>I was hoping someone here might know where I might find a
>commercially produced nuc that uses 1/2 to 1/3 length frames.
 
>Thank you for any help
 
>Keith Benson
 
Hello Bee Liners
 
I have some used baby nucs here that I would be happy to get rid of cheap. I
used the nucs that you spoke of and while they worked fine they were High
priced. If you needed a large qty. Bob with apicom will order them for you I
am sure. Back to the nuc issue $2
each you arange for shipping. I have about Two Hundred Duplex baby nucs. I
can not tell you where to find a baby nuc made in the states.
 
We raise a lot of queens here at Hybri-Bees and St. Ambrose Apiary's and do
not find that small mini nucs are cost effective in the long run. You would
be better off to use the equipment that you have at your disposal and go with
that. you can use deep brood boxes and split them four ways or two frames to
a box we run three frame 6 5/8 nucs here almost year round and have very
little maintance. When we are done with them we just combine them and make
hives out of them.
 
Just about two frames of bees will run anywhere to produce quees in. While
the baby nucs and mini nucs are cheep in bees they are expensive in the long
run.
 
If you still are of a mind to use Mini's You can go to a garden store and buy
styrofoam flower pots about 4 inches in dia. make a lid for them out of light
wood. put bees and queen cage candy in box with virgin or cell and Bang you
got one custom made baby nuc. They work fine, we ran 100 of them one season
here. A plus is that you get a lot of wax. The only draw back is that you
dont have movable frames. You could make them as well if you wished to have
small frames in them.
 
 I also have a pattern here that you can use to make Mini and micro mini
nuc's yourself. You would think that with the large queen industry we have in
the states we would have standard nucs made by someone, but alas we are still
horse and buggy along those lines
 
I hope this helps, if I can help in any other way with Queen rearing or nucs
just let me know.
 
Dean Breaux
Hybri-Bees