Opened my hive today to take some frames for an emergency nuc

[OzBuzz]

So there's stilll 3 weeks of winter here in Melbourne, Aus... the nights are still cold, maximums this week are in the 15oC range (59oF) through the day... nights are cold. So i went in to my hive expecting a small brood nest, some stores being depeted! how wrong was i!

The hive is booming! 6 frames packed full of brood! 2 frames packed full of honey! Lots of drones and the hive was packed, and i mean packed, with bees!

So looks like things are rolling early here! I took three frames out for the nuc! two packed full of brood and one full of honey - i took bees associated with the frames too. I consolidated all of the frames to make a complete brood nest again and put empty frames back in on the outside.

In the coming weeks i'm going to add a second brood nest once things have warmed up a little more...

Should i be worried with the amount of drones i saw? Is there anything special i should be doing?

[bugleman]

I don't know anything about your locality and nectar flow but you sound like you have a good handle on population management.  Did you give the split a mated queen?  At 59 spring degrees I wouldn't expect them to raise thier own queen.

[OzBuzz]

G'day Bugleman,

Awesome - it's good to hear a fellow beek say i've got a handle on things coz you can question yourself sometimes and then you sit there very anxiously questioning if you've done the right thing. Once the temperatures warm up i'm going to put on a second box and then i'll checkerboard the brood nest to encourage the bees to fill both boxes. Then once they've done that i'll start making some more nucs hopefully.

Yes, there is a mated queen in the nuc. I actually got the queen from a log that i was given a few weeks ago. There were two tiny bits of comb in it and a handful of bees. She had laid some eggs in there and they started emerging from the comb that was in the log yesterday. (I cut the comb out of the log and put it in some medium frames and made up a small nuc for those - there were insufficient numbers to remain viable though so the nuc with bees/brood/stores from my existing hive seemed the only way to save her - she has some resilient genes - she's been through a lot! time will tell how efficient she is at laying). So i caught her yesterday, put her in a cage with some attendants and queen candy and she is now in the nuc, hopefully, being accepted and eaten out by the colony.

[bugleman]

Better check out some articles by the master Walter Wright.  Checker boarding is only for overhead honey stores.  You never checkerboard brood otherwise you are heading for a disaster.

[OzBuzz]

Better check out some articles by the master Walter Wright.  Checker boarding is only for overhead honey stores.  You never checkerboard brood otherwise you are heading for a disaster.

I'll do that! thanks bugleman... so if you were putting undrawn frames in the brood nest to break it up would you just put the brood frames you shift up in the second super but maintain them in a compact way rather than interspersed with undrawn frames?

[bugleman]

Yes in the spring, when you piramid, that first step really gives them alot of room.  Wait to open the brood nest more with a frame in a couple of weeks or 3.

[deejaycee]

It's springing all over the place.   We went for a walk to see 29 of our hives yesterday here in the North Island of New Zealand.... everything humming along nicely... and 20 feet in front of the line of hives, there's a flippin swarm sitting on the ground!

Luckily we bought a shipping container over winter and our boxes/gear are now right across the fence, so we were able to offer them a hive within five minutes of finding them.