BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER > GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM.
Plans for 2018 ?
little john:
Many parts of the UK have just been hit by snow - a rare event here so early in December - and so not unreasonably, thoughts have been turned towards the warmer days of Spring ...
Just wondering what plans you guys have for the 2018 season ?
For myself, I've never had much problem with getting queens mated in full-sized 5-frame nuc boxes, but have never had much success with the tiny mini-sized boxes - so I've made a couple of half-width deep boxes with 'half-length' frames running across the shorter dimension. It's not a new idea by any means - as a lot of people are already running this format. Just thought I'd join them ...
Each half-width box will accommodate 11 of these smaller (5"x 7" deep) frames, and with a divider inserted 2x 5-frame mating nucs are thus created - again, an already popular format - and I've made a number of dummies to play with reducing the frame count from 5 down to 3, in order to reduce the number of bees required even further. I'll just have to see how this strategy works out - I've run into problems with absconding when using divided full-sized nuc boxes in the past, so will need to keep a watch out for this.
So - what plans do other people have ?
LJ
Acebird:
How do you accommodate the growth of the colony when the equipment is non standard?
I did not make it back to my favorite number of colonies, three. So hopefully I will have one surviving hive that I can split to get back to three.
Van, Arkansas, USA:
Hey Buddies, I?m gonna graft and generate queens. Not for sale though, as I run a small operation and I will not ship. I will give queens away to locals.
For open breeding, I use a partioned 10 frame that holds 4 compartments , 2 deep frames each partition each with 3/4 inch opening. Required lots of resources for this but remember I am a small time Breeder. I will generate some II queens, hoping for mite resistances, this is so time consuming and expensive: incubators, stereo microscopes, insemination equipment, carbon dioxide kits....
As you may or may not know, only takes one drone to complete a queen mating. Each drone bearing 12 million sperm in one microliter. More than enough for a queens lifetime of laying. However, the queens spermethca (holding chamber) will hold 10 microliter thus 10 drones is the usual for insemination.
This II queen breeding is lots of trouble and expensive as already stated, I would not recommend. However, what?s a retired genetic engineer to do? Well, try to better the bees. I hate varroa and will do anything to generate or improve a queens resistant traits.
Blessings
little john:
--- Quote from: Acebird on December 02, 2017, 08:10:34 am ---How do you accommodate the growth of the colony when the equipment is non standard?
--- End quote ---
These frames and boxes are not for raising nucleus colonies, but only for mating queens with. I agree wholeheartedly with your point that if raising a nucleus colony which naturally expands - then sure - keep them on standard-sized frames from day one. Any other approach is nuts (imo).
With these mating nucs, the principle is similar to the use of mini-nucs - i.e. they're setup with the smallest viable colony; queen-cell emerges, queen is mated, lays a frame or two of eggs, then removed. Next queen-cell is added, and so on. If the small colony should enlarge a little during this process, then the number of frames can be increased from 3 to 5. Some people pull the divider - Mike Palmer being a good example - to enlarge the colony to a box-full of frames, and even stacking those boxes and over-wintering them, thusly:
... but I don't intend doing this. The key to the setup I'm planning is in maintaining a common footprint, or a simple divisor of it:
The British National Hives I mainly work with are square, as in 'A' above. The 5-frame Nucleus Boxes are Half-Width, as in 'B', with two fitting exactly over a standard Brood Box. Discrete standalone Mating-Nucs could then be quarter-sized - but I've decided to maintain a 'B' footprint, divide this in half, as in 'C', and run the smaller frames across custom-built boxes, rather than along their length. Thus far, my system is more-or-less identical to Mike Palmer's.
By retaining the divider and common footprint division it creates, combs for the smaller mating frames can be initially drawn-out over a colony housed in a standard half-width nucleus box, and colonies then formed by installing nurse bees through a queen excluder. Then, when the season is over, and these small colonies made queenless again for one last time - the remaining bees can be easily combined with any queenright nucleus colony housed in a standard half-width nucleus box. Thus, these custom-sized frames (and dividers) never get to leave their custom-built boxes. Or at least, that's the plan ! (Famous last words ...)
Van - wishing you great success with your AI/II - I once looked at the cost involved for equipment and the amount of time it typically takes to become proficient ... it's definitely not a technique for the faint-hearted !
LJ
beepro:
For 2018 I have many things to do including:
1. Making splits with tf bought queens.
2. Plant more nectar/pollen producing plants for our summer dearth.
3. Making grafts from the best resistant tf queens.
4. Perfecting my mite removal tf system starting early after June when the flow stop.
5. And II the Cordovan queens to populate my local DCAs.
It is going to be a very busy season for me to rebuild my
apiary with 60 drawn comb already in storage. Not sure if I can accomplish it
all but for sure it will keep me busy all season long, including winter.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version