# $2 foam mini mating nuc



## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

This is an excerpt from a FB live webinar I did last nite for the local clubs 
I made over 50 pre-cut kits to donate and was going to have a train the trainer night and then have them bring kits back to their club to run a test workshop. 
but things as they are the only way to get this out there before queen season was to do distance learning and have them pick their kits up "curbside" 

The idea is they can easily copy it if it the club likes it and do a bigger workshop, just takes someone to pre rip the 5"X4' strips and then only a few screwdrivers and miter boxes (or knife and straight edge to score and snap) on-site for a club project.
Mini's paired with push-in cages around cells can help people make the most of a swarmed hive. 
Thought mabey some of you here might find it useful, its a bad video, but a good project :lpf::lpf:
https://youtu.be/taf9-oMmF90

For my own use I am building them in to 4 packs with a center feeder


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## JConnolly (Feb 21, 2015)

Nice. I especially love the simplicity of the feeder. I've got two questions:

1. That looks like a pretty hard foam. What foam are you using?

2. Are you not worried about comb being attached to the sides making inspection for a laying queen and queen extraction more difficult?


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

its foam core board I salvaged, signage from a large convention. much stronger then it looks







but the standard house stuff from HD or lowes works here is the 1"







2 you just cut it with a knife, cut up not down.. after you do it once or twice they kinda give up, old top bar guy so it doesn't bother me
I am going to run 6 of the 4 pack this year and see what happens


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

Nice!


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

msl said:


> This is an excerpt from a FB live webinar I did last nite for the local clubs
> I made over 50 pre-cut kits to donate and was going to have a train the trainer night and then have them bring kits back to their club to run a test workshop.
> but things as they are the only way to get this out there before queen season was to do distance learning and have them pick their kits up "curbside"
> 
> ...


msl; Any update on these little mating nucs? If someone were making up something similar would slightly larger dimensions be any advantage? Seems like a way of getting some queens mated with very little resources even if they only had so so success rates.

I have thoughts about making some up using Oriented Strand Board. and narrow crown stapler. Cheaper and quicker than screwing. I have made some mating nucs out of foam and my bees seem to think styrofoam is snack food!

Thoughts?


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Delete


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

I was seeing the styrofoam mini mating nucs advertised for $25-40 and my grandpa’s voice kicked in my head “they make that in China for 16c”. I even went to a Chinese distributor (where I’m sure American companies purchase these) to get a quote. They still run ~$7 even in bulk and burn you alive on shipping. Ultimately decided just to build something. What you have here looks great!

I’d really like to know where to buy the heavier polystyrene in sheets (the core stuff you mention). I really like my Lyson 6-frame boxes, and they have toys, whistles, latches etc. But something similar could be built for less, particularly just the boxes. Thanks for posting.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

joebeewhisperer said:


> I was seeing the styrofoam mini mating nucs advertised for $25-40 and my grandpa’s voice kicked in my head “they make that in China for 16c”. I even went to a Chinese distributor (where I’m sure American companies purchase these) to get a quote. They still run ~$7 even in bulk and burn you alive on shipping. Ultimately decided just to build something. What you have here looks great!
> 
> I’d really like to know where to buy the heavier polystyrene in sheets (the core stuff you mention). I really like my Lyson 6-frame boxes, and they have toys, whistles, latches etc. But something similar could be built for less, particularly just the boxes. Thanks for posting.


;tldr; You get what you pay for.

I've got a few of the Lyson 6 framers, love them. 6 frames, follower, can be used for 2x3 for mating queens over the season, then 1x6 frames for wintering a tiny colony which we refer to as 'spare queen' in March. They have ventilation cutouts, and plugs to fit those cutouts. They came with assembled frames, and the big plus, top feeder. I paid the equivalent of $35usd each for them. We first saw them at Apimondia in Montreal and I ordered 5 to try them out over the 2020 season, they worked well enough I ordered 20 more for spring 2021. 25 of those units will allow me to mate 50 queens per round in the styro boxes, with more in the 4 ways.

