# Grafting and Nucs



## JD's Bees (Nov 25, 2011)

Start with one nuc and a mated queen.
Even an experienced beekeeper with a strong double brood chamber hive and drawn comb for the nucs would find making 8 nucs from one hive ambitious. Add in the learning curve to produce your own queens as well and you may end the season with 0 hives.


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## garusher (May 28, 2012)

Hi,

okay, sorry i didn't really mean i was going to use all those nucs, i was just happy to have made them for free over the weekend.

I've also been reading on the bushfarms site about the doolittle approach to queen rearing. he states a strong colony at the right time should be able to raise 5-10 nucs.

My intentions are to at least winter a single nuc, maybe two so i at least have a hive replacement.

Thanks
Gary


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## PCM (Sep 18, 2007)

From what I understand, you just got a package of bees from the Post Office less than 2 weeks ago.
If this is correct, I'd say feed them, basically leave them alone and let them try too build up enough to make it thru the winter.
Next spring you may have a hive that survived the winter then you should be Abe to make a split or two.

Good Luck, from another Missourian
PCM


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## JD's Bees (Nov 25, 2011)

Sorry for my misunderstanding, just had me worried you were heading for disaster.
I have nothing against your plan but seeing as you are new to this I think for this year a mated queen would be better for building your nuc for winter. Raising queens adds a lot of risk and will put you 3-4 weeks behind in egg laying.


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## scdw43 (Aug 14, 2008)

If you just place an excluder between the two brood boxes they will not draw out queen cells. You will have to isolate the cells from the box that has the queen in it for the bees to think they are queenless and draw out the grafted cells. You need to go back to Michael Bush's site and reread the part on queen rearing.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

Since you have the nucs already you should put yourself on swarm collection/bee removal lists in your area. If you could get something like that then the resources from your other hive might help you get another hive ready for winter without too much strain. Good luck.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

scdw43 said:


> If you just place an excluder between the two brood boxes they will not draw out queen cells. You will have to isolate the cells from the box that has the queen in it for the bees to think they are queenless and draw out the grafted cells. You need to go back to Michael Bush's site and reread the part on queen rearing.


Actually if you put brood above an excluder they will quite often start queen cells on it. Give it a try.


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## waynesgarden (Jan 3, 2009)

Don't be too impatient to build a nuc from a brand new hive. You will have to pull frames and bees from that hive to establish the nuc. If unable to wait until next year, I would wait at least wait until July at the earliest to steal the frames of honey, pollen and brood as well as the good amount of bees necessary to establish the nuc or nucs. Pull too soon and weaken the hive at a time when it needs to be building up,.

Your new hive needs to build itself up before you you should even think of compromising it.

If you can get some old brood frames from someone, put them in your nuc boxes with some lemongrass oil on paper towels in a loosely closed sandwich bag and put them to work as swarm traps. A better way to increase than to divide up a first year hive into nucs.

Wayne


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## Capricorn (Apr 20, 2009)

I vote for swarm traps as well. I've caught 1 swarm in a nuc so far this year, and I'd bet dollars to doughnuts I have another in a trap I haven't checked for a while... Swarms are great fun to play with as a beginner as well!


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## garusher (May 28, 2012)

Hi,

Yes, it would seem that all queen rearing methodologies require putting the bees into emergency queen rearing mode. I think that the Hopkins method seems the most easy and requires the least amount of equipment.
Gary


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## garusher (May 28, 2012)

Hi,

Okay, I will give some swarm traps a try too, i have some wood across the road that might suffice. 
As for making the nucs from my existing colony, WayneGarden suggestion of not attempting until july was what i had in mind. I really need this first colony to really get the second hive box full of bees first.

Gary


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## garusher (May 28, 2012)

Hi,

I think i am going to jot down in a document my plan, time frame and what days i intend doing what. Then paste that document into this forum for critique. 

Also those nucs i made, are capable five frames, but for this queen rearing stuff, they probably need reducing to 2-3 frame mini mating nucs?

Gary


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

Not really. I've used 8 frame hives for mating nucs, and just filled the space with frames of foundation. It works great if you are making increase, because you never have to move or disrupt the hive - just let it grow.


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## garusher (May 28, 2012)

Hi,

Okay, here is my plan.

