Little John
Drone Bee
- Joined
- May 27, 2012
- Messages
- 1,655
- Reaction score
- 4
- Location
- Boston, UK
- Hive Type
- Other
- Number of Hives
- 50+
For anyone planning on over-wintering nucs, Mike Palmer gave a very good talk on this subject during the 2013 National Honey Show, a video of which has been uploaded to YouTube:
As Mike points out in his talk, the over-wintering of nucs has a very long history, but for various reasons has been largely replaced by imports from afar: in the case of the northern US, from more southerly states, and in Britain, from regions bordering the Mediterranean.
It is my intention to over-winter native AMM stock, both queens and nucs, and so I'm currently in the process of looking at proven systems for doing this. Mike's system is being run on Langstroth boxes, and so this post is (mainly) concerned with how best to run such a system using as much standard National kit as possible.
For the benefit of anyone who hasn't viewed Mike's talk yet, the system is based around a split-brood box, with one or two pairs of half-width supers placed over that box.
The underlying principle behind the use of a split-brood box is that a relatively thin divider will allow thermal transfer between the two halves, thus the nuc colonies will cluster on either side of the divider, sharing their warmth.
However, when dividing a National brood box a problem immediately arises, in that a box which holds 11.5 35mm frames (12 only with a tight squeeze) cannot be divided equally AND incorporate a divider as well.
So - what possible solutions are there for this problem ?
The first - and perhaps most obvious - is the use of a thin divider, with dummy board spacers fitted at both ends of the box. A simple solution, but one which requires 3 components to be made.
The second solution is one already employed here: the use of a wide divider.
Although only one component needs to be made, there is very little thermal contact between the box halves. This could possibly be remedied by having aluminium sheets attached to the sides of these wide dividers, with thermal bridging bars joining them.
The third solution would be to run the brood box asymmetrically - that is, with 6 frames in one half and 5 in the other. That would obviate the need for dummy spacers, but would require the making of an adapter plate. Such a plate could easily be inserted between a brood box with bottom-beespace and nucs above with top-beespace. As can be seen in the following diagram, the central bar of such an adapter plate would need to be 36mm wide in order to completely cover both a 3/4" divider below, and present a similar width to the pair of nuc boxes above. In practice, I would expect that this could be whittled-down to something around 26mm, which would hopefully still present enough surface area for adequate sealing. There would undoubtedly still be some propolising above the inner top bar of the 6-frame nuc, but whether this becomes a serious problem or not, only testing would reveal.
A fourth solution would be to dispense with the brood box entirely, and make an extra pair of half-width nuc boxes instead. This pair could then be strapped together to form the split brood box. If the inner walls were kept to a minimum thickness (as with all the nuc boxes in this system) - say, 10mm - and the outer wall made extra thick - say 30mm - then this could be a possible solution, albeit one which has strayed from the basic concept of 'using what you have'.
Having strayed this far - a fifth solution would be to abandon the National box size entirely, and make sets of completely new boxes, dimensioned for either a 4+4 or 5+5 system.
If possible I'd like to settle on one of the above solutions before the New Year, in order to make the necessary kit before the season commences - so would very much appreciate hearing any opinions which others may have on this particular topic.
LJ
Code:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nznzpiWEI8A
As Mike points out in his talk, the over-wintering of nucs has a very long history, but for various reasons has been largely replaced by imports from afar: in the case of the northern US, from more southerly states, and in Britain, from regions bordering the Mediterranean.
It is my intention to over-winter native AMM stock, both queens and nucs, and so I'm currently in the process of looking at proven systems for doing this. Mike's system is being run on Langstroth boxes, and so this post is (mainly) concerned with how best to run such a system using as much standard National kit as possible.
For the benefit of anyone who hasn't viewed Mike's talk yet, the system is based around a split-brood box, with one or two pairs of half-width supers placed over that box.
The underlying principle behind the use of a split-brood box is that a relatively thin divider will allow thermal transfer between the two halves, thus the nuc colonies will cluster on either side of the divider, sharing their warmth.
However, when dividing a National brood box a problem immediately arises, in that a box which holds 11.5 35mm frames (12 only with a tight squeeze) cannot be divided equally AND incorporate a divider as well.
So - what possible solutions are there for this problem ?
The first - and perhaps most obvious - is the use of a thin divider, with dummy board spacers fitted at both ends of the box. A simple solution, but one which requires 3 components to be made.
The second solution is one already employed here: the use of a wide divider.
Although only one component needs to be made, there is very little thermal contact between the box halves. This could possibly be remedied by having aluminium sheets attached to the sides of these wide dividers, with thermal bridging bars joining them.
The third solution would be to run the brood box asymmetrically - that is, with 6 frames in one half and 5 in the other. That would obviate the need for dummy spacers, but would require the making of an adapter plate. Such a plate could easily be inserted between a brood box with bottom-beespace and nucs above with top-beespace. As can be seen in the following diagram, the central bar of such an adapter plate would need to be 36mm wide in order to completely cover both a 3/4" divider below, and present a similar width to the pair of nuc boxes above. In practice, I would expect that this could be whittled-down to something around 26mm, which would hopefully still present enough surface area for adequate sealing. There would undoubtedly still be some propolising above the inner top bar of the 6-frame nuc, but whether this becomes a serious problem or not, only testing would reveal.
A fourth solution would be to dispense with the brood box entirely, and make an extra pair of half-width nuc boxes instead. This pair could then be strapped together to form the split brood box. If the inner walls were kept to a minimum thickness (as with all the nuc boxes in this system) - say, 10mm - and the outer wall made extra thick - say 30mm - then this could be a possible solution, albeit one which has strayed from the basic concept of 'using what you have'.
Having strayed this far - a fifth solution would be to abandon the National box size entirely, and make sets of completely new boxes, dimensioned for either a 4+4 or 5+5 system.
If possible I'd like to settle on one of the above solutions before the New Year, in order to make the necessary kit before the season commences - so would very much appreciate hearing any opinions which others may have on this particular topic.
LJ