Easy Way To Make A Nuc

[Ray4852]

nucs are easy to make if your hives are strong enough to make one. First thing you must know. Check your mite load. If your hives have mites.  Your nuc is going to get infected with them too. Treat before you start. I use mated queens. Order your queen before you plan to make a nuc. Pick your location anywhere in your bee yard.  Make your nuc up 24 hours before you get your new queen. I don’t look for the queen. I look for 3 frames of capped brood. Brush off all bees from the frames into the bottom box. Put frames in empty box with brood. Take out one frame of pollen and honey and put it in the box with the brood. Now you have your 5 frame nuc made up. Add 5 more frames to fill in the box. Put you queen excluder on your second hive body. Next put the nuc on top of excluder. If you have a honey super put it on the top of hive. Come back the next day and remove your nuc. All frames will have nurse bees on them. Your nuc is queen less now. Place your nuc on top of a new bottom board. Install a robbing screen. Put in your new mated queen and start feeding megabee. Come back  3 days and see how your new queen is doing.

[iddee]

One question, Ray. Shouldn't it be 3 frames of UNcapped brood? The nurse bees don't feed capped brood, so would stay in the bottom with the larva.

[Ray4852]

I use capped brood. You can use uncapped brood too. I look for 3 nice frames of brood. The nurse bees  move up and cover it. Fast easy way to make a nuc. queen is down in the bottom box below excluder.

[iddee]

I agree with the overall method. It's just that I think the open brood left below would hold most nurse bees down there and only enough would go up to provide heat. Mostly house bees, older than nurse bees, but younger than foragers. Please correct me if I am wrong in this thought.

[Ray4852]

Nurse bees stay with the brood because they wont drift back to the mother hive. Foragers drift back to the mother hive.

[iddee]

I don't think you got my gist. When you brush off the bees into the bottom boxes, why should the nurse bees leave the open brood that needs fed, and move up to the capped brood that only needs warmth.the house bees should do that and leave the nurse bees with the open brood in the bottom boxes.

[brooksbeefarm]

I make up 5 frame nuc's, 2 frames with both capped and uncapped brood,if mostly uncapped and eggs i look for the queen on it so i don't injure her when i brush the bees off. One frame of capped brood that will emerge soon to build the nuc up quick, 1 frame of honey with pollen and 1 empty frame for the (bought queen) to start laying in. I do the same if i'm making them raise there own queen, except i make sure they have eggs to work with. If the hive is strong that i'm taking the brood and bees from, i will shake another frame of bees off into the nuc and take the nuc to another outyard before i open it up. Of course i check for mite and SHB loads before making the nuc's, basically the same as Ray and Iddee. Jack

[Ray4852]

I thought nurse bees come up and cover the brood too. Those are house bees covering my brood. I see very little drifting back to the mother hive. My bees are very happy to see my mated queen go in the nuc. 100 percent acceptance.

[Ray4852]

Jack ,I have a hard time finding the queen. That’s why I use a queen excluder to make my nucs. When its time to put my mated queen in my nuc I want to be sure its 100 percent queen less. These mated queens today aren’t cheep. One mistake I wasted 25 dollars.

[iddee]

I think you fail to differentiate between nurse bees and house bees. Nurse bees clean cells and feed the young. House bees process honey, warm the nest, make wax, carry the trash to the front door, etc.

[LazyBkpr]

Making up the nuc 24 hours in advance.. but putting the box back on the queen right hive and waiting to the next day means those bees may not consider themselves queenless when you put the new queen in that same afternoon you remove the box?  Maybe I missed something between my eyes and brain? (Its well known to happen)

http://outyard.weebly.com/nucleus-hives.html

[Ray4852]

 Scott.
The queen is down in the bottom box. The nuc is up in the 3rd box above the two hive bodies. The nuc sits on the hive for 24 hours. My new mated queen goes in the next day when I remove the nuc from the hive. Every nuc I make up never had a problem with the bees killing the queen. Simple easy way to make a nuc with out looking for the queen. Give it a try next year. I know you will like it.  How I learned how to make nucs this way I watched a video on vimeo. They have an E-book on the net about making nucs their way. The name of book The nuts and bolts of splits and nucs by Jim and Pat Haskell. The video is still on vimeo if you can find it, I got the E book right in front of me now.

[iddee]

Ray, do you have an excluder between the bottom and second box?

Also, do you direct release the queen, or use the 3 day chew out method?

[Ray4852]

http://pwrbeekeepers.com/splits-and-nucs-demonstration.pdf

[Ray4852]

 The excluder lays on top of the second hive body. Nuc sit on top of queen excluder. Yes I use a cage for the queen.

[Yankee11]

Hey Ray,

Thanks for starting this, we got in a little trouble on the other thread

I have another question I've been saving for ya. By making the nucs this way, does it help with swarming?

I plan on using this method this spring for making my nucs to sell. I am gonna raise my own queens and make up the nucs the day the queens hatch and put a virgin queen i each nuc. I spent a lot of time last year looking for the stinking queens when making up the nucs. I only have limited time as I still have a day job. Unlike Perry who can spend all day looking for queens.

[brooksbeefarm]

Hey Yank, don't be talking about my buddy Perry, his wife has a job. Jack

[Ray4852]

I think it cuts down on swarming because you weaken  the hive a little and give the queen more room to lay eggs. Add a slatted rack to your hive . This will give the queen more room to lay.

[tecumseh]

in an effort to not reinvent the wheel and to give credit where credit is due this is in some text referred to 'the Doolittle' method of making splits.  to some degree any given frame will not be all capped or all uncapped and certainly the more difference you produce in this splitting (or nuc making) the more initial difference there will be in the age demographics of the various parts of the split < once new bees begin to issue this difference fades.  I myself just mix thing up and have some uncapped and some capped in the upper and lower box.  I myself use this same method and I have 'shook down' the bees as little as the morning before and as long as 5 days before... quite often I am making nucs (vs splits) and will remove from 2 or 3 nucs from the top box.   

[Yankee11]

The reason I like this, is the part about putting all bees below the excluder and not looking for queen.
 Last year I was looking at all frames picking 3 then had to make sure queen wasn't on one of them, Then if I wanted to
shake some extra bee into the nuc, also had to make sure I didn't shake queen.

Since I will be putting capped queen cells or virgin queens into the nucs, it will be 10 -15 days before she is laying, so most
bees will be hatched out and she will have room to lay.

Unless I put queens in the queen castles and let them get mated first, then make up the nucs. Will probably be doing both.