Uniting apidea to nuc

[beejazz]

I hope this is going to work! I didn't like the idea of wasting the bees/brood if i had removed the queen, so I have united the Q+apidea with newspaper to a 3-frame nuc, (Paynes Poly nuc). I used 3 poly ekes to house the apidea (double box so 10 frames), placed some strong cardboard on the topbars of the nuc with a cut-out the same dimensions as the apidea, newspaper over the cut out hole, and then the apidea placed on top of that with the floor removed. I think it may be working, since there is quite a bit of pollen going in now, and the newspaper is chewed through and removed. I'm thinking I should look for the queen and get her down into the nuc if she is not already, and then put a piece of Q exc under the apidea.
Regarding the amount of bees/brood in an apidea, with 2 boxes of brood, is that equivalent to a frame of bees? I'm hoping I have made up a nuc that will be strong enough to over-winter.

[Jon]

3 well covered apidea frames is roughly equivalent to a super frame.
You can unite a queenless apidea with any colony by simply placing it over the feed hole in the crown board above newspaper after removing the floor.

[beejazz]

Yes, of course, but options were over-winter the queen in apidea, cage her and use to re-queen a stroppy hive, or unite the whole apidea to a 3 frame nuc, making a strongish 4 framer, that I can either over-winter or re-queen stroppy hive with. I have apiguard on for another 2 weeks, not sure about re-queening, perhaps I had better wait.

[Adam]

I united an apidea with a nuc just a few weeks ago. After one week, the queen was below on a full-sized frame and so I put a queen excluder between the two boxes. The Apidea was removed after all the brood had emerged. The nuc is still quite small so another mini-nuc was shaken in front of it a week or so ago to strengthen it a little.

It's worth considering re-queening a stroppy hive now. If you do, the bees will be decent come spring. If you don't you may well have 2 months of stroppy bees after you re-queen; let's say you re-queen at the end of March which is possible in London, then you could have until the end of May before the stroppy bees have gone.

[beejazz]

The unite is going well, had a quick look and there is a nice amount of capped brood in the nuc, however the apidea frames are being filled with stores since I am feeding the nuc down below. I did think about waiting until all the little frames are capped then removing and keeping for next year, but I need all the bees down below i should think, to draw the remaining foundation, 1 and a half, and to keep the brood warm, as the nights are getting chilly now, also I want the stores in the nuc not the apidea boxes. Should I rig up some kind of frame so that I can let a colony or nuc? take down the stores after scratching the capped stuff? Or is it poss to just freeze the frames until needed next year? There are 10.
I re-queened the stroppy hive, paper unite, must check at the weekend to see if they've taken to her, or not!