Using Mini Nucs for Queen Rearing

do do [Music] I use a mini nuke um the the key thing is it's the amount of bees that that are mini that are mini Newt uses you use about a cup full of um of bees to put into the into the into the mini nuke and we'll show you later how how we go about it if you're Queen rearing using nukes then um you're using sort of half a colony of bees or so at the beginning of the Season you're using about three frames of bees um later in the season four five or six frames of bees so half a half a brew box almost um so half a brewed box of bees as opposed to a cup full of bees then um though it's uh it's very very economical using using mini nukes and that's why you do it the three types of mini nuke we've got here um is uh on the right hand side is the is the apodia um and you'll be seeing us using using the apodia uh most of the time this is a a a Chinese copy I suppose um it's the best way to describe it uh it it is normally white in color and uh we we bought um a sort of about 25 30 of these um the Chinese ones and the comparisoning cost is heart they're half the price the downfall of the these ones in particular is the fact that it's not at such a high grade on a starry bees can't you that or when they do they don't make much damage with this one with the Chinese one because it's the lighter a larger polystyrene when the bees chew it they make holes all over the place and particularly around the entrance and the difficulty with that comes that when you've made the made the um made the mini new cup you put it into a cool dark place for about three or four or five days and during that period of time with the Chinese ones then the bees will often chew out and then they'll get out and then that basically is a complete waste of time so that's the that that's that's a copy um but they they say the advantage of them is that they're cheap and if you use them for just one season then they'll be they'll be absolutely fine but I use these mini nukes over and over and over again so these are about um five five years or so old um and the these ones are struggling and then this one is a um I think it's a German coffee it's a slightly it's slightly larger it takes um again cut full of bees is absolutely fine um you've got your food compartment at the back and then these frames are sort of almost a little bit like a top bar Hive really um and uh um the bees have less a chance or less inclination to abscond from the larger the larger boxes if I um that they're all of a similar similar makeup really um so starting with the apadir then you've got a a cover board on there and then this little hole here and that's where you will either run in the Virgin Queen or put a queen cell down and in and through there and the queen cell just fits in really neatly uh there and then what you do is the lid goes back on you can see there's a little cut out there so everything's been thought through really really well so that then holds back there and then you put the top back on so that's where how the um the the Virgin Queen or the queen cell is put in and then these frames are made up by putting a sort of like a starter strip which is a bit of Wireless foundation in there and then you run hot wax in and around the edges to hold it in place then you run a little starter almost like a starter strip down on either side and then the bees will build out this foundation and then they'll run it down the sides as well using the the hot wax strip that I've put in there so that's one two and three in there and then at the back that this one is the feeder box which um you'll see I will put load it with um with fondant and we'll do we'll do that later okay so that's that's the upper deer so when you when you're putting it together and before you put the B put the bees in check that everything is set up correctly so now if I put the put that over the top then you'll see that that's not lined up correctly so what you have to make sure is that with that little hole lines up with that frame the front frame doesn't matter but it's those two the two back frames and it's really important because once it's full of bees the last thing you want to be doing is trying to you take the cover off or or anything like that because all the bees will escape so you don't want to be doing that you want to have everything absolutely sorted now at the front this is your entrance here you can see I've got a pin the pin is both to hold the entrance down otherwise the bees will escape guaranteed so it goes in the side like that and when the bees are in there they're to hold they're they're to hold it up and stop it from closing on the front here it's a little Queen excluder okay that's the queen excluder and that just goes in there like that and then you hold it in with a pin otherwise the bees will push against it and then it will come out and then you'll lose you'll lose the queen particularly when she's mated and she wants to she'll abscond so if you have a queen excluder there that stops a queen mated Queen from absconding so that's the entrance sliding on the front and then what you want to make sure so you hold the queen excluder in place with with a pin like that that that holds it in place and then the sliding door here you want to hold it up and you do that again with the pin so you just put the pin in there like that and that will stop it closing otherwise if you don't have that in there it will close in and then it'll trap all the bees inside so that's that's the apodia and then going on to the Chinese one it's the same it's the same basic principle so you've got a feed compartment at the back and this has just got some um fondant in it and the blue wrap um and then the frames there and again the orientation is important because um that's how the queen cell goes in Queen cell goes in through that Gap there okay with these frames you can have either way around you can't move take those frames and put them in an apadir because the dimensions are different the feed box on these doesn't come out but again same principle sliding front and you can see if you look just down there the bees have had a chew in there look and so we've repaired it with a bit of a bit of hot plastic from a from a glue gun and that's that's done in that perfectly adequate repair and the same applies your pins to hold hold the door up or down and queen queen scooter on the front and things like that and then this this one again exactly the same um they don't normally come with a perspex cover so we've we've made the cover um and we made the cover for that one as well um and then the queen cell goes in and this is like a mini uh mini top uh top bar hide so we put strips wax strip across there cut timber down and then the bees build the uh build the um build the foundation down themselves build the comb down themselves okay and then the feeder compartment is at the back the great thing with the apadir is it comes with um an extension on The Brood box so one of the problems as I was saying earlier on or one of the difficulties one of the challenges is that the um is that the bees will once a queen is laying and she's laid up on all three frames then she will abscond with her little Colony off they go so to get around that take the feeder out you can put another couple of frames in for her to lay on or lay in like so and then you put the you put a big extension on the top like that and then put another couple of frames in in the back on that so you've then got that and then what you can do on top of that to keep them well fed is you go and put a top feeder on like that with a queen excluder and then this this feeder it doesn't have to be fondant it can be it can be syrup that's your lid there we are this is how I overwinter my apodias so what I'll do for the season is I'll try and do three or four runs in the apodias and then when I do my last run of breeding stock then that's when I overwinter my my little colonies in the apodias and this is what I'll use for overwintering so I'll put the Brew box extension and then the feeder and the feeder on top of that and then they will last very very happily over winter so for feeding them to start off with then I use I use the Ambrosia fondant this and the reason I use um reason I use the fondant is that when you're loading the apodia with bees you turn it on its head and you slide the bottom the bottom out just let me demonstrate so when you're loading when you're loading the bees in and we'll do this you'll see it done later you slide the bottom the bottom out and then you put you put the bees in if you had sugar syrup in your feeder then you turn their upside down all the sugar syrup will come out that's why you put fondant in then after a while after the bees are all settled in and everything like that they've eaten they've eaten the fondant so five five days a week or so later you can then put sugar syrup in no problems at all just going to make make sure that you put some plastic netting or something like that in the feeder box so that the bees don't drown in it so a bit of plastic netting in there no problem at all and it's got a little Queen excluder there to stop the Virgin Queen going in as well the thing with um the thing with apodias is that um I I find they're very very good at the beginning of the season um but then later in the season when you're trying to do so for instance um second week of July or beginning of July when the Wasps start to become a problem they the colonies are find it really quite difficult to look after themselves particularly newly established colonies so if the apadir has been up and running for um for a month or so something like that then they're able to look after themselves and they're a strong colony whereas if you're putting a new starting a new apadir in sort of July time then the Wasps can be a real problem which is why I stop using apodias here at trelabe and I use um using the apodias down at Eden because um they're the worst problem isn't so bad down there whereas it's particularly a particular problem up here at Chile particularly as the summer progresses

Channel: Bee Improvement and Bee Breeders Association BIBBA

Views: 3,228

Keywords: bibba, bee improvement, beekeeping, bees, honey, bee breeding, roger patterson

Id: nyZu-SwDgRw

Length: 14min 12sec (852 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 07 2023