Justin, we tried the mini mating nucs but found them too restrictive. We will make the 5 frame nuc boxes our standard mating nuc from now on. That way the new queens can just grow their nucs into single deeps without the work and risk of taking them out and reintroducing them to a new colony.

Although the queens are raised in the nectar flows (locally that is May and June, we have an April flow but that is too early for queen rearing), once July starts we are into a dearth and those new queens are trying to build their colonies. I want them to build as fast as they can for two reasons...one, to evaluate the fecundity of the new queens (keeping the best) and two, to get big enough to overwinter the colony. That means feeding 1:1 in July, August and then 2:1 to get them to winter weights in September. 

By the end of the queen rearing window, we will have 5 runs of queens, each separated by two weeks (that seemed to work well for us last year). 10 queens a run means 50 colonies to feed by mid July. 15 a run means 75....and I think I would struggle to run even 50 as I also will have resource hives and honey hives to manage. But any which way, 30-50 take a lot of syrup especially when they all approach a 10 frame size and in the interest of this aging beekeeper I would like to have to feed only once a week, and mix only once a week.

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