# Smoking bees up into half frame grow out box to populate mating nucs??



## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

Ambition is good and you will need to study hard to overcome your inexperience because your plan is challenging. Any time in beekeeping when it seems like the recommended method is hard, it may be hard for a reason. When you smoke bees up into your nucs, how will you determine that it is nurse bees successfully smoked away from the brood? They are genetically hardwired to stay with and protect brood. They will be the last to leave the brood. You will get older bees less well suited for the duties in the nucs. Take frames of brood out of you hive and brush the adhering nurse bees into your nucs. I bet you are worried about getting the queen? Then put your mating nucs under a queen excluder and place a full deep over the excluder. Now shake the frames onto the excluder. They will filter down thru. If neccessary hurry them up with some cool smoke. That is not so hard and I think you will find it works fine. If others give you advice you like better, I defer to them. Good luck with your endeavor.


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## jrbbees (Apr 4, 2010)

Good plan Vance! I'll be using that.


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## kycountry (Feb 3, 2012)

Thank you Vance G!!! 

One of my worries is getting the queen.. The other is getting drones from the parent hive which would get moved to the mating yard. Seems the way you explained it would take care of both issues. Two of the grow out boxes pushed together would be the same size as a standard hive body so I could set one deep hive body with the queen excluder under it on top of the 2 boxes.

I have another beekeeper that I can set up a mating yard within 1 miles of his yard. I plan to hatch the queens here in the nucs then move them 9 miles to the other yard for mating. As long as I keep a queen excluder over the nuc opening, I will not have to worry about drones slipping in the nucs (I hope) while they are here. 

Again, Thank you for your time and reply,
Eric


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

I am going to install a few packages right onto a 10 frame deep box-divided to accomodate 20 mini frames. When that is filled, I will add a second box, also with mini frames divided into a quad. When those frames are mostly drawn, I will graft some queen cells onto one frame per quad section ,Get them started in a starter hive, then arrange the frames in each quad section with feed, capped brood and a queen cell frame. Using this as a finisher hive using the cloake board method. When the cells are capped, I can ether just lift it off the quad and place it elcewhere for using as a mini mating nuc-or remove and install each section in it's own mini nuc for mating.

Having the bottom box drawn out in minis allows me to remove frames of brood to place in the quad-drawing up the good young nurse bees. Hee hee-right into my trap!
Hope you can follow that!
(I'll mark my queen at time of installation for easy detection and placement/confinement)

This would be the bottom deep(20 frames)









Second box-quad:









Feeders for quad:









Single mating nucs(Holds five frames)


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

My box's are all deep, but my frame with the queen cells is shallow. Here you can see the difference between a deep frame and the grafting frame. Just enough room if you want to protect the cells with cages. 
When making your shallow mini frames for grafting, just flip over the frame bottom so the grove is facing down to accomodate your cell cups. These hair roller caged don't fit these cups, but you get the idea:




















I will be new at grafting and don't expect all of them to take. Will probably get 2 out of 5 in the beginning, but you can do as many or as few as you like-possibly culling at some point.


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## Velbert (Mar 19, 2006)

ShamRock Plastic 1/2 Frame Deep These 1/2 frame length deeps makes good over wintering nuc

<img src="http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g...ZyYW1lIFJ1c3NpYW4gQnJlZWRlciBRdWVlbi5qcGc.jpg">


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

Cool pic. Where do you get those plastic 1/2 frames?


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## Velbert (Mar 19, 2006)

Thanks 
http://www.dadant.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1315


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## KevinR (Apr 30, 2010)

Velbert said:


> Thanks
> http://www.dadant.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1315


Too bad it's 85 bucks, plus shipping. I'd love to buy the frames separate.

*pouts*


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

I went to the manufactureres web site yesterday. They have the frames for $1.25 each. Did not get a shipping price, I assume they will email me with the cost. I like the black deep frames too and they do not say if the frames for sale seperatly are deep or shallow, natural or black.
heres the link:
http://www.shamrocksbees.com/beekeeping-mating-box.php?pid=4


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## KevinR (Apr 30, 2010)

Lauri said:


> I went to the manufactureres web site yesterday. They have the frames for $1.25 each. Did not get a shipping price, I assume they will email me with the cost. I like the black deep frames too and they do not say if the frames for sale seperatly are deep or shallow, natural or black.
> heres the link:
> http://www.shamrocksbees.com/beekeeping-mating-box.php?pid=4


Thanks for the link, I thought the company went the way of the dodo. Since their other website is a spam portal site now.


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

Oh oh..Glad I did not give them my credit card info! I'll be careful if they contact me-which they have not yet.


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## KevinR (Apr 30, 2010)

I think you misunderstood... They had another website... shamrock-s or something like that.... I think they lost it from expiring payment/etc and now it's a portal site...

As far as I know... the people in general are legit.... but I have never ordered anything from them.


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