# Mini nuc percentages



## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Southern_Sun said:


> I was wondering if there are any tricks to getting the percentage up on them... any ideas on site location, site size, strength of nucs when made up etc etc would be much appreciated.
> 
> Thanks


I've found that if the mini-nucs are too strong, the % goes down. 75% seems to be about the average, even for large producers. I was at about 60% or even less until I stopped making them up too strong. Had a couple high 80s this summer. Also, remove bees and/or brood after catching the queen...if you think they are getting too strong.


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## HVH (Feb 20, 2008)

Oldtimer said:


> I'm also not grafting but using cut cell, which gives a higher mating % so it's all pretty simple.


Do you mean a higher rate of emergence or mating? If mating, can you explain?


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

>>What reason for a lower % when too strong? Absconding?

Mostly they will raise their own cell and kill my virgin when she emerges.

A standard box divided into 3 nucs of 3 frames each, with removable division boards. Quite simple they can be united for the winter then split up again, no more hassling around with tins of bees and trying to keep lots of baby nucs just right.[/QUOTE]

I do the same, but my minis are 4 way with 4 mini combs. I unite in August and winter in doubles with 8 mini combs.


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## Southern_Sun (Jun 25, 2008)

Cheers for the responses guys.. We find that the mini's are good for matings early in the season as they use less resources and we have no problems with finding enough bees, I can accept the lower percentage but 60% just seems to low to rely on.. How big are the yards that you guys are running them in? How many drone supply hives and other hives in near proximity? 

Our full depth nucs are 1 box halved with a removable division though we are thinking of setting up some that run smaller frames divided evenly into quarters aswell.

Thanks again


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

I made up ten mini-nucs. They were not strong. They had four little frames and a fifth frame was a feeder. When I first made them up I cut sections of comb honey to fit in a frame, the remaining frames I inserted one inch wide starter strips of beeswax foundation. I installed ripe queen cells, then added about one and a half cups of nurse bees. The queens emerged, the bees built some comb, then when the queens went on their mating flights all the bees in the mini-nucs would go with them, none of them ever returned.

I thought, "this couldn't happen again". I was wrong, I tried it two more times, and never got a single mated queen to return to a mini-nuc. [I suppose I seeded my local area with Cordovan Italian queens. I hope that is true. It would be nice if they are out there producing Cordovan drones.] I had plans to make a hundred more mini-nucs. I outfitted a super to hold mini-nuc frames to grow them in a full-size hive.

I gave up on mini-nucs and stuck with 5-frame medium nucs. All my hives and nucs use medium frames, so it is easier to locate frames with resources to build nucs with. I have many more queens mate and return to my 5-frame medium nucs, than did in my mini-nucs. Bye bye mini-nucs.


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

We run 5,000 duplex minis per mating yard and provide 50 drone hives and 62 cell builders on each location. 

We use feeders for the first 2 cycles each year, after that we place a frame of honey inplace of the feeder.

Our percentages stay in the mid 90s, its all about timing so that once the queens have mated they only lay a small amount before you catch and re-plant. Temp has a lot to do with absconding as well, hotter areas that place these little nuks in full sun have lower rates because there are so few bees to control temp and humidity... a little afternoon shade goes a long way.

Of course we are in an area that hits the low 100s in summer and 10s in winter.


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## Velbert (Mar 19, 2006)

if you stocked your mini nuc with just frame of honey and foundation strips and a queen cell you will not get hardly any to stay but if you will place them in a dark cool room after placing in q-cell and keep them shut up until the end of the 3rd day after hatch they will mostly all stay put.


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

*part 1*



Oldtimer said:


> Please tell a little about how you raise your cells.


Well first and foremost our cell builders have been selectively bred for nearly 100 years. Those are our heaviest laying genetics and keep a steady population of around 100k per hive. With 8-10 deep frames of nurse bees hatching at any given time.

This is a Huge benefit to producing mass numbers of cells at once. 

Our grafting is all done dry, by members of our family who start learning and practicing very early (my father was 9, I was 7, my daughters were 6. lol), and a few select bee keepers from Russia and the Ukraine that are learning our practices in order to teach bee keepers of their countries when they return home.

See next post...


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

*Part 2*

We use primer nuks (one frame of honey "either uncapped or scored with a hive tool to make it runny", and one frame of solid pollen, and about 3 lbs of young nurse bees in a 5 frame swarm box with a screened bottom) like most others do, however, we do not have to wait 24 hrs before we can place a frame of cells in them (the younger the bees the less this is a concern).

