Mating Nucs - A Little Work

As reported last time, I purchased some mini queen mating nucs. The mini frames within the nucs have a slot where you are expected to put a small amount of wax foundation so the bees can draw it out. I decided to do that Monday evening as I had a few minutes free.

I had a small crock pot with wax in it that I had used for re-coating some plastic frames (I purchased the crock pot expressly for dedicating to this task, as for marital harmony, you should never use any of your wife's cooking items for anything having to do with beekeeping and especially bees wax!!). So I plugged it in and let it heat up.

I had also purchased a pack of 10 sheets of wire-less foundation, to use with these nuc frames. I cut up one of the sheets into about 1" strips, and put them in the slot in the frame. Then I dribbled a little melted wax on the edge to hold the foundation in. Here's the result:

Not too exciting, but now the mating nucs are ready whenever I am (or, I should say whenever the bees are). Looking back, I realized I didn't need to buy wire-less foundation - I could have taken one sheet of wired foundation and just cut out strips in between the wires. Now what am I going to do with 9 1/2 sheets of unwired foundation? Maybe make candles...

The weather hasn't been too great lately - it got down to 25 degF the other night, and it's been cold and rainy. Old Man Winter is getting in one last dig!

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Also, I just noticed that this is my blog's 200^th post!! Yay bees!