>>I used a Cloake Board on a mature hive.  After a few flips they 
started coming at me like one of those AHB videos.

If you don't have AHB, bees on chemically contaminated bees can be 
very agitated and defensive...

>>I was thinking the entrance was small enough to defend.  I was 
wrong, every one was robbed out.

2 medium frames is not a lot of bees.  And it's easy to lose bees due 
to drifting in such a set-up.  If your bees defend against humans, 
they should equally or better defend against insects.  Where the 
entrances at least pointing in different directions?  And, what may 
be most important, where the individual compartments bee-proof?

>>I should have sticked to the larger nucs.

Not necessarily.  Kirk Webster successfully uses a set-up similar to 
yours.  Check in the recent issues of ABJ.

>>In the North East, how late in the year would you try to mate 
Queens?  Last year I had drones right up to Christmas.

I am just south of you and can get queens mated through the 1st week 
in October.  The bees are just sealing up the last batch of queen 
cells from a feral queen - they should mate well and start laying by 
mid-September.

October can not be counted on for successful matings here.  I will 
see drones late into the season but virgins will often not fly in 
October/November even if daytime highs get up into the 80s 
occasionally.

Waldemar
Long Island, NY

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