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Building Nucleus Colonies June 9, 2012

Building Nucleus Colonies June 9, 2012. INTRO: Where do your bees live?. Finding your queen is important Use marked queens Use only a little bit of smoke a puff under the screened bottom, and one at the entrance Remove top hive body, remove frame #2 and assess the oval of broodnest

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Building Nucleus Colonies June 9, 2012

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  1. Building Nucleus Colonies June 9, 2012

  2. INTRO: Where do your bees live? • Finding your queen is important • Use marked queens • Use only a little bit of smoke • a puff under the screened bottom, and one at the entrance • Remove top hive body, remove frame #2 and assess the oval of broodnest • The queen is most likely to be on a frame with eggs and young larvae – go there first • Only go through every frame as a last resort.

  3. Look near the eggs

  4. House bees – under 3 weeks of age: don’t fly well, perform tasks within the hive • Nurse Bees – 5 to 15 day old bees produce the most royal jelly – they are found on the young larvae

  5. Nurse Bees • Nurse bees are essential for queen production, queen health, and brood development • Nurse bees are not aggressive, don’t fight with other bees, and rarely sting

  6. Cull combs in early spring • Rotate 20% of frames with new foundation each year so none are older than 5 years • Date your frames, pull out oldest ones when broodnest is small (don’t pull brood frames) • Save frames with capped honey and pollen in the freezer • Clean out frames that are broken or full of drone comb – add new foundation and change the date (If you glue and nail your frames they should last for years.)

  7. WHY EVERYONE SHOULD MAKE NUCS: • Our goal is sustainable hive management – Stop Buying Bees! • Overwintered nucs with northern raised queens are in high demand and short supply – become part of the solution • I look forward to the day when there is no demand for package bees (but don’t worry about my business) • Nearly every bee in a package has just returned from California almond pollination – where every disease known to bees is in one place for a month

  8. Why make nucs? • Swarm prevention – in spring

  9. Backup against winter losses • Go into winter with as many nucs as you hope to have hives for next year and you’ll be sure to not buy bees (and probably have nucs to sell) • Use your own raised queens or purchase queens • “Reverse split” – combine weak hives in the fall or break the weak hive down into a nuc • The survival rate of bees in nucs is significantly higher than in full sized hives

  10. Ideally nucleus colonies should be on a separate yard from full-sized colonies. • If they are in the same yard as your hives, put them as far away as possible, reduce entrances, and add a robbing screen

  11. Types of nucleus colony equipment • Queen castle (not really a nuc, but great for rearing Northern queens) • Use better bees! • Any new virgin queen open-mated locally will be stronger than a Southern raised queen • Carniolans use less honey in winter, and Russians even less • Carniolansand Russians forage better on cloudy, foggy, and misty days • Dark bees shut down broodrearing when resources are scarce and are less prone to robbing than Italian bees

  12. Types of nucleus colony equipment • Double wide (in 8 or 10 frame sizes) • Advantages: uses standard sized equipment; two small colonies share warmth • Can live atop a full hive and share more warmth

  13. Types of nucleus colony equipment • Standard 5 frame deep • Advantages: industry standard, easy to transport and sell • Two-story 5 frame medium • Advantage: huge demand for nucs on medium frames and tiny supply

  14. Making a nuc: Need a queen • Take out the existing queen for swarm prevention nucs • Cut queen cells in parent hive down to ONE • Then return within nine days and double check for queen cells • Purchase queens for nucs for increase • Or better, move swarm cells into a queen castle and raise your own* • Nucscan be made with queen cells at the right time of the year • Move weak queens into nucs in the fall • Sometimes they improve and perform well in spring *(Move a frame like this into a queen castle, add a shake of young nurse bees and a frame of resources and wait for a couple weeks)

  15. Making a nuc: • Need resources (at least one frame) • Use pollen and honey from comb rotation, or take it from a too-strong hive

  16. Making a nuc: • Need brood and nurse bees • Move at least one frame each of open brood and capped (ideally emerging) brood and the bees that come along • Shake one or two frames of nurse bees from additional frames of open brood

  17. Making a nuc: • Spring nucs need space (foundation); late season nucs need drawn comb • Spring and summer nucs tend to want to outgrow their space; to prevent them swarming take out full frames of capped brood and give them to your hives that can use the population

  18. Making a nuc: • Feed the nuc • For spring nucs, feed just until nurse bees grow up into field bees (a week or two) • For late season nucs, feed heavy syrup (until mid October) to pack the hive FULL

  19. Overwintering nucs(use dark colors) • Solo 5 frame (worked last winter) – solo double wide (I’ll try this this winter) • Double wide over a full sized colony *The Forbes Overwinternator (naming rights by D. Israel)

  20. Overwintering nucs • Multiple boxes, packed tightly together for warmth

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