Using my nuc

[neurobee]

I just started keeping bees this spring. I've got one hive. I also have an empty 5 frame deep nuc. I originally bought the nuc in order to raise queens or keep a sort of reserve colony around in case my one hive needed help or whatnot.

I may have access to some swarms soon. My question is, is a swarm the best way to populate this nuc.

Also, is keeping bees in a nuc as a reserve even feasible? It seems like either you got to keep adding equipment and making splits or let the bees swarm out of your nuc (bad for neighbor relations)--I'm an urban beekeeper. Any advice?

Thanks.

[John Adams]

I hived a package in one of my nucs for a guy about two weeks ago and have already had to move them into a regular hive body. One of the packages became queenless and was not nearly as far along as the others, but that's a whole other topic.

[schawee]

            i keep 10 nucs just in case i need a queen for one of my hives.10 days ago i needed 8 queens and got them from my nucs.those 8 nucs made queen cells allready .so yes its feasible to have nucs.you can pull caped brood from the nuc and place in your hive to keep the nuc from swarming.i put some swarms in nucs ,it just depends on the size of the swarm.the biggestswarm i caught took to deeps.    ...schawee

[Michael Bush]

If I were a hobbyist I would try to keep a nuc with a queen in it all the time. It gives you resources.  You can steal a frame of eggs.  You can requeen with that queen.  You have something that you don't ever expect to become a hive to help your other hives.  A frame of brood, a frame of honey and a queen cell is a good start...

[neurobee]

Michael-

So you would take a frame of brood, honey, and pollen from the hive I've just started from a package and use it to populate my nuc? Would that possibly put the starting hive at a dangerous disadvantage for numbers?

[doug494]

I'm still kinda confused on this as well.  How do you maintain a nuc at that size?  If my hives are going well and don't need anything, what do I do with a growing nuc?

[VolunteerK9]

I'm still kinda confused on this as well.  How do you maintain a nuc at that size?  If my hives are going well and don't need anything, what do I do with a growing nuc?

Place it in a 10 frame hive body and start another nuc :)

[AllenF]

Nucs are cheap to build.   I use them for swarm traps as well as nucs.   I have one swarm that move in 2 weeks ago on the back porch.  They filled it up so that I added a second nuc body on top of them just to watch them for a while before I move them. 

[Michael Bush]

>So you would take a frame of brood, honey, and pollen from the hive I've just started from a package and use it to populate my nuc? Would that possibly put the starting hive at a dangerous disadvantage for numbers?

Probably not before it has two deeps full of drawn comb and a good population of bees.

>I'm still kinda confused on this as well.  How do you maintain a nuc at that size?

You can maintain it that small by stealing frames of brood for other hives and giving them empty combs to draw.  Or you can move it into a full size box and let it grow.

>  If my hives are going well and don't need anything, what do I do with a growing nuc?

Sooner or later you hives will need something.  Meanwhile you get to experiment with raising a queen, nursing a small nuc and you have resources you can steal for other hives without worrying about setting back one of your production hives.  The nuc is expendable.   You can combine them to save a queenless hive or just steal open brood for a queenless hive.  You have more options and more resources.

http://bushfarms.com/beesnucs.htm

[Brian D. Bray]

For either the sideliner or backyard beekeeper who might need a lot of queens during the spring and early summer try a queen castle.

My queen castle will hold 13 frames without dividers, 12frames with dividers.  4 sections, 3 frames each.  I pull frames of brood out to assist weak hives and have 4 laying queens at my disposal at all times into August when I break the castle down into 4 nucs and then double stack them for overwintering.  Or I can turn it into a nuc making machine for increasing hive numbers fast.  4 hives every 30 days, and it reloads itself by making queens out of the brood frames left behind.