BBKA Forum

Had a go with plastic Rainbow mini nucs last year whilst queen rearing. After only one go jury is still out on several points.

Was going through all my mininucs cleaning them up and usually knock out the drawn comb and give fresh starter strips each year. Quite a few have perfectly good drawn comb in the mini frames however. I don’t change comb every year in full hives and it’s obviously extra work for the tiny colonies to have to draw fresh comb each time, so made me think.

Those who use Apideas and the like - do you always knock out the last seasons comb or do you ever reuse it?

I am happy to leave drawn comb in mini-nucs if it's decent; alternatively I might cut it down to a couple of cm. The top of the comb doesn't always have brood in it during use so it's not usually dark and so you have an instant starter strip if some is left behind.