Pulling frames from different hives and re-combining

[shoefly]

When you "steal" five frames from five different hives to make a new nuc do the bees fight amongst themselves? They are not smelling the same aren't they not?

In the same scenario: If you decide to add a frame with a queen on it does the queen get harrassed by bees from the other frames?

[djuniorfan8]

Usually their in such a state of confusion not much happens. I sprayed mine with Honey Bee Healthy syrup, and then put a caged queen in. Their one of my best hives so far.
- Tim

[Dan Williamson]

>>When you "steal" five frames from five different hives to make a new nuc do the bees fight amongst themselves?

If you pull frames of brood most likely you will have younger nurse bees that are less likely to fight. I made up a nuc the other day with frames of bees from different hives. I smoked them pretty good to confuse them and didn't notice any fighting.

>>In the same scenario: If you decide to add a frame with a queen on it does the queen get harrassed by bees from the other frames?

It can. With nurse bees they are more forgiving but you run the risk of losing your queen. I direct released a queen into the above nuc with bees from different hives which was pretty risky but they accepted her no problem. I wouldn't recommend doing that though. I think you are better off to cage the queen for a few days and giving them time to get used to her.

If you want to make up nucs I would suggest taking brood from different hives brushing off all the bees. Put those frames of brood above an excluder on a strong hive. The nurse bees will move up through the excluder to cover the brood and you can be sure that most of those bees are nurse bees. All of these bees are from the same hive so there will be no fighting and because they are young should readily accept a new queen.

Dan

[Michael Bush]

The more hives they come from the less fighting and the more confusion. Confusion is your friend when setting up nucs. smile.gif

[Branman]

Wow, I never knew that...

MB, you put the caged queen in immediately? or tried the direct introduction route?

I may try this method this year for my nucs

[Michael Bush]

I would leave the queenless overnight. Then you can either do the candy method, the push in cage method or leave the caged queen in for four days and then direct release her. They all work well enough.

[shoefly]

Actually, I was combining two fully established queenright frames from the observation hive with a three frame nuc that appeared queenless. The newspaper method may have worked if I had two nucs to stack above each other, but I had only one left. Couldn't figure out how to put the newspaper in sideways. So together they went. Two frames on one side and three frames on the other. Haven't dared looking in there yet what they have done to the queen but I hope she is fine.