# Mating nuc size?



## Saltybee (Feb 9, 2012)

I am working on improving my spotty queen rearing record. I have read pros and negatives on mini nucs as well as 3 & 4 frame nucs.

If I have the arguments correctly summarized, a mini nuc will on average have a lower successful mating percentage than a larger nuc. (Setting aside the rather big questions of feeding, timing, technique, and location.) On the plus side the lower success rate is offset by the lower commitment of resources. In simple economics a good plan.

This got me thinking of the queens who do not return to a mini nuc. Are some of these queens more inclined to a larger colony and try their luck at an occupied nuc or full hive? In nature there are more small hollow trees than large hollow trees. Wild bees would in theory try to occupy all available environments. Some inclined toward small cavities, fewer to large. In evolutionary theory the species would eventually split to separate species. (Man long ago interfered with that.)

Is it possible that small mating nucs and colonies are more natural? Michael Johnston's double nuc hive comes to mind.
If you desire a bee that is naturally comfortable in a conventional hive, shouldn't your entire breeding program be consistent with that goal? Use a large nuc?

If a conventional hive is not really a goal but a merely a means to reach a goal, is it somewhat of a falsity to select queens from only those few hives who are naturally inclined to succeed in an unnaturally large hive?

No answers just questions. Maybe I am only talking myself out of being a double deeper as a write this?


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## JD's Bees (Nov 25, 2011)

For a small scale beekeeper who wants to make a few nucs with their own cells I would recommend using a standard size, either deep or med frame. There is no reason to complicate things with smaller mini nucs and the like. 
If you are just getting into queen rearing recently then I would focus more on following whatever method to the tee, good populations, nutrition, choosing quality breeding stock, etc.
The best way to get good results is to get each step right.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

To me the issues are this:

With a mini mating nuc:
o you have to get the combs drawn
o have to feed them (and keep them from being robbed in the process)
o get the bees to stay in the nuc
o deal with all those combs at the end of the year.

with standard frames you:
o already have drawn combs
o can put open brood in so they will stay.
o can put capped honey in so you don't have to feed them.
o can combine them at the end of the year to make a colony or boost any weak colonies.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesqueenrearing.htm#matingnucs

Mine are all two medium frames.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

Mine are all medium frames too - but the ability to stock nucs with a cup or so of nurse bees would allow me to deploy a lot more mating nucs without decimating hives that I would like to make a honey crop from - and finding queens on them has to be quicker. So I've procured a few of those 1/2 size frames and mini nucs to play with this year.


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## fish_stix (May 17, 2009)

You don't decimate a hive by pulling out a couple frames of brood and some honey and pollen. If that decimates a hive then you probably shouldn't have split from it anyway. Until you need hundreds of queens at a time full size nucs make a lot more sense for all the reasons MB stated above. Much more versatile than trying to work with a bunch of mini-frames that you can't do anything else with.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

True, but coming up with resources to make up 30 or so mating nucs is another matter - wouldn't you agree.


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## canoemaker (Feb 19, 2011)

Using a divider, 20 half-sized frames will fit in a 10-frame medium super. In the spring, a strong colony can draw those frames and fill them with honey (if there is a flow) or with brood. They can then be used in mini-mating nucs. In the fall they can be returned to the 10-frame box with divider to bolster hives.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

I also suspect that it's better to give the minis a few tries to get a little experience with them instead of reaching some theashold and then diving in all at once with 150 or so. Maybe they won't really work for me, or maybe i'll like them alot. Only one way to find out though.


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## Flyer Jim (Apr 22, 2004)

I think I will have to go with fish stix and M B on this one. Uniformity is a good thing,or you end up with a shop full of junk that in the end goes on the burn pile.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I don't think people using mini mating nucs can imagine how quickly and easily I can put together 200 viable mating nucs and how quickly at the end of the season I can turn these into several strong colonies. Basically you decide what hives you want to break up (usually the ones that aren't doing that well or that badly) and a frame of honey and a frame of brood and a queen cell go into them and I'm done. I don't close them up, move them around, put in QMP, feed them or anything else. I'm done and I have a viable mating nuc instantly. At the end as I'm selling off queens, I start combining them either into colonies or nucs to winter. simply by putting them all in the same box with the brood together and the honey together. It is simple, direct and I don't have another kind of frame around. Two medium frames is a fairly small mating nuc anyway. I wouldn't want it any smaller.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I suppose I should also point out, I don't even put any extra effort into finding the queen in the hives I'm breaking up. I look at each frame once to see if I see a queen, and if I do I put it in a nuc with the queen and no cell. If I don't find the queen, in any of them they are all in mating nucs with cells. Maybe I waste one cell (or one queen if you want to look at it that way) but I don't waste my time piddling around looking for her.


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

For mating queens, I've tried mini mating nucs, two medium frame nuc condos, and three medium frame nuc condos. In the mini mating nucs, I had ten of them, it was easy to get them set up with their tiny frames, bees, brood, honey, and a little feeder, but after running cells and virgins through my ten mini nucs, three times, each time producing strong, but tiny little colonies with their pretty little virgin queens - which promptly when the virgin queens departed on their mating flights would take most of the adult workers with them - not a single one of which were ever seen again. I'm sure I made near thirty tiny little absconded colonies. I wonder how many actually survived out there in the wild. It was during a very strong flow - none were actually robbed out or even threatened by robbing. I prefer mating nuc condo's of three medium frames. Set up with one of emerging brood, one of honey/pollen, and one empty comb for the new queen to start laying in, and a queen cell. Two frames works pretty well, but for me, three works better. When I want to graduate a mating condo to a 5-frame nuc, it is faster with three than two.

I even mate some new queens in full size colonies, and full size nucs, but most in the three medium frame condo nucs, three compartment and some four compartment.


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## Saltybee (Feb 9, 2012)

canoemaker said:


> Using a divider, 20 half-sized frames will fit in a 10-frame medium super. In the spring, a strong colony can draw those frames and fill them with honey (if there is a flow) or with brood. They can then be used in mini-mating nucs. In the fall they can be returned to the 10-frame box with divider to bolster hives.


Thanks for the posts. I do take advice, just slowly. You people stay up too late for me.

Canoemaker, how many half mediums are you using for a nuc. Taking mini frames out of a functioning hive must give a more stable start to a nuc. Two or three mini frames loaded would be a bee investment close to others using a full frame. Smaller house possibly giving a warmer ball cluster than a longer frame. I started my nuc frames by wiring onto full frame and pulling after they were drawn. Your method of populating first makes sense.

Invest in bees or invest in time. Which is more precious. Absolutely clear that more than a few hives makes that choice really simple.

Too small an investment in bees and you end up with absolutely zero. Experienced that. I have been too stingy before. Looking too see if there is a sweet spot in the middle in terms of the little guy.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

Joseph - Were you ever able to try minis that already had some brood in them - or is absconding a problem even then? To me *that* is the real issue. Inconvenient frame size is a manageable trade off that is offset by fewer resources being required to stock the minis - but if you can't get them to produce mated queens, then nothing is worth that.


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