We prep our cell builders by pulling 4 good frames of uncapped brood to the upper brood chamber and moving loose honey and pollen closer to the area right above where the cell frame will be placed.

24 hrs after the cells were placed in the nuk, we place the cell frame into the cell builder and return the other frames and poor the bulk of nurse bees directly on top of the cell frame.

See next post...


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

*Part 3*

9 days after the graft was made, we pull the cells and plant them in the mating nuks of that same location. 15 days later, we catch and re-plant. 

From Feb-Oct we follow an extremely strict schedule, one good rain on the wrong day can hurt us greatly. 

At the end of our queen season we stop grafting and begin allowing the mini nuks to pull their own cells...those that do not get shaken into the air and their frames put into special supers and placed on hives to be protected for the next year... Those that do, we will catch the queens and use them to requeen our "package producing" hives.

50 drone hives per 5,000 queen nuks, with one drone frame per hive and great layers to keep them coming strong...and carefully chose the genetics of your drone hives...we include one ferral drone hive per yard (Our ferral strains are moved to "safe zones" far away from any others when not not in use so we can keep them as un-altered as possible, and have been doing so for 50+ years).

Hope this helps!


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

*Part 4...*

Thought I might should add that our mini-nuks are medium in depth and only hold 3 frames per side (they are duplexes). My father came up with the design in the 50s after receiving an order for 10,000 queens (that was a TON of queens back then) from the Jordan government who was working to better their native bees.

The frames are about half the length of a standard frame, so medium supers with a center rails work great for storing 20 of these frames per hive for winter.

When we stock these nuks, we shake our bees into 30 lb sized packages with a sliding cover over a large hole in the top, the we give each nuk 2 frames of wax (we take the special supers off early and let the bees rob any honey out of them first), a feeder with 1:1 sugar syrup, and a #2 "soup can" scoop of bees. Then we keep the doors closed for 24 hrs and open them as we plant the cells.

Hope this helps!


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Oldtimer said:


> Hmmm.... Very interesting.
> 
> There's a few things I'm not understanding:-
> 
> ...


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Oldtimer said:


> Hmmm.... Very interesting.
> 
> Then to the cell builders, tell me if I understand this right, the grafted larve are put into a 5 frame swarm box, how many cells? Then, 24 hours later they are put into cell finishers? I'm assuming the finisher is 2 boxes with queen below & cells above? How many cells go into the finisher? You dump the bees from the swarm box into the finisher?
> 
> ...


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Oldtimer said:


> Hmmm.... Very interesting.
> 
> 15 days after planting the cells in the mating nucs, you catch and re plant, just what does that mean? And if you mean what I think you mean, what is the rational behind doing this?


Our queens hatch from the cells on the 10th day after grafting...we have this process down quite well, calculating weather, temp, and humidity along with the genetics of each individual queen that was used for grafting, we can judge the hatch time within about a half hour. So we plant an hour before hatching, then allow 15 days for breeding and to allow her enough time to lay the inside of two frames.

From graft to laying queen...24-25 days.


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Oldtimer said:


> Hmmm.... Very interesting.
> 
> you catch and re plant, just what does that mean? .


We make waves of grafts each coordinating with the catch dates of the preceeding queens...So when we are catching queens, we are planting cells that will hatch within the hour to replace the queens that we take. 

Note: As I said before, Over 125 years of hard work and great devotion has gone into the genetics of these bees. The genetics of our cell builders, drone hives, and grafting queens all play key rolls in our rates and our production cababilities. Scheduling is a key factor, but stock selection and developement over time is the most important part of queen rearing.

Hope this helps!


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Oldtimer said:


> Are the empty cells left in a hive for a time before being grafted into? and what % take would you consider normal?
> 
> Your cell builder setup, the queen is in the bottom box under an excluder, there are another two boxes of brood on top, then maybe a couple boxes of honey. Where in the hive do you put the cells? Once the cells are capped will you add more day old cells, and if not why not?


1. We do not prime empty cells. A little tip about using new grafting equipment: smoke is a smell that a well worked colony will be quite accustomed to, when using brand new grafting frames and cells a few light puffs from your smoker before you place the frame in the swarm box will provide a safe cover for and put the nurse bees at ease.

2. 90% is an acceptable take, any less than that and we start looking for the reason and try make adjustments to correct it. If bad weather is a factor, we may be more understanding, but if the hive produces more than 1 "less than 90" take, we will cull it for the rest of the season and only use it for practice grafts (queens from these grafts are donated to universities).

