Moving New Nucs Two Miles Away From Hives

[Jen]

What are the reasons to moving new nucs two miles away from split hives?

[vvand111]

so your foragers do not simply return to original hive leaving your nuc with out a work force.

[Perry]

so your foragers do not simply return to original hive leaving your nuc with out a work force.

 

[Jen]

Even tho the nuc has a queen and brood?... 

[Wandering Man]

The foregers often end up in the original hive. Some of your nurse bees are forced to become foragers at an early age, leaving the hive under staffed until the brood hatches and starts taking up some of the slack. Even then, it might not be until a month or more out before the queen has laid enough new eggs, and rose eggs have matured to workers before the hive is "fully staffed."

[Jen]

Okay.. so.. is that such a bad thing? I mean, it will not kill the nuc if some of the foragers don't return, it will simply be a 'slow to grow' nuc right?

[Perry]

Depends on weather and stuff like that. If you make up a nuc with 50% foragers and 50% nurse bees, and don't move it 2 miles, the foragers will all return to the original hive and deplete your nuc by 50%. Food intake will drop, brood could get chilled, all sorts of things could happen.

[Wandering Man]

Jen, 3Reds and I did this a few weeks ago, after we'd ordered a queen for a hive we thought was queenless. We split the hive when we found it still had a queen.

We don't have a place for bees other than our backyard.

I stuck a robber screen on the front of the new hive to force the foragers to reorient before leaving.

It may have helped a little, but we don't see near as many bees coming and going as we have in the donor hive.

But, I think they will survive. It's been 2 1/2 weeks and the hive is still working. I'm hopeful things will be even better when we get back from our trip.

[Jen]

Perry, I see. I've already pulled 3 nucs and they are in my back yard, I may have some failure curve this year. Last year I got 8 nucs set up with the coaching of Apis. Overall they did fine, but some did dwindle, I remember that now. I kept them all summer to build up and winter. Over all I lost 3 of those 8 for one reason or another.

Wman, a robbing screen... that's an interesting idea. I don't have a place for bees other than my back yard as well.

And I'm experimenting with a nuc that I didn't have a queen for, so I'm going to see today if that nuc is building queen cells today.

[riverbee]

jen, what vandy, wm and perry said.
"so your foragers do not simply return to original hive leaving your nuc with out a work force."

and wm brings up a good point on robbing as well, nucs have little guard defense to fend off robbing/killing of the queen. if you leave them in your back yard and have bigger hives, reduce the entrance/use a robbing screen.

[Jen]

I have entrance reducers with the opening of one or two bees... would that be enough to ward off robbing?

[riverbee]

jen..........

bees are bees........so many variables, reducing the entrance to one or two bees is a good thing to do to help them out.