1) going to remove a centre frame from my top brood box and replace with a empty comb for queen to lay eggs in. mark frame
2) leave for 3-4 days to obtain very small larvae. remove bees and prepare a surface for the Hopkins method.
3) At the same time i am also going to have to remove the frame the queen is on, plus some brood frames, food etc and put into a nuc. hopefully this will prepare my original hive as the cell builder.
4) make sure original hive is in queenless state, and place Hopkins prepared frame horizontally across frames in top brood box.
5) day 12 i need to prepare my nucs, put 1-2 frames of brood and bees into each nuc, plus an empty frame.
6) day 13-14 the cells should be sealed and ready to transfer to nucs prepared the previous day.
7) either return queen to original hive or leave one cell to hatch.
8) day 15-16 Queen should emerge
9) day 20-23 Mating flight
10) day 23-30 Queen begins egg laying.

Questions:

#3 how many frames should be moved with queen to 5 frame nuc. 2 brood, 1 food, 2 empty foundation.
#5 I'm thinking one frame of brood and bees, two empty combs?
#7 arguements for and against returning to original hive. probably leave a cell instead of returning queen.
#8 Availability of empty comb would seem important in this entire operation. hopefully the queenright nuc and nurse bees will provide some?
#9 Nucs will need feeding and monitoring hopefully avoid robbing.


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## bejay (Jan 14, 2005)

some have suggested already to not weaken your new hive trying to make nucs and queens with the package you installed 2 weeks ago just isnt going to be strong enough.
buying a mated queen and making 1 nuc in july is probably a good option for you and not weaken the hive to much.


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## garusher (May 28, 2012)

Okay,

Well thanks to all who put forward suggestions and comments.
I've decided if all things look good in 5-7 weeks to get 2 mated queens and steal a couple of frames from my colony to start the nucs.
I'll leave the queen breeding until next year. I'm going to get reputable queens with good genetics so my future colonies will have an advantage.

Thanks
Gary


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## Andrew Dewey (Aug 23, 2005)

Maybe I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning but I think your plan to create nucs from a hive just established from a package is nuts. It is way too soon for the bees to have built up enough to have surplus population to go into the nucs without setting the donor colony back perhaps irrecoverably. Your focus your first year should be for the hive to build population and gather the food stuffs to make it through winter successfully.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

With all due respect Andrew I have to disagree. Of course you have to practice a little judgement on viable colony strength, but i've gone from 1 3 lb package to 35 colonies in 3 years on the theory that 2 queens can lay twice as many eggs as one. 

If you can do a queenright split and end up with 2 good 5 frame medium nucs or more you are golden in my experience. With the caveat that I'm in the south.


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## Andrew Dewey (Aug 23, 2005)

@ David - two things come into play: 1) location and 2) beekeeper experience. I know nothing about MO but we are talking about the OP with two weeks of experience. I like to dream as much as the next person but I like to have my colonies live through the winter too. I realize all beekeeping is local. Yesterday afternoon the temperature dropped here to 56 - too cold in my judgement for the invasive inspection I wanted to do on my 8 survivor test packages/hives. Today was warm enough and I just finished. None of those packages are at a point where I'd consider using them to make up a nuc and they were installed more than two weeks ago. And there are three queens on my kitchen table that arrived in the mail today that are waiting to be installed. They'll have to wait until tomorrow when I get to my Russian yards. (So much for guidance from queen producers - you'll get your queens in June - at least they got the month right!)


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## garusher (May 28, 2012)

Hi,

I like to ask questions and get informative answers, that in my opinion is how to learn. along with life experiences.
This is my question: 
Whether a hive has 1,2,5,10, or 20 frames of bees with a queen, it's considered a colony. That colony surely can support itself, provide itself with enough food for the winter; if sufficient sources are available.

So why would taking a couple of frames to start two nucs with mated queens be evasive to the parent colony?
Wouldn't three queens producing eggs, brood etc provide the beekeeper (newbie) with extra drawn comb; which seems to be the only thing in shortage to a new beek. I read these smaller nucs really perform good. of course this is reading, not life experience.

My readings indicate that an understanding of the bees clustering and movement during winter is the major factor in the success of bees through the winter, not colony size.