For a mating nuc, if it's something you plan on using once in a season, then a jury rig box from scraps is probably ok, and, all the 'fiddling details' probably dont matter to you. We will place our first round of cells around May 1, then continue placing cells into the nucs thru till end of July. With the lyson, for the last round I move the follower to make it a 6 frame unit, then that colony stays in the unit till the spring. IMHO, the lyson units with the top feeder pay off in a big way when it's time to put on feed. If you want to see robbing in a big way, go thru a line of 20 or 30 tiny nucs where you have to lift off the lid to put in the feed during a dearth. You will see a frenzy at the little ones as the larger colonies realize there is syrup available there. With the lyson mini plus units, I lift the lid and only expose the top feeder for a few seconds while I pour in syrup, we dont expose the bees. We dont get a massive round of robbing starting. We are feeding the mating nucs all thru the season, so this is a big deal for us, and I credit the top feeders as playing a big part in our success rates mating queens. Between the styro and the 4 way boxes I have here, we did over a hundred queens this year, and only one of them was not mated and laying 2 weeks after placing the cell. That one was mated and laying a week later.

There are a couple of big differences I have found between my 4 way boxes and the little styro mini plus units. In the 4 way I have to look on 5 half size frames to find a queen. With the mini plus, while it's split, I just have to look at three, so it's much more time effient on my part. Likewise for feeding. With the mini plus, lift the lid and pour syrup into the top feeder to feed both halves. With the 4 ways, I have to take the lid off a bottle fill it and put the lid back on for each quadrant. Sometimes I have to fuss with unplugging the holes in the lid as they have got plugged up with propolis.

In getting things ready for winter, we have historically used jar feeders on the 4 way boxes, and those are a PITA to refill constantly. The top feeder on the lyson units made the job trivially easy, but also inspired me to try something different on one of the 4 way boxes. I use a shim for wintering, it's made of 1x2 and we pack damp sugar in over the frames using the winter shim, usually in early October. This year I put the shim on one of them in early September, then a pie plate with straw on top of the frames inside the shim, fed them by simply pouring syrup into the pie plate. No more fussing with lids and plugged holes on jar feeders, worked really well, going to do that with all of them next year.

Wintering mating nucs we have always had excellent winter survival, over the last 4 years, any mating nucs with a live colony on Nov 1 has had a live colony at the end of March. The timeframe we do have attrition is September and October, inevitably some of the small units succumb to wasp predation. With the little 6 frame units, in a case like that I can take the box and stack it on another one of the units then pour the feed to them. The bees will protect the comb over the winter, and in the spring expand to populate both boxes, so they will be populated again by the time we are ready to start placing cells. The ability to stack the boxes is a big help when it comes to populating or re-populating some of these units.

I guess where this long ramble ended up, for me at least, it's a case of 'you get what you pay for'. There is just no way I can assemble an inuslated box, 6 frames, follower and top feeder for the equivalent of $35usd ($50cdn) to get the functionality I get from the mini plus units. Not sure what this years price will be, exchange rates are volatile these days so time will tell. Either way, once I've sold 2 queens out of one of those boxes, I've recovered the cost of the box and all the feed in there, with a little left over, and I will still be able to do 3 more rounds in it.

FWIW, this is what one of the mini plus units looked like on Oct 12 this year, the day I took off the top feeder and closed it for the winter. It wont get opened up now till mid February which is when we start our first round of spring feeding.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

crofter said:


> I have thoughts about making some up using Oriented Strand Board. and narrow crown stapler. Cheaper and quicker than screwing. I have made some mating nucs out of foam and my bees seem to think styrofoam is snack food!


For sure, these certainly aren't the best mating nucs out there. With the right tools and skills some one can build much better!!! as Grozzie said " For a mating nuc, if it's something you plan on using once in a season, then a jury rig box from scraps is probably ok, and, all the 'fiddling details' probably dont matter to you "

They were designed to be the easiest to make! Measuring tape, straight edge, knife, screwdriver. Make an pair of nucs anywhere any time with a $6 2'X2' sheet of foam
They were my answer to "I can't raise my own queens because...." There truly isn't any excuse, even someone starting with a package could raise some queens by the end of summer... Its either an education issue, or a motivation one... So I went after the education in the words of sam comfort.. I wanted to "return the means of production to the people"

I don't know about bigger... If you wanted bigger I think Sams mating nucs (11"x11"x6" box with a divider) would be the way to go so you could pull the divider and stack up to over winter...

