Hi Gaye Thanks you so much for your generous comments!

Hi Barabara Cheery notes like yours are always welcome and appreciated. Thanks Barbara

Thanks Marco That's our #1 question for sure! Thanks for your kind remarks. All the best for you and your bees.

Thanks Justin! We enjoy making them.

Merci Jean!

They say "you're welcome"!

Hi Tom Thanks. Have fun raising queens! You'll find it really rewarding.

Thanks Doug! That sounds like a very good system. Thanks for the tip, I might just try it. I've thought of stacking these units to winter but haven't yet. We can get some through wintered indoors as 2 way nucs by taking out the removeable partition. Last year we didn't get as much honey so had the time to use up all the last round of queens requeening. Cheers.

Thanks Mario.

Glad to help Carlos!

Go for it!

That's great Rob! Good luck using it. They are fun little hives to work with.

@@UoGHoneyBeeResearchCentre I just built one on my channel. Check it out!

You are very welcome Chris. It's our pleasure to talk about bees. I'm sure you know the feeling!

Yes sir,to comment on your videos,I really enjoy watching them. I feel I learn from them. I watch alot of beekeeping videos from new beekeepers. Honestly, they put out alot of bad information but with good intentions if that makes sense. Fun to watch these new guys who think they know it all. I'm a newbie, hell I make alot of mistakes. You teach the right way to do things,they work up where your at down to San Antonio where I'm at. Went long,but thank you. Chris

me too :)

Hi Dan Nice to hear you appreciate our videos. I've tried to make a point of mentioning dates in videos but have not been consistent. You're right it would be helpful. We filmed 33 videos in 2016 and 21 in 2018. It takes awhile to get everything edited and the CC and transcripts done so we release them as possible.

Thanks Shawn!

Thanks Wayne! We use painters tape. It's easy to peel off when its not needed anymore. Being a paper product, bees can chew through.

Go for it! They are fun to work with.

@@UoGHoneyBeeResearchCentre Well when I do I'll be wearing my Honey Bee Research swag I purchased from your website!

Hi Ross Welcome to the party! We appreciate your kind thoughts. I haven't worked with 4x1 nucs but of course have some thoughts about them. I know beekeepers that use these successfully and more that use 3x1. The 2x2 configuration provides a natural space. It is also less confined so it's faster for finding queens and I believe better for the bees. Long narrow spaces make seeing and catching queens more difficult, especially if she is on the walls instead of the frames. That said, there are some advantages of using standard frames. One big one being that you can unite the nucs in the fall and overwinter the united colonies.

Hi Phillip Thanks, glad to hear you have found our videos helpful. We bought the boxes and frames from Lewis and Sons in Manitoba Canada

He already said... "18oz Canvas." 😉

Thanks Bill We do have gentle bees. They are Buckfast that originate in Denmark. We breed and raise queens but our breeder stock comes from Keld Brandstrup in Denmark. There are other gentle bees strains around.

Thanks! Hehe. I won't judge but the pheromone is easy to get here. I haven't tried going without. We would lose some nucs without Temp Queen. The bees have no queen and no brood to hold them in the nuc.

honeybee.uoguelph.ca/frequently-asked-questions-3/

Hi Herbert Glad you enjoy our videos. Thanks! You'll see the pheromone supplier in our FAQ link I sent.

It's a Plastic Strip that has artificial "Queen Phremones" on it. Search any Bee Supply Company or Site for "artifical 'Queen' strip." 😉

Hi Peter Great to hear you enjoy our videos! That is encouraging. We try and get all staff used to being stung regularly and building a tolerance to venom. After that getting stung doesn't bother you much. We also breed for gentle behavior and know how to work with bees in ways that keeps them calm.... most of the time! ;)

Research has shown wearing protection like gloves, etc. that receives stings and then exposing yourself to the venom externally by post-handling actually can make you (and other members of your family that may handle same) even more allergic to stings down the road. Also, most folk crush more bees wearing gloves than they would without gloves (because you can actually feel the bees under your fingertips) which leads to stings in the gloves. Unless you wash/smoke heavily/etc. them, that smell stays on your gloves and next time the bees smell it and are ready to go round two (become defensive) before you barely get started working them. I do put on a set of surgical gloves when I work with chemicals; other wise I keep my beekeeping gloves and suit for "emergencies" only. While I did not learn this until later in life, many hobbyist beekeepers I met when I first started beekeeping 40+ years ago had to quit because they became highly allergic - and now I more fully understand why.

