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Author Topic: Turning a hot hive into nucs  (Read 2582 times)

Offline Joseph Clemens

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Turning a hot hive into nucs
« on: March 19, 2008, 04:46:38 pm »
Okay, early this morning, I moved the three occupied supers comprising this "hot hive" about 100 feet away from their original location, each super on its own stand, then I covered them with a cloth. On the old location I stacked empty supers with 2 frames to collect the field bees.

I then set five empty nucs near the relocated supers. Next I went through the supers, one at a time, looking for sealed and emerging brood - using at least two frames of sealed/emerging brood with covering bees, per nuc. The remaining space in the nucs I filled in with combs of pollen/honey/nectar/empty. During this sorting, I kept my eye out for the queen, when I found her I made sure to make a note of which nuc I placed her in, I just couldn't dispatch her right then. There were ten frames of sealed/emerging brood, enough for these five nucs. Now I just need to produce enough queen cells to take care of these nucs.

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Joseph Clemens
Beekeeping since 1964
10+ years in Tucson, Arizona
12+ hives and 15+ nucs
No chemicals -- no treatments of any kind, EVER.

Offline busy bees

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Re: Turning a hot hive into nucs
« Reply #1 on: February 22, 2009, 01:44:30 pm »
As a new beekeeper, I am really glad to find "old" posts like this that give step by step details about routine beekeeping tasks.  Thank you for sharing your knowledge, Joseph.  Cheers from Canada. 

Offline heaflaw

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Re: Turning a hot hive into nucs
« Reply #2 on: February 24, 2009, 12:05:30 am »
I have 2 hot hives.  Here's what I plan to do---comments appreciated.  When I see the first drone cells, I will make two nukes from my best hive of one frame of mostly eggs, another of some sealed brood and one of honey/pollen.   I will shake & brush mostly all of the bees off the frames as I take them out.  I will set each on top of an excluder on each of my hot hives for a few hours.  Nurse bees will crawl up to take care of the brood.  I'll then set them next to or on top of the hot hives and feed sugar & pollen.  When the new queens have started laying (about 2 weeks after emergence), I will kill the old hot queens, and a day later combine the nukes with their respective parent hives.  The nuke bees will have been from that hive, so they should combine peacefully.  Since I had the nukes beside the old hives, the field bees from the nukes should enter the old hives.  This way I will not have weakened any of my hives much and I will have re-queened my 2 hot hives with my best genetics.  If I have extra queen cells and other strong hives, I may make some more nukes.

Online Michael Bush

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Re: Turning a hot hive into nucs
« Reply #3 on: February 24, 2009, 07:19:16 am »
The hard part of dealing with hot hives is finding the queen.  That and calming them down right away.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesrequeeninghot.htm
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"Everything works if you let it."--James "Big Boy" Medlin

 

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