Were the minis come in to there own is when you need/want to mate out a lot of queens in one fell swoop, be it to maximize the 1st round or 2 of queen rearing when the demand for queens is high, or your a back yard beekeeper with a dozen swarm cells... a mini takes 1/10 the bees of a 2 frame deep mating nuc, stocked traditionally with a 60% frame of brood and a frame of food and ahearingbees.

I have been eyeballing the quads done out of OSB with 3d printed ladders for the feeder made out of a quart deil container... was going to do it as winter project but with covid,boarding up windows for the election and hurricanes the price jumped from $7 to $24 ... the fall storms usually only make the price jump to $15 (right when we are buying lumber for the haunted houses lol) I Picked up a damaged sheet in the home depot 70% off pile yesterday, but its likly going to be used for a 6F "one rip" lang project (with a divider so it becomes 2 2f nucs with extra space to help people not roll the queens.) I have in development

The nucs worked" well enuff" for people... by mid summer I was givening kits away to anyone who bought a virgin for $15 (Lock down boredom driving sales) about normal non return / absconding for a mini... I want to say maybe a 65% success rate which is darn good for 1st timers

It worked realy well for what it was intended for, saving swarm queens that would otherwise have gone to waist
Beekeeper with a few years experience goes to help a 1st springer whos hive swarmed, insead of culling cells they use small pushin cages. Come back and cage the virgins, leave one.
take them home to put in minis and mate out...
The experienced beekeeper gets "free" queens for helping out a new beekeeper!! The new beekeeper gets some education, there hive doesn't after swarm, and if the virgin fails to mate the experience beekeeper as a extra mated queen for them... a win win win


only a few people did the above, but they were quickly over run with extra queens!!!


@Joe the foam core isn't something you would want to buy for this project... its like $28 a 4x8 sheet min order of 12 kinda thing Foam Board, Foam Core Boards, Black Foam Boards in Stock - ULINE
it was a great upcycled item as it was free, but I don't know witch brand I ended up using, some are better then others


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

msl said:


> For sure, these certainly aren't the best mating nucs out there. With the right tools and skills some one can build much better!!! as Grozzie said " For a mating nuc, if it's something you plan on using once in a season, then a jury rig box from scraps is probably ok, and, all the 'fiddling details' probably dont matter to you "


Exactly. My case is different, I'm placing a fresh cell in each unit every 3 weeks, sometimes it's only 2 weeks, then I'm wintering a colony in them. In my case, the upspend for a commerical product that adresses all the fiddling details is money well spent. BUT, it may be a bit on the extravagant for somebody just doing one or two queens in a year, for their own use. For that example I point to Ian Steppler. When he was still a regular contributor here, his first season doing a large number of queens for in house use, we all saw lots of photos of his mini mating nucs. But he quickly realized, they are a lot of extra work, so he just started putting cells into 6 frame units and 'call it done', those are his replacement stock for next year.



> only a few people did the above, but they were quickly over run with extra queens!!!


This was the enlightening part for me. The first year I took on raising my own queens, I used 5 frame nucs with standard deep frames and had 8 lined up on a stand. I placed cells in them in mid May, planned on just growing them out that year. A few weeks later one of the old time keepers in the area was knocking on the door, 'do you have any spare queens?'. We walked out to the back, I opened one of those nucs, caged the queen then left the now queenless box to raise one on their own. A huge light bulb went off in my head at that point, queens are no longer precious, I just gave one away.










Different folks have different issues that become limiting. Our move to 4 ways was for efficiency of use of space on the stands. In our area over the winter we often have standing water in the back, so the hives must be up on stands. I can hold twice as many colonies in 4 ways for the same stand space as 2 5 frame units. Now that we have moved from just raising queens for our own use, to raising significant numbers for sale I am taking a different route for stands for the mini plus units. I can buy little plastic stepstools at Canadian Tire for under 10 bucks, and they often show up on sale for 5 or 6 bucks. The next time they have a good sale (I do check the flyer every week), we will go in and buy 25 of them to use as mating nuc stands. We have used them in the past for hive stands when we put colonies in a friend's back yard in town, two of them will hold one 10 frame unit nicely.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

joebeewhisperer said:


> I was seeing the styrofoam mini mating nucs advertised for $25-40


Just to complete the prospective - the mini nucs can be made from free Styrofoam coolers (which you pull from a local recycling dumpster). Of course, you have to have the dumpster - the real limiting factor.
I just pull more coolers last weekend.
Different sizes too!


