[BjornBee]

If I was to just let a three or five frame nuc alone long enough, would the bees go through the same swarm urge? And would the bees raise swarm cells that would be healthy? And if I was to take the queen out of a five frame nuc, would there be enough bees to adequately raise a new queen without any problems? Thank you.

 

[Antero]

BjornBee---what I do is ,I have 5 frame nucs(4 frames and a frame feeder) I wait until the nuc as 4 frames of bees than I add another nuc on top transfer the queen and some seald brood to the top nuc a long with new frames.Make shure you have at least 1 frame of eggs on the bottom nuc .I did this last June and got 90%.


Terry

 

[Ian]

I left my nucs a bit too long last year, kind of forgot them. They were a single brood frame, with a mated queen, working on foundation. Made my rounds and they were plugged full of brood. They did a great job of drawing out the foundation. There were many that had been preparing to swarm. I stopped it by finally transfering them to single brood and releived the brood nest a bit, and put them to work again on foundation.
It would of really pissed me off if I had let them swarm on me.
I think in a nuc there would be adequate srores and reserves to successfully rear a queen. I figure the porportions would be just the same as a bigger colony.