How to Modify Paynes Poly Nuc - Convert to Eight Frame Poly Nuc - Cut Out Paynes Side Feeder

In this video, I'm going to show you how to modify a Paynes Poly nuc so it can take 8 frames. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. I'm going to show you in this video how to modify this Paynes Poly nuc so it can take 8 frames. So there are 2 things I don't like about the Paynes Poly nuc. One is that there's not much insulation in the roof. Doesn't have a top feeder, and the roof is quite thin. Not much I can do about that apart from putting some Celotex on the roof. The second thing is that I really don't like the feeder. I know some people do like this feeder. Personally, I'm not keen on this feeder. It works, but it gives me a little bit of a headache and it makes my life more difficult. So back to this video. Why am I going to modify this then? I'm going to take out the feeder, I'm going to chop it out, and I'm going to repair everything back together so it can take 8 frames. And then you might think, but then you don't have a feeder, how are you going to feed your bees? And then the second part of it is that Payne's sell a top feeder to go on top of it. So then you have an 8-frame nuc, top feeder that sits on the top, and then the roof. And just by doing that, just by fixing the first issue that I don't like, which is I don't like the feeder, I've actually solved the second issue as well, which is that it hasn't got enough insulation on top, because I'm going to put a top feeder on top of it as well. Now when you add everything up together, it's still quite expensive, but actually the price of poly has gone through the roof at the moment. Manufacturers are putting their prices up left, right, and center, and when you work out Payne's, their prices are coming through as well. But if you add up everything, an 8-frame Payne's poly nuc with the top feeder Not that much more expensive than it used to be compared to, say, BS Honeybees, Maysmoor, and Abello. So it's actually something that's probably worthwhile doing now. Does take a little bit of work, but we're going to go through all the steps in this video, make it as simple as possible. Right, first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to make myself a little bit of space. I'm going to take out the plastic queen excluder because I don't want that flying off anywhere, and I lose these on other ones. So I'll keep that in my back pocket. I won't need that going forward. And what I'm going to do is I'm just going to cut out that feeder. So I'm going to jump straight in. I've got an angle grinder, all of the guards off. I'm going to put it down to its lowest setting because this is polystyrene, this isn't metal or brick. And I'm just going to chop that feeder out. So this is what it looks like to start off with. You can see you've got your space there for your 6 frames. Really simple frame runners, just flat, makes this job so much easier. Then you've got your integrated feeder, side feeder there. Obviously you've got your bit of wood at the bottom, and all we're going to do is we're just going to chop out that section there, build it up with some runners, and then we're good to go. So like I said, Makita angle grinder cordless is the best tool in the world for loads of things, but especially for this. So I've got my eye protection on, I'm going to turn this on now, and I'm going to cut out this central feeder. Now, it can take a few cuts. You just need to work your way in. It's a little bit awkward, but you're not going to win any prizes for neatness here. You just need to hack it out and you can put it right at the end. So once you've got it to a point where you've made a few cuts like that and you feel like you made a mess and you think you just can't get in there anymore, just use a little bit of brute force and just rip the bits out. And then you can tidy them up at the end. So what happens is you start getting bits off like that, and that's fine. It gives you access in to chop it up, make it much neater. So you can see it starts off looking really, really messy, and it is difficult if you're going to do this with an angle grinder, you're going to do it with a knife. Never starts off looking good, but you just need to get in there and that will give you access to neaten everything up. So classic North Wales weather, it is pouring down. You might not have an angle grinder, so you can do this with a real high-tech, well-kept saw as well. Like I said, you're hacking away at it. You can make it look better at the end. So once you get down to the bottom like this, it becomes impossible to get anything in there. What I would suggest is a hot knife is a really good way to do this, or if you've got a special tool that can do this— I don't know what it is yet. What I use is some really fancy pliers like this, and I just rip the polystyrene out until I get it back to where I want it to be. Right, after you chip it all away, you're going to have something like that. Loads of loose bits, and you can see we've got the rough shape done now. Really, really easy. So next thing you need to do is you need to deal with these bits here. You need to get rid of these, otherwise you're not going to have a consistent frame lug. Really easy, angle grinder in there or the saw. Chop it out, try and get it as