[Mountainboomer]

Hello , I am in the process of building some overwinter nucs and will be adding the queen cells this coming thur.. I was wanting to locate all of them side by side {touching each other} and all facing one way in one yard rather than spreading them around as I have done b-4. there are a couple of reasons why I want to do it this way , one of course is to make it easy to inspect and to be able to keep my eye them , the other is that they are in individual 5 frame nucs and I wanted to wrap them on 4 sides {top,back and both sides} with plywood or some other insulating material to keep a little bit warmer. All nucs are painted in various patterns so I hoped that this would work with out loosing any bees to drifting. Has anyone out there ever done this in this manner or have any ideas for me in my quest to make things easier. Thank you

 

[Steve zone 5 WI]

My plan is similar except I plan on double deeps with a medium of food. All of the reading that I'v done indicates that in my zone it should work. There's a fella in Hudson WI that that has posted his results on wintering nucs. Because he is only a few hours from me his information is very valuable to me.

Thanks for asking this question I look forward to the reply's

This is a good read http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?189642-Wintering-Nucs

Steve

 

[enjambres]

I in northern NY and my wintering stand has all hives snugged up together, facing the same way, with panels of foam insulation strapped around them as a block (sides, back, and fronts.) Some of my colonies were small enough to be nucs last fall, though housed in regular equipment with internal follower boards and insulation to make the cavities smaller to match the number of bees. I didn't have problems with drift (that I was aware of.) Though because of the relative size differencs among the hives I was vigilant about anti-robbing devices being on the smaller ones at both ends of the winter.

The only downside I can see is that it's a pain not having side access to the boxes in the middle, though less so for nuc-sized boxes. But as spring flowed this year and I began to add more space/equipment it was a bear to work the middle stacks. Also if you have telescoping covers you need to have the boxes separated by at least two inches to accomodate the overhang of the covers. A two-inch thick panel of foam does the trick nicely.

All three (!) of my hives came through the winter like champs.

Enj.