@@jfelty6262 Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience. I agree with everything you said. :)

Smaller frames gives you more frames to equalize with.

Yes you can do that...i did that....you end up with 4 cavities with 3 deep frames.......problems are that these nucs over crowd the space very quickly......also, removing 1 frame and replacing with foundation is rather hard to the nuc..... and this configuration is long and narrow which is not "normal".....I have over wintered these and they do work......you can rebuild these every cycle of queens which can reduce over crowding (see Mike Palmers video on making up mating nucs)...... Now the 4 way mating nuc box shown here with the separator running from front to back with a 3/16" masonite sheet that is removable allows you to have 5 half combs per cavity......you can winter these very well by removing 2 queens and joining 4 nucs into 2 with 10 half combs....or just make up small 4 half frame supers and allow each nuc to expand up for 4 nucs with 9 half combs

Hi Stephen I use small mating nucleus colonies because I can mate more queens with less bees compared with larger units. It's also quicker. There are many other good ways that suit different goals. For smaller numbers of queens full size frames may be more appropriate.

We got these nuc boxes and frames from Lewis and Sons in Manitoba. Their contact information is in our FAQ below. honeybee.uoguelph.ca/frequently-asked-questions-3/

Our pleasure!

Hi Bil I like both the mini mating nucs and the 4 ways but if I was to chose one now it would be the 4 ways. They are a little more robust and can take some ups and downs in weather/forage situations. It's also nice to have 4 nucs open at a time for swapping frames.

We move the nucs at least three kilometers from the location of the parent hive.

We cut them into two pieces for a four way nucs or mini nucs.

Hi Kenny. You could see our video titled 'Requeening' to see how we use mated caged queens. Another one to see is 'Caring For Caged Queens' .

We buy them from Lewis and sons in Manitoba Canada.

Their stuff www.uoguelph.ca/honeybee/education-events.shtml

Hi Juan in Spain. They are Langstroth size in width and length but only 6 5/8 inches high. You are welcome Juan.

Hi man, Sorry but in my country we don't use inches to measure and I can't find equivalence in cms. What size do you think it would be best to do it, supper or Langstroth, since I don't want to cut any box. Tank's

@@juansantandreu3833 They are 16.825 cm high. I often look up metric conversions with Google. We use both systems here.

We haven't had to feed them as they start off with quite a bit of stored food the way we set them up.

Unfortunately we don't have plans. We purchased them from Lewis and son's in Manitoba.

We move them at least 3 kilometers. That way you lose very few bees. You make a good point about the age of the bees but you will definitely lose more bees if you move them from closer than 3 km. If this isn't convenient for you try it from closer and add extra bees.

Remember the 3cm to 3 Mile Rule.* If you load your Boxes with mainly Nurse Bees, add some Feed, and *Close the Hive up (but make sure they have ventilation !) Wait 3 Days or So*. The "Bees" will forget their 'original' location, and will have to reset their Stat-Nav, so to speak (!) So... Any Hive can be within 3cm to 3 Mile Rule. 😎 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝 Happy Beekeeping 2022. 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝 My Garden is not big, so my Hive area is even more limited ! So I can have several Hives and Nucs, doing above, with no problem at all. Go Split, and make Nuc Hives easily. Same applies to Queen Boxes too... 😎

Yes. There are no eggs or brood until we get a mated queen.

Paul is making them. Here's more kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gd5lnLeKrZeUYp8.html

Thanks guys. Here's a link to an Ontario bee supply company that ships and sells my belts dancingbeeequipment.com/products/bee-belt

**queens

Hi David We use a two week cycle because our summers are short. We ensure that the queen is laying eggs before caging her. A three week cycle with the same equipment allows more certainty about the queens viability.

i am betting they are made in house.

Hi Andrei and Jeffery I normally do build what I can but a friend was ordering some of these from Lewis and sons in Manitoba so I jumped in on the order. I suspect they are available elsewhere.

That could work too!

:) :)

Hi Jeff So far we have only fed the nucs with hive top feeders at the beginning set up stage as described. I don't have specific feeders made up for the 4 way nucs. We've removed full frames and added foundation frames where necessary. It may be different in your conditions but we do our mating during the main honey flow in these units.

Thank you. Really looking to move away from depending so much on the mini mating nucs in the styrofoam. Shaking bees in a box and distributing by the cup while trying to keep the bees out of the sugar water seems much more laborious than a natural load in by placing a 4 way nuc on a 10 frame deep. Thanks again for the feedback

Thanks Kevin! Lots of ways to do beekeeping- that keeps in interesting.