Author Topic: Combining Three Week Nucs  (Read 1309 times)

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Offline Jen

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Combining Three Week Nucs
« on: May 23, 2018, 01:28:37 pm »
I only keep two hives, and they are running smoothly. I like to have a couple nucs to winter. This season I have made 9 nucs for sale and more to come. Keeping 9+ nucs queened in the spring is precarious. I now have three nucs that have no eggs, larvae, brood. Two of those nucs have queens, one is dragging around very slow, the other queen is very small and not laying now for 2 weeks. I would like to replace both queen with a new mated queen.

I would like to combine all three nucs and make one strong one with the new queen. I know I will smush the two dud queens first.

How can I merge three nucs? Was thinking maybe stack all three with newpaper in between each nuc... ?
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Offline riverbee

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Re: Combining Three Week Nucs
« Reply #1 on: May 24, 2018, 12:04:56 am »
jen, sounds to me like you have 3 nucs with 3 dud queens? and 3 queens that need to go to the promised land?...... :D

combining all 3 of these nucs with a new queen?  crap shoot. (just my HO)

i guess what i would do is combine with my regular hives, and then when appropriate for your environment make up your nucs that you want to overwinter from the hives you have that are prospering to overwinter.....

not sure jen, just my thought. i have combined failing nucs, but not 3 at a time.
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Offline Jen

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Re: Combining Three Week Nucs
« Reply #2 on: May 24, 2018, 11:25:09 am »
Hi River :) Crap shoot is a good term for this situation. One of my friend beeks suggested:

removing all queens, wait 24 hours
stack all three nucs with newspaper between them
intro new queen in the middle box, or top box would prob be fine
check back in 4-5 days and hopefully find released queen alive
check back in 7 days and hopefully find eggs

I'm not against banging all the bees out onto the lawn and let them find new hives to live in. But all the bees in these three nucs would make a very nice sized single nuc albeit some of those bees will be old.


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Offline Lburou

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Re: Combining Three Week Nucs
« Reply #3 on: May 24, 2018, 01:49:29 pm »
...I'm not against banging all the bees out onto the lawn and let them find new hives to live in...
Not a bad idea, it's simpler and has a better upside than risking the bees in all three NUCs going 'laying worker.'

Yet, if you insisted on combining them, don't combine all three at once. Combine two, wait a few days and combine the third.  You are feeding them, right?
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Offline Jen

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Re: Combining Three Week Nucs
« Reply #4 on: May 24, 2018, 01:58:51 pm »
Hi Lee, two weeks ago I put all full frames of honey in each of them. But we are in a dearth right now so sugar syrup is being used as well.
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Offline Riverrat

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Re: Combining Three Week Nucs
« Reply #5 on: May 24, 2018, 06:10:32 pm »
How many frames of bees in each hive?  you may be able to get a good queen in each of them and add a frame of larva in different stages from your strong hives and they should have time to be built up for winter.  Did you split these off and let them make a queen?
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Offline riverbee

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Re: Combining Three Week Nucs
« Reply #6 on: May 29, 2018, 10:58:33 pm »
 "we are in a dearth right now"

jen, might be part of the problem with the queens not laying. some queens shut down.
what breed of queens are they?

how are the queens in your other two hives doing?

and what did you decide to do with the 3 nucs?
i keep wild things in a box..........™
if you obey the rules, you miss all the fun.....katherine hepburn
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