3. The queen is in the bottom deep, bellow the excluder. We usually place the cells in the next deep and place the third deep on top of that. If we are pressed and are pulling 2 cell frames in each builder we will place the 2nd one directly on above the 1st in the third deep.

4. We rotate builders on each cycle. On the ninth day we pull the cell frames to be planted and we remove the excluder and put the hive back in order. This gives the queen a chance to lay the upper two deeps again.


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## Merlyn Votaw (Jun 23, 2008)

Would someone please explain the difference between a mini-nuc and a full size nuc? I have still got a lot to learn about beekeeping and may never learn it all.


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

Full-size nucs use standard frames, usually from two to six and either medium or deep frames; mini-nucs use specialized frames that are smaller than standard frames. Mini-nucs are generally used exclusively to mate and hold queens. Standard nucs are more multi-purpose, they can be used to raise, mate, and hold queens, but they can also be used as starter colonies, and various other purposes.

There are many and various designs of mini-nucs that use a wide variety of frame sizes, none are standard sizes that would fit in a "standard hive". Full-size nuc frames will fit into standard sized supers.


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## Pugs (Jul 15, 2004)

The frames in a mini-nuc are usually 1/2 to 1/3 the length of a regular frame. 

Uses fewer bees when one is mating queens.

Pugs


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Oldtimer said:


> Russell that is awesome information. It is the best stuff i have read on this forum!
> 
> I was a full time queen breeder also but you've still given me some new ideas and things to try. Not many people can do that.
> 
> ...


You are welcome. Yes. Actually we maintain seperate base lines ie...Base Yellow Itallian, Carniolan, Buckfast, Russian, & Feral, along with numerous hybrid generations, and our distinct lines such as our Sunkist, Moonbeams, etc..

The only lines that we do not develope a varrora resistance in is the base and low-gen-hybrids.

All of our sale queens have a good resistance, and we work year round on further resistance projects to build effective means of pest and disease control, without the need for chemicals.


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## gennetika (Aug 31, 2010)

Michael Palmer said:


> >>What reason for a lower % when too strong? Absconding?
> 
> Mostly they will raise their own cell and kill my virgin when she emerges.
> 
> Michael, i've experienced this thing you comment, but i don't quite understand why bees do this, i normally catch my queen today and tomorrow (24 hours later) as the books say, i put a queen cell, but by some circumstance i open my mating nuc several days later and i found several queen cells built by the bees and no presence of the virgin, however she was correctly emerged. I've noticed this in some batches of queens, but in others, bees seem to behave as the books say. anyone knows why bees prefer sometimes to built their own queencells rather than accept yours and he virgin??


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

gennetika said:


> Michael Palmer said:
> 
> 
> > >>What reason for a lower % when too strong? Absconding?
> ...


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Again, its all about timing and genetics... You have to time your catch perfectly...

1. If the queen that you are catching has not laid enough eggs, the bees may be frantic enough to chew the cell open...

2. If she has laid too well the bees may reject the new queen as inferior...

You have to time the catch to match the available brood space of your nuk and plant the cell accordingly.

We plant our cells WHILE catching our queens, but again, we have this timing down pat... The queen that we catch has laid just the right amount of eggs to keep the bees "busy but unfulfilled", and the cell that we are planting will hatch within the hour of our planting it.

This way there is no interruption to the "slow pace" production that we wish to maintain in the nuk. There are eggs present when the cell goes in, but not so many that there is no "need for improvement"... There is enough time for the cell to be accepted, but not so much time that the bees feel anxious.

Lastly, the cells need to be "great" cells from a strong builder. The bees can tell quite well if you replace a great queen that has the genetics and the size to lay a strong hive with a poor cell or one from a strugling gene pool.

Hope this helps!


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Michael Palmer said:


> gennetika said:
> 
> 
> > Yes, exactly. The bees prefer their own virgins that are 2 weeks from emerging when one is already emerging. Should we place our queen cells later the same day, after catching the queens? Spivak told me it is probably a good thing not all the virgins we raise are accepted in the mating nucs. She believes the bees are getting rid of inferior queens. Quien Sabe?
> ...


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## gennetika (Aug 31, 2010)

rrussell6870 said:


> Michael Palmer said:
> 
> 
> > What size nuks are you using?
> ...


