PARK POLY NUCLEUS REVIEW

Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to an incredibly cold and snowy episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Today I'm going to be reviewing the Park 5-frame polynucleus. So in this video, we'll go through all of the features as normal. We'll talk about the roof, the feeder, the actual box, the entrance, the runners, everything that's good about the Park polynuc and everything that's bad about the Park Poly Nuc. I've paid for this myself, I bought it direct from Park Beekeeping Supplies, and I'm going to give you my honest review and recommendation. So elephant in the room, it's pretty snowy here today. Who'd have thought it, North Wales would actually get a little bit of snow this year? We've got some serious snow and it's cold. It's been going down to about -6, -8 degrees at nighttime. It's relatively warm today, you might have just seen a bee fly off over there, it's about 2 or 3 degrees. I'm just coming up to this apiary here, Just to clear some of the entrances because they're blocked up a little bit with snow. A couple we're putting fondant on as well. So that's the reason I'm up here. Do a couple of reviews while I'm here though. Got 3 or 4 to do today, and the first on the list is the Park Poly Nuc. So you may have noticed on this channel we quite like our polystyrene beehives and nucs. We're working our way through all of the Poly National nucs and all of the Poly National beehives. So we're pretty— we're getting there. Still got a few really important ones to come on the channel though. We've got a couple of exclusive reviews coming up for you as well, so hit that subscribe button now and stay tuned for some brand new content on our channel. All right, so the first thing to say about the Park Poly Nook is that it comes pre-painted. It's got a really nice textured paint finish. I really like that. Not overly keen on the color, so I'd probably give it a go over with something else. The problem that I have with that is I find when they use like a masonry paint like this, if I spray over the top with a, with a gloss-based car paint or something. It doesn't adhere to the poly as well. So my personal preference is to get the poly nucs not painted, especially if they're going to come in a color that I don't like. So my personal preference is to get them not painted. I do, however, quite like the texture though, purely for aesthetic reasons. It feels quite nice. Now the next thing that you immediately realize with the Park Poly Nuc is you lift it up and there's just nothing there. It is featherweight. I cannot believe how light this nuc is, and from speaking to a few people, I understand that the reason they've done it is due to the thermodynamics. They're going for absolute premium insulation properties on this hive. So we start with the roof then. It's a standard telescopic roof, and with all of the good designs of the poly nucs on the market, it comes with a recessed roof. Now this one isn't anywhere near as deep as the Maysmoor one, but what it does mean is you can pop it straight on the top of the box like that, and you've got about a 25mm, so 1-inch gap in order to feed fondant directly on the top of the bars. That's something that I always look out for in poly nucs is a way to feed fondant, because I find they're the colonies that need fondant in the winter. The only negative, and it is quite a big negative, is there's just nothing to it. It's so incredibly light, and for insulation, that's perfect. That's exactly what we want. Low-density polystyrene is going to give you high insulation properties. But what it does give you is very, very soft polystyrene. And you can just see here, I push into it and it just dents straight away. It's not that much more dense than the polystyrene that you would get packaging for any of the stuff that you might get through the post. So then moving on to the feeder. So the Parknoot has got a poly miller feeder, single slot in the middle there, and you put your syrup in both sides there and there. Again, similar theme, really, really lightweight. I cannot quite get over how light this is. Nowhere near as deep as any of the other poly nucs on the market. The poly nucs on the market like the Maysmoor one and the BS Honeybees one, you get about twice the depth of syrup. So I'm not overly keen on this design of syrup feeder. I personally, I feel it should be at least twice as deep. You're only really getting about 35 to 40 millimeters of depth, and that's assuming that you can get it perfectly level. And I find even when it's like that, the syrup pulls into one side. So unless you're getting that perfectly level, you're going to get barely a litre of syrup in here. And I like to go in and put loads of syrup into these nucs going into winter to get them nice and strong. So in terms of the design of the feeder, I don't have an issue with it. Standard rebate design. The issues I have is that it's too shallow and way, way too light. Then we move on to the box. And again, I'm going to say it again and again throughout this video. I cannot believe how light this is. The thing about the box though is that there's a little bit more meat in terms of the depth of the polystyrene, so it means it's not quite as bad and as fragile as the roof and the feeder. So in terms of the the insulation of the box, of the density versus the durability, I've not got as big an issue as I do on the roof and the feeder, and especially on both ends. So here and here, got about 70 mil. Of polystyrene insulation. That is a huge amount of insulation, and I'm sure the bees will do really, really well in here. You can tell this hive has been designed by someone who wants to get the best out of the thermal insulation properties of polystyrene. So another thing that really annoys me about this nuc is that it's 5 frames. There really aren't that many 5-frame nucs on the market anymore. This is, this is pretty much the only one that I could find. I much prefer