Nucs and Queens

[Jack Weston]

I would like to start a nuc. It will be my first. Do I have to have a new queen, or will the bees start their own if I pull some frames with brood and honey and brush some bees into the box?

Jack W.

[Sundance]

If you pull frames with eggs and have ample nurse
bees, they will make a queen. Just a slower process
than adding a bred queen.

[Jeffzhear]

If you have a strong hive, try a walk away split in May/June. Take the hive and split it in half, putting an equal number of frames with eggs, brood, pollen and honey and bees into each. If you see the queen, move that one away from the stand where the original hive was. She should continue to lay eggs and that hive will build up quicker while the second hive generates their own queen. By leaving the queenless hive in the original location, it will end up with more bees...as they return from the field. My suggestion, do a search here on walk away splits and read as much as you can...and formulate your plan, then execute...If you have more questions, there is a ton of experience here to offer you advice.:)

[Jack Weston]

Thank you. That's really helpful.

[Grant]

[By leaving the queenless hive in the original location, it will end up with more bees...as they return from the field.[/QUOTE]

I've tried variations of this, mostly leaving the queen in the hive in the original location and moving a four-framed nuc of brood/young bees a few feet away. Unfortunately, ALL the bees I had in the nuc abandoned the brood and flew back to the original hive. And I thought I had the younger house bees with the frames of brood. I also thought they would stay with the brood.

I had not thought of moving the queen -- good thought. Maybe she's the glue that will hold those young bees in the nuc colony set off to the side.

My best luck comes when I have the queen in the lower brood box. I top it with a queen excluder, then add several supers (some just plain foundation) and put the upper brood box on the top. Put your frames of eggs/brood here. You'll soon have several frames with several queen cells, the open brood attracts the younger house bees to this upper box, you have a lot of younger bees to feed the developing queen cells and the upper box is blessed by the heat generated in the hive. Now divided these frames into nucs.

It's my ignorant version of an old-fashioned idea called the Demaree manipulation. Excellent for preventing swarms.

Works great. I've also had improved luck moving those nucs somewhere else a few miles away.

Grant
Jackson, MO

[BeeAware]

Queens reared by small nuc colonies are often sub-standard. I'd give them a mated queen.