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

gennetika;577861 I've noticed that in a nuc with not many bees (not overcrowded) said:


> gennetika, I have found the same thing. Last summer my mating nucs were way too srtong. I removed bees twice making 20 pound swarms and starting new colonies. It did seem to help. This summer, I started my nucs much waeker than before. I had much less of this virgin rejection by the bees. Still some but much less. On the last catch in 1 of 4 groups there was much rejection. The nucs were much stronger by then. So, maybe preventing the mating nucs from getting so strong is part of the solution.


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

gennetika said:


> rrussell6870 said:
> 
> 
> > Russell,
> ...


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Oldtimer said:


> Hi Russell,
> 
> It's just the start of cell raising time in my part of the world, and I'll be doing the first graft in a week or so.
> 
> ...



First off, I hope all is well in your area! We heard about the massive quake and I remembered that you were in NZ and got worried that you may have been effected by it...

As far as the Carnis go... go for it. What you are looking for is a queen that will lay very heavily and early enough that your bulks will come while temps are still cool. In our area Feb is our coldest month, but March heats up fast, so I develope builders and package producers that are building up heavily in early Feb, so I can shake packages by late Feb, and start building cells at the same time.

If you are using a "Primer" nuk, you will want a ton of nurse bees to keep temps right and care for your cells...in lower temps go for about 3 lbs in a 5 frame nuk with one frame of open honey (or make about 5-7 deep lines through a capped frame with your hive tool and face that side toward your cell frame) and one frame that is heavy with pollun (also make sure that the heaviest side is facing your cell frame). Don't put any other frames in the nuk...just let the bulk of young nurse bees cluster tightly to the 3.

If the temp is higher, you will be fine with 1.5 lbs or so.

Your builder needs to have a ton of young bees hatching consistantly...No slacker queens!... she needs to be laying hatched cells quickly. This will produce a heavy amount of nurse bees to care for your cells, and will help the builder to repopulate quickly once you remove the excluder. Remember to put your excluder in place when you make your nuk, this will allow the upper brood chamber to hatch with out direct contact with the queen thus making your nurse bees more appreciative of the cell frame when you place it in the upper chamber.

Good luck and again we hope that all is well!


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## fish_stix (May 17, 2009)

Oldtimer; I had the same problem this year with early emerging virgins. We also started pulling them on the 13th day. Wonder what gives? Never had that problem in the past.


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Oldtimer, 

We graft larvae on its 3rd day after the egg was laid. From the date of graft, our cells hatch in 10 days... thats 13 days from the date the egg was laid to the date of hatch... You are right about the extreme care speeding production, along with the instinctual needs of the hopeless colony. When I set up primers, I make sure to leave them with absolutely NO eggs or larvae that they could possibly use to develope their own queen out of... Provide plenty of runny honey and pollen... and a overwhelming number of nurse bees... this is the key to higher percentages, better cells, and fast production... 

ps... When you rear queens in hives that were under stress, you will find that the queens seem to create brood that compensate in some way to combat that certain form of stress... The queens that you have just produced should be slightly heavier layers than their mothers, if you pull stock from them selectively, you should find that in several generations you will have better queens to create your cell builder hives with... Good luck!


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## beekuk (Dec 31, 2008)

Deleted


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## chillardbee (May 26, 2005)

I've been waiting to see Jean-marc post to this thread since he's been using the mini styro as well. From what he has told me, it has me pumped up to try this out since I would like to breed my own queens economically for requeening. So until he does i'll try tell you how he does it and this will likely be the way I'll try it.

By JM's estimate, a pallet (4 hives) all strong can stock up to about 120-130 minis. basically a soda can full of bees is enough for each. Each nuc is stocked with a cell and given feed. Then they are locked up (confined) and kept in the barn for the first 3-4 days (the cell will hatch during this time). Afterwards he sets them out and opens the entrance. He has told me he has had pretty good results with that, what the % is, well, hopefully he'll post.

Something else about our local. Our weather isn't very hot in the spring time and for the most part, the queens will be reared during this time. As a matter of fact, I hope to rear queens at the earliest time possible which will depend on the amount of mature drones available more than anything.


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

I keep getting a lot of questions that I believe this thread answers. So I decided to post to it again to bring it back to the top of the list.

Hope it helps!


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## jrbbees (Apr 4, 2010)

bump bump.


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## chillardbee (May 26, 2005)

Thanks russel. Maybe JM will see this and post and reply, eventually. Unfortunatley, my plans to buy some minis fell through. hopefuly at some point I'll a couple hundred to try.


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