[jrose1970]

I have a question. How do nucs fair over winter? It would seam like they would need more honey to make it.
Plus, what is some good advice for making it through the winter. I had 7 hives in the fall. One was literally stolen!
It was not a bear. LOL. The other 6 made it! Then I've lost two since. One swarmed right before the temp dropped to 17 out of the blue. The bees left in the hive didn't have enough heat. I'm pretty satisfied though. I've done two splits and so far so good.
I'm thinking of doing some splits toward the end of June and leaving them in nucs for the winter, but if that's a mistake, let me know.
Thanks in advance.

 

[David LaFerney]

Here in Cookeville Nucs overwinter as well as large hives as far as I can tell. I winter a few every year and they are no more likely to fail than bigger hives. Mine are 8 frame medium singles, but 5 frame deeps should be about the same.

 

[GLOCK]

My nucs seem to winter just as good as my DBL. deeps.
I even had a nuc that had only 1 frame of honey and sugar going into winter {dinky} .I keep it to see how it would fair . Figured it would die by Jan. and well she is growing and doing well so I guess ya never know.

 

[Matt903]

I overwintered some five frame nucs this winter, and now they are in their second deep. They took off like nothing I had ever seen. They clustered on about three frames during the winter, I kept thinking I would lose them because of the extreme cold, but they came through fine. I made the splits in July, with mated queens. I fed them in the fall to get them up to weight, they never built up out of the nuc. It is now something I plan on doing every summer.

 

[jrose1970]

Thank you all very much. It sounds like that is the way to go if you don't want to split before the big flow.
Next question, LOL, how many frames of brood, honey etc. do I need to place in the nuc?
Thanks in advance.

 

[merince]

I've been overwintering some in single deeps. They do fine. This is the first winter where I tried 4 frame deeps and none of them made it. We had recordbreaking cold winter though.