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Thanks guys!


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## elmer_fud (Apr 21, 2018)

Have you had any problems with the bees deciding to use the lid as the starting point for comb instead of the skewers?


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

No one reported it 
I think I saw it once on the few I ran 
all and all no big thing, shake the bees off and toss the comb. Your after queens the rest is more or less disposable


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

GregV said:


> Just to complete the prospective - the mini nucs can be made from free Styrofoam coolers...


My workplace bought a warehouse close by the plant/office. I think there's a ton of insulative foam board in there that I'm reasonably sure they would give me. However, I would like to get the hard stuff like the Lysons are built from. Like the core stuff mentioned by the OP. When I put these Lysons together a few screws went in with some angle. Any type of styrofoam I have ever used would have chunked out a corner but this stuff, although hard, just accepted the screws. No idea what it's actually composed of, may just be the catalyst/curing agent or whatever. Wish I had a pallet of it.


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

msl said:


> It worked realy well for what it was intended for, saving swarm queens that would otherwise have gone to waist
> Beekeeper with a few years experience goes to help a 1st springer whos hive swarmed, insead of culling cells they use small pushin cages. Come back and cage the virgins, leave one.
> take them home to put in minis and mate out...
> The experienced beekeeper gets "free" queens for helping out a new beekeeper!! The new beekeeper gets some education, there hive doesn't after swarm, and if the virgin fails to mate the experience beekeeper as a extra mated queen for them... a win win win


Nice.  And yes, $28 x 12 is more than I probably want to invest at present. Thanks.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

So build them at $2 or so with the 1" foam insulation from HD/lowes.. ya sure the bees may chew it up or what ever after a few rounds/years... bu at that point you have had a huge ROI.


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

msl said:


> So build them at $2 or so with the 1" foam insulation from HD/lowes.. ya sure the bees may chew it up or what ever after a few rounds/years... bu at that point you have had a huge ROI.


Sounds like a winning plan. Thanks!


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## CuryCork (Dec 22, 2020)

Is there a first part to the initial video you posted? It seems to start in the middle after you’ve made the cuts. I am going to graft queens this season and might. Well sell some mates queens while I’m at it.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

all the cuts/parts are below the video


> You will need 4 feet of ½” foam 5 inches wide (can be two 2’ pieces)
> Eight 2” dry wall screws
> Eight 1.25” drywall screws
> Screen for the bottom, #8 hardware cloth or package screen preferred. Window screen works in a pinch
> ...


There is no cutting video as it was a training webinar for some of the local clubs to go with the 50 pre cut kits I distributed you can see the full webiniar here (it came out poorly witchis why I just youtube the pre recorded build section...witch of course the audio didn't come out on the webinar....ahh technology



__ https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=2289482097821328



the concept was that after this they build they were trained enuff they could cut thier own stips and run as in person work shops (maby next year...lol dam covid) at their local clubs. that's why it was set up as one 4' rip cut so you could just use a miter box or even a square and score and snap the foam with a knife and then just assembly with a screwdriver... simple cheap too for a fun group project




crofter said:


> I have thoughts about making some up using Oriented Strand Board. and narrow crown stapler. Cheaper and quicker than screwing.


