Good bye Mini Plus - I will miss you But.....

[@sentimentalbloke7586]

The guy in Barnyard Bees, David I believe, even uses two frame nucs to start off new queens with limited bees, then as they expand and run out of room he simply moves the frames to a five frame nuc in the original spot. It's worth a look at his programs. I can't see why he couldn't have simply added a divider board.

[@gwenyngruffydd]

Reminds me of a guns and roses 🔫🌹song…. 🎵mama take these mini nucs away….I don’t need them anymore…😂🎵

[@michaelduncan6287]

Didn't see a contact on your pg. But want to say hope you and your bees weather this current storm, looks like your getting hit hard!!!

[@tomkingsley4398]

Thanks for the video. I was using queen castles for mating queens, but I'm going to switch to 5 frame nucs. It seems like I'm always trying to streamline my operation yet keep as much flexibility as possible. Thanks for all the education and incite you provide.

[@davidmaloney2724]

I always get a few losses with a robbing frenzy even with queens in them but with so many colonies you got to do what you got to do

[@aCanadianBeekeepersBlog]

Nice looking yards

[@richardnoel3141]

Thanks Ian. 😎

[@BubbleManna]

Farewell faithful friends

[@robertwattam947]

Thank you Richard

[@davidmaloney2724]

Supper good choice you can do everything in a nuke and frames are interchangeable

[@kaistumer198]

Send ‚em over i take ‚em happily

[@AntennaBee]

R.I.P minis 😅 5 framers are the old fashion way proven year after year

[@edwardwalton3661]

Hi where are you selling the mini plus thanks

[@richardnoel3141]

in North Brittany, France.

[@valerasurudo3203]

❤

[@paulf4424]

Well it'll raise some funds and keep you fit running around in the apiary.

[@richardnoel3141]

lol, may be help finish the extraction room i hope

[@cuidandodasabelhasapicultura]

Bom trabalho assistindo no Brasil

[@richardnoel3141]

gracias deseándoles una gran temporada!

[@mywaychannel1]

You can raise queens in a normal nuke that holds 4/5 big brood frames . Then you can sell them as nukes or just use the frames to make bigger colonies..less equipment and nonsense 😊

[@sentimentalbloke7586]

My thoughts on mini plus is that they are a really stupid idea, you can't use their frames anywhere else if you need to and exactly what benefits do they have over nucs? the answer is NONE. A waste of money and resources that would be better used elsewhere. I do all of my queen raring in nucs and full sized boxes, why? Because everything is interchangeable.

[@richardnoel3141]

there is benefits if you are raising queens to sell. you can fins the queens a lot easier in ansmaller amount of bees and you need less bees to get the colony started.! but i see your point, and i agree. universal frame size is key

[@graemediesel2936]

It is worth quite a it to me to just have one size of frames

[@marekbily8677]

I have bad news from Czechia. First Asian hornet is here. The nest was destroyed yesterday :).

[@richardnoel3141]

its a bit like Thanos!! Inevitable!!

[@benjamindejonge3624]

Try some mini EWK plus. For your own use, btw they’re not plastic or foam and last a hundred years

[@SlauterPFK]

What was the main reason to get rid of Mini+ in the end? I also work with Dadant frames and I thought about a Mini+ system with 1/2-length Dadant frames. But, I'm going with 2*3 mating nucs with normal frames for now. That gives me an option to actually pool some honey out of the nucs while breeding queens and not messing around with smaller frames. So, this topic was very interesting to me.

[@richardnoel3141]

Exactly, as you described, i used to sell a few queens, so having a system where I could easily cage them from the mini plus worked quite well in that respect and then the rest I will transfer to the nucs as and when I needed them, but the problem was I am finding myself spending a lot of time. Just literally checking the mini-plus before you even do anything else when you can do the whole thing in a nuc ( like you are doing) and you can either divide it into two, or you can just use a whole frame, nuke with some partitions. It was certainly a good exercise for me over the years we have experienced it and I’m not slating of the system, but having one size frame is more universal for me. I’ve always wave the flag for keeping everything universal inside and this was the final bit in that quest . Thanks for your comments, good luck

[@SlauterPFK]

I understand, thanks! In the end, less time spent with fewer queens for sale, but also with more bees and honey produced makes sense. I now think I wasn't wrong calculating all of that😁@@richardnoel3141

[@kaistumer198]

M+ is only working propper if you winter them (2-3 high), raise them to 8-10 stories in spring and then split ‚em up with your first queens. Once they are ready either use the queen and out a cell, or split ‚em, or add a 2nd story and keep the quern laying. If you want to add the queen to a hive, put the M+ without the bottom on top of the hive. The great thing about the M+ is that you aren’t forced to run them on a tight schedule like the Apidea. The last M+ of the season, stack them 3 high, use your honey super bees for making shook swarms 2 queens go into the swarms, 1 gets two stories on top and overwinters. So you also have queens for spring or winter queen replacement.

[@johnmorgan9435]

I think your making a mistake, but you have your reasons.

[@richardnoel3141]

May be but I haven’t been using the mini Plus to their full potential for the last 3 years really and they were becoming a days work just to check them, as well as the nucs I create, there was just no point in carrying on in that way!