13/06/2026
It’s been a big week of making uni mating nucs, getting on top of things before spring. Boxes are all made, openings are printed on the 3 d printer and installed, wax strips are cut and some have been welded, using heated wax to the 100’s of bambo supports. Just have the lids and some of the strips left to go. We made a 130 two frame nucs last year and this year we are going to run 3 frame castle hives. We still have to make and paint another 30 of them. They are customised 10 frame boxes with partitions in them to take three lots of three frames which means we have to make special bases for them also. The plan for next spring is to mate the queens in the minis and then introduce them to the 3 frame castles to prove the laying pattern before we put the queens into our hives. We hope to reduce the amount of equipment we need to use. Last year we ran a two frame nuc and the success wasn’t that great. I put it down to the virgin queen getting confused on her return and flying into the wrong hive plus they were well out in the open. The idea of running the castles is so that we can install the partition at the beginning of the mating season then at the end of the season remove it and return it to a full 10 frame box. This will hopefully reduce the amount of stand alone nucleus hive we hold through winter. Hopefully we can get new queens into our production hives in a reduced amount of time.