I wanted to swing back to this 3/4" OSB has an R value of 0.91 1/2" foam is a 3, 1" is a 5. So there is a massive improvement in even the 1/2"foam.. when your using so few bees its important


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

I had not considered the R value factor. Titebond glue as a paint will put a tough bee proof finish on foam.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

It doesn't always pay to put lipstick on a pig


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## elmer_fud (Apr 21, 2018)

crofter said:


> I had not considered the R value factor. Titebond glue as a paint will put a tough bee proof finish on foam.


foil tape also seems to make a good bee proof surface, not sure if it is worth the cost though for the size of the mating boxes


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

msl said:


> It doesn't always pay to put lipstick on a pig



The 2 dollar foam nuc serves it's purpose, a very inexpensive place to mate a queen. But as you start adding the bits to 'improve it', there comes a point where one should just bite the bullet and say 'buy the right tool for the job'.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

yep


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Hey, you guys are ganging up on me! I'm upset 🙃.


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## CuryCork (Dec 22, 2020)

crofter said:


> msl; Any update on these little mating nucs? If someone were making up something similar would slightly larger dimensions be any advantage? Seems like a way of getting some queens mated with very little resources even if they only had so so success rates.
> 
> I have thoughts about making some up using Oriented Strand Board. and narrow crown stapler. Cheaper and quicker than screwing. I have made some mating nucs out of foam and my bees seem to think styrofoam is snack food!
> 
> Thoughts?


Thanks


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## CuryCork (Dec 22, 2020)

Wondering if u had an update on the mini nucs? Any additional pics of mini nucs in action?


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## ifixoldhouses (Feb 27, 2019)

elmer_fud said:


> foil tape also seems to make a good bee proof surface, not sure if it is worth the cost though for the size of the mating boxes


I saw some foam boards at Lowes wrapped in foil, pretty cheap I might try and make a few myself.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

CuryCork said:


> Any additional pics of mini nucs in action?


here is a video of me loading them.
The stiff leather gloves I am wearing (COVID took out the nitrials I usually use ) and the wind kicking my butt!! enjoy watching me fumble 




This is a guy working the ones that inspired this project 




and here is sam comfort working his mating nucs with a bamboo skewer top bars


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

msl said:


> here is a video of me loading them.


Nice. Neither wind, nor sleet, nor snow is going to stop you from stocking nucs!


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## CuryCork (Dec 22, 2020)

Well I am going to give these a try this year. Made about 20 mini nucs from 1 8x4 piece of insulation from Lowes. Painted them inside and out and have them ready to go. I made one small change in that I did add a small piece of waxed black foundation secured to the top bar. Just drilled a little hole and attached with a very small zip tie. Hopefully this will give the ladies something to work from. 

It was fun winter craft to do when you are itching to do something bee related and it is too cold to do anything outside. I figure if I can get enough mated queens for emergencies on any of my 10 hives then the project is a win. Replacement queens and sugar are too of my biggest expenses.

I will let you all know how it goes and send some pictures if I have some luck.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

I couldnt find any 1/2" foam in stock but do have a sheet of 3/4 aluminum clad foam that should do the trick.

Did the paint toughen up the foam a fair bit?


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## CuryCork (Dec 22, 2020)

It definitely did. I painted the entire sheet before cutting. I also applied with the TrueBond craft glue at Lowe’s. That put a strong bond on some of the cut edges. I think that is a little expensive though so I am going to touch. All the exposed “cuts” with primer and paint


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## CuryCork (Dec 22, 2020)




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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

I will be interested in how that turns out

The white bead board is expanded polystyrene (EPS), my bees tend to eat it like a snack

the project is set up for the much touffer extruded polystyrene (XPS) that is easier to work, and much less messy Owens Corning FOAMULAR 1/2 in. x 4 ft. x 8 ft. R-3 Square Edge Rigid Foam Board Insulation Sheathing-36L - The Home Depot
the last kind of foam is polyisocyanurate and its dust is very irritating so I Have stayed away from it.


An additional step (optional) was developed late last year was to cut a small disk of shelf foam for the cup feeders to help with drowning Con-Tact 20"X4' CONTACT GRIP PREMIUM ALLOY-04F-C6N0B-06 - The Home Depot it floats and has holes for the bees to drink threw.


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## ifixoldhouses (Feb 27, 2019)

why not just silicone it up in the back instead of a cup?


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Less cost, less mess and the guarantee of being watertight when assembled by a novis at a group workshop.


