Mating Nuc Efficiency

[Bush_84]

So I?ve made an observation and looking for some input. I made six queen cells (initially 8 but 6 went south before emerging). Three went into full sized production colonies. Three went into mini mating Nucs. Mini mating Nucs are half medium frames and can hold five frames. So I?d dump two frames of bees in the mini mating nuc and close them up for a couple of days with queen cells. Even with this they shrunk quite a bit when I opened the front door. I know everybody will say move them to an out yard. I don?t have one and don?t have a plan right now to get one.

Anyways I noticed that my stronger hives seemed to mate queens better the weak ones. My mini mating Nucs that had 3-4 frames of bees seemed to mate their queen. The hives that withered down to two never did get their queen mated. Queen emerged from the cell, but never made a mates queen. All of my production hives mated their queen. I should note that strength being defined as a sufficient concentration of bees, not necessarily quantity.

Has anybody else noticed this and are there any other suggestions to increase my odds at mating queens?  I have had awful luck getting them mated. I paint them different colors and any that are the same color are facing the other direction and not next to the hive of the same color. My mating Nucs also have entrance discs and they are also of a different color. Maybe I just need to ensure that I shake in way to many bees.

[bemused]

Managing mating nucs is a skill in itself.

They require careful management to keep them viable and strong enough to support a queen. The first time I tried mini mating nucs they all died of starvation within two weeks. I find it easier to mate them in things like three frame nucs because if you add a frame capped brood and nurse bees they'll quickly form their own colony with lots of bees.

I only raise between 20 and 40 queens a year, so three frame nucs work fine for me. However, next season I'm going to try mating nucs again just because I want to crack the technique.

[BeeMaster2]

I have found that putting a split hive on top of a queen right hive, with a double screen in between, drastically improves the success of getting a mated queen.
Jim

[Bush_84]

I have found that putting a split hive on top of a queen right hive, with a double screen in between, drastically improves the success of getting a mated queen.
Jim

Interesting. I would have figured the opposite. I would think that the virgin would return to the wrong entrance a bit to frequently.

[texanbelchers]

I had some questionable cells and was out of bottom/top boards, so I tried a stack.  It was 2 mediums separated by a QX with cells top and bottom.  3 of them resulted in a laying top box queen, but no bottom box queen signs.  Granted, the bottom box cells were a couple days behind the top which may have done them in to start with.  One had 2 laying queens, but both were being balled when I took a look.  I don't think I'll be doing that again, but it was an interesting trial.

I run 6 medium frames (2 undrawn, 4 resource/brood) in a box with a couple scoops of bees; just enough to control the SHB.  To get bees I shake frames into a bin and let them sit for a while, then shake them down in the bin.  I'm left with nurse bees that don't migrate back much.  I've tried moving frames with bees, but invariably too many go back to the origin hive and the results are spectacularly slimy.  My apiary is a 45 minute drive on a good day and most often I have to set it up and walk away for days.

On the last round of queens it looks like a 66% overall mating rate counting my stack experiment.  15 nucs and 10 queens.  I'll recheck the missing 5 tomorrow night; it is always possible I overlooked one.

[Waveeater]

I have a post on here with my experiment on the mating nucs for this year. As of now I still have 11 out of 12 that have mated Queens and are doing well. Some are a little stronger than others. I have had to move several from 3 frame nucs over into 5 frame nucs. Some I have put into stacked 5 frame nucs, and one is now in a 8 frame med box. I have had to check on them pretty much weekly due to overcrowding, food, etc. I have had one start pulling swarm cells because I let them get too crowded. I got that stopped. We are in a dearth now so In the next few weeks I hope to start replacing some of my older queens with some of these younger ones. I'm going to also try and overwinter some of them in 5 frame nucs (stacked) as an experiment.

[Bush_84]

I built a system based off of the mini mating nuc frames. It all started when I saw the Mann lame double mating Nucs in their bargain bin. So I bought two and some frames. They seemed real neat and I decided to tinker one winter. Tinkering is what I like to do when the weather turns cold. Anyways I noticed that I had some old warre boxes that I would never use. They are 2x lumber. I cut them down to fit the frames and made a bunch of extra frames. The old warre hives hold 8 of these mini frames. If I recall the hive body is about half a five frame deep nuc.

Last year I figured I?d first start bees in the Mann lake double Nucs and grow them out into the old warre boxes. I had trouble getting bees in and keeping them in. I had one that looked good, but I moved them over to soon and they got robbed out. I also am having troubles with hive top feeders. I can?t keep bugs out of the syrup. So in the end I got nothing out of the deal.

This last winter I made up smaller boxes from some scrap that hold five of these frames and take an inverted jar with a plastic gas line as delivery. Earlier in the spring I made up a queen cell and shook some bees in it. It worked very well. They are still kicking and are about filling up the five frame box. I just yesterday combined a laying worker mating nuc with it. My second round didn?t go so well. First there were some cracks in the four hives I setup which allowed most of the bees escape right away.  So I came back the next day to one empty box. The other three looked good enough to continue. One was stronger than the other two. In the end the two weaker Nucs never had their queen return from her mating flight. The stronger one has a laying queen and doing just fine. The other two quickly developed laying workers. So they got combined with my two good mating Nucs. My overall plan is to eventually combine them all into one and move it over into the warre boxes. I have a hive that needs a new queen. So the stronger queen will go to that hive. The weaker queen will stay in the mating nuc. Hopefully they are going to be strong enough to overwinter at that point.

Then a stroke of luck. I caught a bunch of swarms this year. Six traps and six swarms. One of these swarms was in a tree next to a swarm trap. I assume both swarms decided to move in and one was late to the party. So I installed that swarm into two of these warre boxes. I?ll be honest it?s a bit of a tight fit, but it?s a perfect situation to get a ton of these frames drawn out quickly. I?ll have to give them a third box at some point. I?ll check on them next week to see where they are at.

 I understand that people use them for mating queens and then get rid of them in the fall. I have seen videos of Michael Palmer overwintering mating Nucs. Keep in mind he uses half frames that are deep frames not mediums. I want to use these hives for rearing queens and mating them. I don?t need a ton of queens. If both make it through the winter I can make queens in one and setup mating Nucs from the other. Keep in mind that I don?t want that many queens. If I harvest 2-4 queens at one time that?s plenty. I should also have more success with setting up mini mating Nucs if I can pull brood and bees from a hive directly and avoid shaking or scooping bees. I can then focus on honey and splits with my big equipment.

My production hives and new swarms are already starting to pile away honey. So now I just need to get these mating Nucs pumping.

[beepro]

Timing:  You have to time it well to make these mating nucs splits.  I try to time it so that when the worker bees are emerging, the QC or virgin from the incubator are ready.  So there are specific time in the caledar that I make my graft which will correspond to the time that these worker bees emerge.

For example, I know that it will take 14-16 days for the QCs to emerge in the incubator. And the worker bees will emerge on the 3rd week in the calendar month.  This is only an approximate time.  So if I time the QCs graft date by counting backward, each month I can graft within those emergence dates.

This way even when the bees fly back to their original location, the emerging new workers will add more bees in the mating nucs.  So the mating nucs hive population will increase instead of losing worker bees.  That is why QCs timing is very important!

For good mating and return of the virgins, I found out this season that having a close by, 5 minutes bee flying time from the DCA is contributing to the over all success rate of the mated queens.  They don't have to fly far away to find the DCAs.  So this season I have very high rate of queens all mated.