Brushy Mountain Nuc Box Dimensions!

[kbfarms]

We just build them ourselves, that way its what we want.

[ChristopherA]

No one is perfect, mistakes happen. Call them up and express you feelings, maybe there was some flaw. Maybe a new dude or dudet were running the saws that day. They have excellent customer service. I would go that way prior to bashing on here.

[Michael Bush]

And I thought they were perfect. I just cut a 19 7/8" piece of one by ten and I have a lid...

[EastSideBuzz]

We build our 5 frame NUC's to hold 5 frames and an internal feeder.

[WI-beek]

This is the dilyo with SPACE for frame manipulation for the bees JRH that I think others are trying to point out that you may be missing! No matter how many frames or what size box or width of frames you have you want a certain amount of wiggle room to pull any given frame for what ever reason. You need to be able to squeeze frames aside and pull the frame you want out with out rolling bees on bridge comb. you will be thankful that you have an inch of forgiveness when you pull a frame out so you dont roll bees or the QUEEN herself.

That may seem exesive for a five frame box but when you are making nucs with frames five years old, may be dealing with queen cells, cages, and the like you need that inch of space not matter if it is one frame, or 20. Just squeeze your frames to one side leaving a frame with stores to the open side in your nucs.

All that said, I would not want the boxes you have with the lack of space on bottom. That I find odd and would call and complain about. You need space bellow frames so you dont crush bees when you put frames back in. You also have to account for burr comb one bottom bars. I find the depth dimensions of your boxes poor craftsmanship and would try to send them back.

What I found that works great for me is building the nuc wide enough for five frames and a frame feeder and maybe a quarter to 3/8" play (I find the width of a 1" x 10" perfect so it does not have to be riped). I also leave about an inch of room for underneath the frames so I can make nucs with swarm cells that are built on the very bottom of frames and so the queens dont ever get crushed during inspection. When I need to pull frames I have found that I can pull the feeder strait up without rolling any bees because there is very rarely comb built on outside of them or propolis and the plastic is smooth and bees dont get washborded on the side of it when it comes out like they do against comb. Then I have all the space in the world to pull my first frame out with almost no risk of killing the queen which is the most important concern of mine. I also have the capacity to add another frame to the box if they are getting crowded to relieve congestion till I can come back in a week or so with a ten frame box.

[JRH]

Thanks for your comments. In my original post I mentioned three problems:

- the extra width (which I thought unnecessary)
- that most of my outer covers don't fit the extra width
- and that there is no bee space above or below the frames

In reading the comments which followed, it is clear that there is no correct width for a nuc box and that various widths have staunch defenders!

[BeeCurious]

JRH,

Whose outer covers do you have?

[Specialkayme]

I ordered a BM deep nuc box last year and used it as a template to build four more of my own. When I put it together I thought "oh thank god I have some extra room to pull a frame out."

I bought a nuc box from Bjorn when I first started out, and that thing held five frames and nothing else. If one of the frames had some propolis on it, you had a hard time getting it in there. In fact, another beekeeper in NC (that I bought a nuc from, and had him put it in this box) told me it was crazy small, and he would have to "talk to Bjorn about what he's building." Of course it was made to be a transport nuc, not an all season nuc.

If I had the choice, I would build all my equipment the way BM built theirs. As a matter of fact, I designed all my nuc bottom boards, tops, and medium boxes to their dimensions. Everything works well for me.

To each their own though.