Gary


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

Queens may be capable of producing more than sufficient numbers of eggs, but without sufficient nurse bees to raise them to adulthood, many of those eggs will not reach maturity, so, stealing bees/emerging brood from smaller colonies can have a deleterious effect on their continuing viability. Viability does correlate with median age of colony workers, quantity of those workers, size of nest chamber, quantity, position, and sufficiency of stores.


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## Andrew Dewey (Aug 23, 2005)

@ Gary - By all means feel free to experiment all you like - but please do so understanding that bees don't read the books that we humans do and their behavior is often different from what we expect. A beekeeper can do everything perfectly and their bees may still die. Equally likely is that a beekeeper can ignore their bees and they will live. It is a conundrum. If you are determined to make up nucs and attempt to get them through the winter, please find someone local to you that can look at your operation and give you some guidance as to how to make it all work. You should listen though when you are told that what you want to accomplish won't work. Even if you hear that as what you want to accomplish others haven't been able to accomplish learn what you can about the failures and do things differently. Hobbies are supposed to be fun. Beekeeping can be fun and it can be heartbreaking too. I wish you lots of fun and little heartbreak.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

Andrew, you are correct of course. Location certainly matters, but Dexter Mo is only about 50 mile north of mine - likely to be frost free until almost Halloween. And experienced bee keeper or not I still think that if you have enough resources - including know how, which is not brain surgery - to make 2 *good*, queenright, 5 frame nucs pretty much any time before September you can most likely double your chances of having bees next spring. On account of in our climate - if you don't let it run out of food - a good 5 frame nuc can over winter just fine. And as an added bonus they are quite likely to come out strong by the middle of March.


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## garusher (May 28, 2012)

Hi,

Well this is kinda off topic, but just some FYI David.
If you make your own boxes, Menard in Cape has 1x12x10' on sale this weekend, i just picked up 9, should be enough to make me 15 deeps. I believe they are just over $9.19 a piece.

Gary


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## garusher (May 28, 2012)

Yippy,

Well Saturday the 14th July i received my two new mated queens, and proceeded to make two nucs up, consisting of a frame of emerging brood and a frame of capped syrup.
Yesterday i checked both nucs and the queen is laying like a champ.
So I am hoping now i have three laying queens i will have alot my resources and hopefully be able to make up another two nucs to run into the winter with.

Gary


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## Ben Franklin (May 3, 2011)

David LaFerney said:


> Since you have the nucs already you should put yourself on swarm collection/bee removal lists in your area. If you could get something like that then the resources from your other hive might help you get another hive ready for winter without too much strain. Good luck.


I would agree with this point made by David, I collected or captured 7 swarms this year. All but one has out worked any package I had bought. I would make sure I have been on the list with the state and on any Beekeepers sites,,even face book sites.


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## garusher (May 28, 2012)

I did locate a nest in a tree, about 30 feet up. however and i am going to put out traps in the spring.


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## garusher (May 28, 2012)

Hi All,

Well i just finished doing inspections of my single hive and two nucs i built, all three queens are laying like champs, my nucs are doing extremely well.
I wanted to post something that i learned from this experience, although i was advised this was not a good plan.

1) because a new bee keeper does not have drawn comb, obtaining the resources to build nucs with, while not traumatizing ones main hive could be challenging. 
2) new bee keepers are concentrating on building comb, getting that second box working and generally using syrup to artificially stimulate the bees into drawing comb. in the process of doing so the bees also store syrup in a lot of that new comb, especially in the second deep.
3) I overcome my lack of drawn comb by removing a frame of stored syrup from the top deep, and leaving the frame outside the hive for the bees to clean up. Several days later I then removed a drawn frame of brood for my nuc and inserted the newly cleaned up drawn frame. I guess i basically supercharged my bees into working harder. 
So i could basically steal a fully capped frame of brood from my main hive every 21 days to create a nuc. if i had a queen or queen cell for the nuc.

Gary


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## garusher (May 28, 2012)

Hi,

Okay, here's the result of my experiments as a beginner.
The main hive was started from a package on 23 June.
So far I have made four nucs from my available resources. actually it is amazing what you can achieve when you have the resources.

Next year, since i will have the resources i am going to graft some queens, hopefully this years full hive should make a good cell builder.

http://i1211.photobucket.com/albums/cc421/musclesonvacation/IMG_2304.jpg

http://i1211.photobucket.com/albums/cc421/musclesonvacation/IMG_2303.jpg


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