Pulled Nuc, Want To Put It Back

[Jen]

I think I made a rash decision today. Hive is 3 meds. I only inspected the top med, and honey super. It's slow going building back up because I believe it has swarmed a couple of times and I did split it also. I saw 3 pretty good frames of capped brood and larvae in the top box and plenty of stores. Automatically, I thought 'This would make a good nuc.' So I pulled it and started nuc #8. Then, after my Sunday nap I thought 'Dang! this hive is trying to build up and I just took more brood.'

Instinct tell me to put the nuc back with the queen. Nice big queen and doing a good job.

But will the bees in the hive accept the queen and 3 frames of brood back tomorrow?

[Wandering Man]

If in doubt, try a newspaper combine.

But I bet there's other advice on its way.

[Jen]

So, then how would I put a nuc on top of a med with newspaper in between?.... thinking.... I could put newspaper on top med, then a medium hive box, then transfer the frames from the nuc to the added top hive box.... but trying not to go higher...

[Wandering Man]

Yes, and once the newspaper is chewed away, you might be able to swap your frames out with the ones you put in to replace these when you made the split?

[Jen]

That seems easy enough... Thanks Wman

[CBT]

You can spritz them with light syrup and honey bee healthy and put them back and whistle as you walk away.

[Jen]

Hi CBT, well I did it the newspaper way. I keep forgetting the spritz thing, and I have some syrup with lemongrass oil in it too 

So what I need to know now is how long to wait to lift off the 5 frames from the nuc and put them back into the middle med?

[tedh]

The last newspaper combine we did, we married them together after 2 or 3 days with no problem.  Ted

[Riverrat]

No longer than its been I would shake the bees out in front of the hive and put the frames back in the hive.   there shouldn't be much fighting

[Jen]

Thanks for help guys, sure hope this nice queen settles right back in 

[rober]

just curious, why are you making so many nucs?

[Jen]

Well Rober, a lot of reasons. I'm in the process, season by season, of trying maintain just 2 hives, and maybe a couple nucs for insurance.

When my hives swarm and I catch the swarm, I've increased my apiary. If I split I've increased my apiary.

I have a guy that comes and gets my swarms, for free. He's trying to increase his apiary. But every winter he looses all his bees because he refuses to treat in the fall, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't feed either. So I feel like I'm sending all my nice healthy bees to the gallows with him.

So, the last two seasons I've been learning how to maintain and sell nucs. So far, I've sold 3 this year. But I now have 8, and all are queened now and still waiting for buyers  I run all mediums tho. So our seasoned beeks are teaching the new beeks to start their hives with deeps, so it's harder to sell medium nucs. Trying to get it across to our bee club that 2 meds equals 1 deep. It's slow going.

[LazyBkpr]

I have found it is harder to sell deeps than mediums. A medium nuc can be started/installed in a super. Even if someone runs deeps their supers are still usually mediums. A deep cant be placed in a medium. The best you can do is stack two mediums and that leaves a lot of space for the bees to make a mess.

[Jen]

Completely agree Lazy! But it isn't swinging that way with the bee club at least for now. I see that I'm going to have to make a demonstration