



## Ian

G, I know of guys here that do exactly that. They will let the queen wander up and lay all through his mating frames and then simply strip the boxes, assembly line sort into the mating boxes and send them out to the mating yards with cells to start off the season.

It's a fantastic idea but I'm not organized enough to do this. Drop of the hat, shake 10-20 minis fits my bill a lot easier


----------



## tpope

What paint are you using on these mini nucs?


----------



## Ian

I just buy a bunch of off spec exterior spray paint. Looks like they need a new coating. 
For what it's worth...;
Blue boxes mate the best, followed by yellow and white. Greens typically suck... 
who knows..,


----------



## Ian

Picked up my incubator today, looks sweet


----------



## Ian




----------



## tpope

That's a nice looking incubator. GQF makes nice products.

I just gotta ask about the paint again. Is what you are using solvent or water based. I would hate to melt the minis I have. I will be using blue since you have recommended it.


----------



## Ian

Likely solvent , some of the cans are rust paint


----------



## Juhani Lunden

tpope said:


> I just gotta ask about the paint again. Is what you are using solvent or water based. I would hate to melt the minis I have. I will be using blue since you have recommended it.


I find minis painted with water based colours get mold more quickly and therefore they are hard to keep clean. Solvent based paint form harder surface, I suppose, mold does not stick to it so bad.


----------



## tpope

Juhani Lunden said:


> I find minis painted with water based colours get mold more quickly and therefore they are hard to keep clean. Solvent based paint form harder surface, I suppose, mold does not stick to it so bad.


I remember getting a styrofoam cup to put a bit of gasoline into to use on a wasp nest... the bottom melted before I could use it. I am leery of melting my nucs with paint. I guess that I'll have to just try what I have on a small area and see.


----------



## tpope

Thanks for the help Ian. Today I painted my styro minis with industrial Rustoleum brand paint. The paint was a bit old so I had to thin it with mineral spirits so that it would brush on. I had no issues with it trying to dissolve or haze the styro. The best part is that the paint is blue.


----------



## Ian

:thumbsup:


----------



## AstroBee

tpope said:


> industrial Rustoleum brand paint


Could you post a link to the paint you used? Getting clear information on which paint to use on these minis is difficult.

Thanks


----------



## tpope

AstroBee said:


> Could you post a link to the paint you used? Getting clear information on which paint to use on these minis is difficult.
> 
> Thanks


No problem.. I used the paint in a gallon can because it was what I was gifted. Rust-Oleum Stops-Rust Protective Enamel 
http://www.rustoleum.com/product-catalog/consumer-brands/stops-rust/protective-enamel

I do not know how well the paint will adhere to the styrofoam. Time will tell.


----------



## Ian

It doesn't adhere like wood, will need to spruce them up in a couple years


----------



## AstroBee

tpope said:


> No problem.. I used the paint in a gallon can because it was what I was gifted. Rust-Oleum Stops-Rust Protective Enamel
> http://www.rustoleum.com/product-catalog/consumer-brands/stops-rust/protective-enamel
> 
> I do not know how well the paint will adhere to the styrofoam. Time will tell.


Thank you!


----------



## Ian

Might be easier just to leave them white but I think the colour helps with orientation and it looks cool


----------



## Father Time

I have seen videos where they put a wad of suger in the mini nuc, at the start instead of suger surp. What is the resipe


----------



## MartinSzy

With all the Mating Nuc abilities. I like this Video the best. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL3HRd1n53g


----------



## tpope

The Rust-Oleum paint I used is weathering well. It adhered well. My only issue was getting some on the slide portion of the door. It makes it difficult to open.


----------



## fatshark

Father Time said:


> I have seen videos where they put a wad of suger in the mini nuc, at the start instead of suger surp. What is the resipe


Just seen this thread reappear ... I use sugar dampened with a little water or bakers fondant in my mini-nucs. Works well and no spillages when you move them.


----------