flush as you possibly can to that frame runner. So then it's looking something like that, and you can see it's really starting to take shape now. All that we're missing is a big plug over there, otherwise they're going to stick loads of brace comb in there, and the simplest way of doing it is just to chop up some poly, glue it into position. Right, so at this point I know everyone's going to do a better job than me of this, but all I've done is I've just chopped out a nice piece of poly, I've stuck it in, stuck a couple of bits in there, and for me that is done. I've seen The Apiarist do that, and I love The Apiarist. His blog is so good, backed up with science and evidence. Can't get better than that. And he did this and it was a 10 out of 10, and this is probably a 2 out of 10. So what he did is he went over, sanded all this down, smoothed it in, It looked so good. So if you want to do that, no problem at all. Just get some filler, plain external wood filler, fill in all the gaps, sand them down. But the 2 dimensions that are really critical here: make sure that the piece of polystyrene that you put in here is flush with the rest of the runner, and make sure that it's flush this way as well. That way you're maintaining all of your bee space. All I'm going to do now, take these out, get some sticks like silicone in there, And I'm going to glue everything together. Then if you want to stick a little bit in the sides, you can do that. Tidy everything up a little bit, get those gaps filled. Anywhere else you've made a mess, like I put a little cut there, get a bit of sticks-like silicone in there. Fill up all the gaps where you're not very good at DIY. Got a bit up here as well, fill that gap up. If you're going to use wood filler, you can get your wood filler in now, fill up all those gaps. I'm not going to bother with this gap here. And there we go, we're pretty much finished. Now like I said, that is not neat, but it really is practical. So you just got to make sure you've got this single frame runner here, same on the other side. Make sure it's all nice and level. Make sure this face is level as well, nice and flush, and this one over here. And then anything above that is just making it look good. Get the filler in there. You can put metal frame runners on there as well if you want, 'cause this is a top bee space hive. You can convert it into bottom bee space, but for a bog standard modification, that is complete. So there we go. We've successfully modded the 6-frame Payne's Poly Nuc with feeder, chopped the feeder out, got it all level, and now this is an 8-frame box. So I'm just going to pop the frames in there quickly now just to show you how well those 8 frames fit. And then we'll talk a little bit about the feeder at the end. So there you go, there's my 8 frames. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. It's a tight fit, but it is a good fit. Absolutely no problem getting 8 in there. You'll get a little bit of flex in the poly as well, but this becomes a really, really useful size of box. I said we're going to talk about the feeder. So obviously, if you've got this now, you've done your 8-frame mod, you're thinking, how am I going to feed that? Payne's sell a top feeder for their nuc anyway. I think they realized that people weren't too keen on that side feeder, so they added this as an option. Now, I think when you take this modification and you add this top feeder onto it, you end up with something that is not available anywhere on the UK market. Every single nuc on the market is a 6-frame nuc. There's some 5-frame nucs on the market, but you don't get a 7-frame nuc, you don't get an 8-frame nuc. The jump from 6-frame nuc up to the minimum of like a 10-frame national box. Some of them have got 11-frame and the Abelo's got a 12-frame. This is a real in-the-middle box and it's a really useful size of box. To have your nucs this big going into winter, coming out of the winter on 8 frames, they're effectively a full-size colony. So you lose that little bit of the spring where you're trying to build that nucleus colony up to target the spring flows. And you've got this big jumbo nucleus colony that's just ready to go and that can give you a bumper crop from spring and into summer. I mentioned it before though, what I like about this now though is that I've solved 2 problems in one, because what I didn't like about it before was the super thin panes roof. Not a massive fan of that. I'm also not a massive fan of the flimsy crown board as well. If I was going to run this nuc like this, I'd leave the feeder on all the way throughout the year, use the top feeder as my crown board, And then in the winter, I'd leave the feeder on as well. You can feed the bees syrup in here if you need to. You can upturn it, feed them fondant in here. It's a really useful, practical system. So there we go. I hope you enjoyed that video. I've been meaning to do that video for a long, long time. If you've got Payne's nucs and you don't like that side feeder, there is an option to modify them, get them onto a top feeder, and you end up with a really unique nucleus that's not available anywhere else on the market. Hope you enjoyed that video. Hope you found it useful. As always, please hit the subscribe button. Please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time.