Worldwide Beekeeping
Beekeeping => General Beekeeping => Topic started by: Perry on January 09, 2014, 12:54:32 pm
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Well, a little sad today but really not unexpected. I tried to overwinter 6 nucs this year for the first time. They weren't super strong, in fact a couple were on the light side, but I popped fondant on them a while back. I decided to take a peek in the 2 weak ones as they were side by side at the end of the 6. Both dead. Full frame of honey in one and fondant still left in the other. Clusters were both too small to make a go of it in this cold we're having. Found both queens though.
Fingers crossed on the other 4, but I have my doubts. They were all active a couple weeks ago till we had those 2 back to back bad storms and now I don't see much activity at all. Still pretty cold, so I guess I'll wait till things warm up a bit.
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Keep trying Perry. Get it figured out. If You can pull nuc's through the winter there I should be able to do it here. Looking forward to the reports!
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Try it with five frames rather than 1 1/2 frames of bees, and 3 1/2 frames uncovered.
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I've got 6 nucs and the week before Christmas they were all still doing good, was warm enough to pop lids and looked like 3-4 frames of bees in each still and they were flying at 43f.
I've got them in the dcoates style plywood nucs. I'm in the process of building 15 sets of these double nucs that Michael Palmer uses in Vermont (http://www.betterbee.com/Products/Nuc-Boxes-and-Components/Double-Nuc-with-Supers). Which should get me the ability to have somewhere right around 50 nucs going into next winter hopefully led by homegrown queens. Wintering nucs is a numbers game. If you do it right you'll bust down dink hives in mid-summer toward the end your main nectar flow giving each nuc 2 frames of brood and a frame of pollen with a ripe q cell. One hive yields, in theory, about 7 nucs.
If you didn't make nucs to winter and started with 10 colonies and had 20% losses you have 8 come spring and two deadouts that you either split a remaining hive to replenish leaving you with 7 production colonies.
If you take your two dinks and split them to 7 nucs each you end up with 22 colonies and you could suffer 50% losses and still have a nuc to sell to maintain your 10 colonies.
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Sorry to hear about those but good luck with the rest. We got a taste of the weather you received and it doesn't surprise me.
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My one nuc which had 2 to 3 frames of bees and a fresh queen in the fall is still going. I doubled it up and put another full of honey and pollen on top when I lost my big hive to queen issues, then put another nuc on top of that stuffed with owens corning pink fiberglass. (some vent between nuc 2 and the insulated one.) then I taped silver bubble wrap on the north side over the whole thing. makes adding fondant tricky, but so far so good with a lot of duct tape, they are alive
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May bee try DBL. nucs{10 frames} and feed well and then try to take them trough winter that's how I run my nucs I have 13 and all are going fine and we just are now coming out of MINS. TEMPS. a few where lite going int winter and I put sugar on top and there still humming .
I bet if you try DBL. nucs you'll have better luck .
(https://worldwidebeekeeping.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi952.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fae9%2FGLOCK3%2FBEEKEEPING%25202013%2FPB210253_zps67fa0afc.jpg&hash=8fa5bfd4f66cd128d5f95712ed704df77c43a0b7) (http://s952.photobucket.com/user/GLOCK3/media/BEEKEEPING%202013/PB210253_zps67fa0afc.jpg.html)
You'll get go luck.
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Went into the winter with only one nuc, made in July with a new queen. 10 frames single body, five frames full of bees and five frames of honey. Hope to check it on Saturday. Sorry to hear that Perry.
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Oh well, I always figured they were a long shot, not nearly as strong as I would have liked.
Glock, I love some of your hive top weights! :laugh:
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I have had good success overwintering nucs in a 5 on 5 configuration