a 6-frame. It's easier to do splits from it if you're taking a 6-frame and splitting it out into 2 3-frames. But I just think for small colonies going into winter, overwintering small colonies, that extra frame really does make quite a bit of difference. So my personal preference would always be a 6-frame nuc over a 5-frame nuc, and you don't have the option with the Park one. So you're kind of stuck with the 5-frame option, which is a little bit of a negative. Now I know this review is a bit skewed towards a negative, but something else that I don't really like about this hive is the fact that you've got castellations. I'm really not a fan of castellations in the brood box. You'd have a bit more flexibility in the ones that are in here, but they're, they're embedded. You can't get them out, and if you did want to take them out, you'd end up messing around with the B-space, and then you'd definitely start ripping away that poly because it's so light. The density is so low, you need the castellations in there just to protect yourself from it. Personally, I prefer the other design where you have an integrated poly runner, and then you can slot your castellations in if you want to do it. Gives you the option of doing it both ways. I really don't like castellations in nucs. I find they can be very snaggy. It's just not something for me. Other people may have a different preference, and that's entirely up to them. So then underneath, pretty standard nowadays. You've got your Varroa mesh floor. You've got a nice easy insert that comes out. Again, my pet hate with these inserts is that you don't— there's not enough room on this nuc in order to actually monitor what's on the boards. Could have just been dropped down a little bit and have some sort of design that's going to scoop out what's in there. When you pull this one out, all you're going to do is knock off all of the rubbish that's on the board, and you're not going to be able to do an accurate varroa drop if that's what you want to do. Now, the floor has got a very strange design, and I'm not sure whether I've got a defective one here or not, but it's not level. Like, it seems that there's 2 legs missing. So you've got 2 little legs there, piddly little pieces of polystyrene, and then 2 longer pieces of polystyrene there. I'd expect to have another 2 piddly little legs there just to balance it out, but you don't. So when it sits there like that, it's kind of tilting a little bit as well. Really not sure what's going on with that. I'm going to assume that that's a defective one that I've got, and normally you do have legs on it, because I just can't see any logic behind why you wouldn't have legs on that side, because you do end up with quite a considerable amount of wobble. Now, a really strange feature of, of this Poly Nuke is the fact that the floor is completely removable and it's made of this really lightweight polystyrene and it has that entrance built into it as well. So when I was playing around with it, I just tried to pull this entrance out and the whole floor comes out. I'm not sure again what the logic is behind that. Whether you can double these up and put them onto another box, I'm really not sure. I'm not very keen on the design though. I just don't see the reason for it. Now just putting that hive back together, putting the floor back in and the, and the Correx board underneath, I'm breaking bits of poly off. It's just not durable enough, this hive, for any reasonable amount of work. I don't understand why they've made it out of this polystyrene. Well, actually, strike that, I do understand because it's designed to be a really thermally efficient poly hive. And if you're the kind of person that's going to just pop one of these in your garden and you've got the time to be really slow and gentle with them, I reckon the bees would actually do really, really well in here. But I'm not going to run this system because it's just far too fragile for my liking. I think there's better options on the market. However, the Park Nuc does have one trick up its sleeve, and it's more of a trick for the manufacturers as opposed to the beekeepers. What you can do with this one is you can use a standard national frame in it, and you can also use a Langstroth frame in it as well. So it's interchangeable between the two, and I'll show you how you can do that now. So as it comes ready-built, this is a 2-in-1 version. They also do a 3-in-1 version as well where you add a separate Econ. This 2-in-1 version though, you can do the National Deep and the Langstroth as well. As it comes like that, you can put your National Deep in it, and then these side entrances here, they actually completely pop out. Careful not to damage the poly as you get them out, and then you're left with a box that's suitable for Langstroth as well. So like I say, no real practical benefit to the beekeeper there. I don't know anybody that runs Nationals and Langstroth and uses them interchangeably. It's a bit of a manufacturing trick there that means that they can sell them to people who use Langstroth and people that use Nationals as well using the same mould. So no real benefit to the beekeeper, but definitely worth noting if you're buying these that they work for Langstroth, they work for National deeps, and then if you want the 14x12 variant, go for the 3-in-1 and it comes with an additional eke as well, and then you can use it for 14x12s. Right, and that's it for the review. We've spoken about the roof, we've spoken about the feeder, we've spoken about the 3-in-1, 2-in-1 nature and the mix of different frames. We've spoken about the rebates, we've spoken about the finish of the material and the floor and the entrance as well. Lost. So as I said before, trying to condense these reviews down a little bit. I've still probably spoken for a little bit too long, so we'll call it a day there. Thanks for watching. Please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video. And I'll see you next time. Bye.