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## CuryCork (Dec 22, 2020)

I like the contact grip. I will give it a try as well. I was also just going to fill with lots of little sticks. If I get some mated queens I will definitely upgrade to the foam board next year. I am going to seal as much as possible to deter snacking. I am in Central NC so we should have good drone build up by the end of March.


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## elmer_fud (Apr 21, 2018)

FYI, some styrafoam will start melting/deforming with spray paint if you go that route. I think brushed on paint may be better in this application


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

I think most of the house paints now are water born acrylics and foam safe. The rattle cans are commonly foam eaters; a few are foam safe but way too expensive.

Come to think of it that sheet I have is the polyisocyanurate foam. Maybe table saw outside and wind to my back while I break the sheet down. Isocyanurate does not sound inviting! With the aluminum cladding I should just have to touch up the exposed edges the bees could get at.


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## Tigger19687 (Dec 27, 2014)

Instead of paint you could put a layer of glue all over it? Leaves a nice grippy surface for the bees too. Elmers glue is pretty cheap


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## ifixoldhouses (Feb 27, 2019)

This is my version of it. one small hole in the side for an entrance, 1 bee wide.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

I think I should start making some $$$ by converting trash into the mating nucs for sale!
Garage is becoming full.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

ifixoldhouses said:


> This is my version of it. one small hole in the side for an entrance, 1 bee wide.


very nice!!!
if your going to pu in a feed screen like that you can make it one bee space up against the divider and not have to worry about the QE as there is no space to build comb



ifixoldhouses said:


> why not just silicone it up in the back instead of a cup?


in seeing your nuc I am reminded the other reason why, so you can pull the feeder and run it on 5 bars as it grows




GregV said:


> I think I should start making some $$$ by converting trash into the mating nucs for sale!


you might make more using the nucs you self selling queens 😉


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

msl said:


> you might make more using the nucs you self selling queens


Yep.
Making equipment and gizmos, in general, is much better business - which is kinda obvious.
The same old - selling shovels (not digging the gold) - where you make the money.
LOL


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## CuryCork (Dec 22, 2020)

For my first grafting experience got 7 of 20 queens. Now let’s see how my mini making nucs work! (I gave them a little start with some old comb and small zip ties) 3 mating nucs!


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Nice!!

as a heads up that last picture looks very short on bees


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## ifixoldhouses (Feb 27, 2019)

CuryCork said:


> For my first grafting experience got 7 of 20 queens. Now let’s see how my mini making nucs work! (I gave them a little start with some old comb and small zip ties) 3 mating nucs!


good deal, any royal jelly in those cups?


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## CuryCork (Dec 22, 2020)

How many bees do you recommend?


msl said:


> Nice!!
> 
> as a heads up that last picture looks very short on bees





ifixoldhouses said:


> good deal, any royal jelly in those cups?





msl said:


> Nice!!
> 
> as a heads up that last picture looks very short on bees


Yeah. I put in about a 1.5 cups. I took that picture after the first bees were in. You could see them clinging to the starter strips. I liked the pic. Other bees I introduced in the entrance.


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## CuryCork (Dec 22, 2020)

ifixoldhouses said:


> good deal, any royal jelly in those cups?


Oh yeah! This picture is around Day 10. Still good royal jelly in there. Not the best shot of the cups. But yes. When I originally checked the cells around Day 8 it was backed solid.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

CuryCork said:


> For my first grafting experience got 7 of 20 queens. Now let’s see how my mini making nucs work! (I gave them a little start with some old comb and small zip ties) 3 mating nucs!
> View attachment 62725
> View attachment 62726
> View attachment 62727


These combs are way too far apart.
Make the tighter.
Try for 1.25" apart.
Not many bees, too much air.


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## ifixoldhouses (Feb 27, 2019)

MIne are working great, caught the queen with a mating sign still in her. Backyard Bees NC on Facebook Watch


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Nice!!
I just cut the parts for 18 for this weekends queen rearing class for the state and got a feeder printed for the quads


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

__ https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10158289889145547



This from a small bull swarm (1st after swarm) that I dumped in a bucket and then dug threw to pick out 6 virgins to stock in nucs
Old school swarm beekeeping ala


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## SeaCucumber (Jun 5, 2014)

Do you use your mini nucs year round?

I use queen castles. Here's what I don't like about them:

the shape of a 2 frame cluster and heat loss
Bees might drift more to the middle hives.
Its hard to find the variety of comb you want.
I was thinking of making all my hives Palmer double nucs sometime. Boxes would have 4 frames. Right now, they are 10 fr. (all mediums). Would it make sense to switch to deeps?

For mating nucs, I was thinking of adding rabbets on the long sides of a Palmer nuc box. A divider would go in the middle (probably a permanent one). This box normally holds 4 big frames. Now it would have at least 10 mini frames.


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

I broke down and bought some minis, didn't really have time (or take time) to try and fix something up. They have been a real challenge, but I'm starting to pull some mated queens out (after sacrificing several to the process). I saw the video earlier where he's fixing the cross-comb. That was really cool. As far as the 3 or 4 that absconded, that was about how my first run went.


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## ifixoldhouses (Feb 27, 2019)

These things are working good.


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## SeaCucumber (Jun 5, 2014)

How do you use them when not mating?

Here's my idea. Its a double mating nuc with a fixed divider. The outside dimensions are the same as a Palmer 4 frame nuc. When not mating, you can put them on Palmer double nucs or 10 fr. boxes. If your big frame hives are all 10 frame or Palmer double nucs, its compatible.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

SeaCucumber said:


> How do you use them when not mating?


They are started with a cup of bees and a cup of feed, most see that as a sunk cost, shake them out and put them in storage for the winter...
mine are duel purpose, about the 2nd week in july when our dearth hits my bees use them as feeders 🤣


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

Ive had some time on my hands and have been printing again, I was not happy with my first mating nucs because of the feeder behind the frames. So my next nuc the greyone, has 5 frames with a feeder on top as you can see from the pics. I started one off with a queen cell and a cup of bees, when the queen was raised and layed wall to wall I removed the queen into a four frame nuc and grafted 3 cells into an empty frame and they raised 3 queen cells so I split the one into 3 with a queen cell each. 2 queens emerged and not the third so I recombined the third with the other two. Both queens are now laying and as soon as I am done with my harvesting I will place the laying queens into nucs and graft some more. I also find that these little colonies are not aggressive at all and can be worked with minimal protection. The only thing I would like to change is to lift the height of the box by 1" so as to allow more comb space.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

How have your feeders been?
the few times I have tryed printing one they ended up leaking


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

msl said:


> How have your feeders been?
> the few times I have tryed printing one they ended up leaking


I have increased my print nozzles from 0,4 to 0.6 and with 4 layers on the bottom no leaks at all, seems much stronger and cuts down print time significantly. I would like to make the top of the caps into a 1mm square mesh and also have some slots down the sides so that you can see the syrup level inside where the bees feed. As I am now using Freecad there is another steep learning curve and not being able to keep at it all the time progress is slow and I have to learn all over again with each project.


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## birddog (May 10, 2016)

Made a few dozen MSL 2$ foam minis over the winter.
And I finally got the first 8 loaded Monday with 14 day cells , cup of bees 50/50 and 1/4 temp queen strip to each to Help prevent abscond.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

crofter said:


> I had not considered the R value factor. Titebond glue as a paint will put a tough bee proof finish on foam.


you could try the 1.5 inch foam with 3/8 OSB glued to it for less chewing and still a good R value.

GG


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

This guy here (a Russian) successfully wintered his mini-nucs (wooden).
He says here will not be doing this shakes of bees and such anymore now that he sees them wintering OK.

Instead, he'd rather winter his mini-nucs (combined for strength) and then split them up as needed for the usage.

(631) Состояние деревянных мини нуклеусов. Розыгрыш отводка для начинающих пчеловодов. - YouTube


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Gray Goose said:


> you could try the 1.5 inch foam with 3/8 OSB glued to it for less chewing and still a good R value.


sounds like the nucs used by ethical bees in BC..IIRR they were using underlayment (1/2 the cost of OSB) to prevent chewing




























birddog said:


> I finally got the first 8 loaded Monday with 14 day cells


ummm
BRRRRRR
Place them cool and dark... not snow still on the tires, lol


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## birddog (May 10, 2016)

That's saw dust


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