# 2 questions: Time to Split and nuc body size



## dkofoed (Feb 25, 2014)

As stated, I have a couple of questions ... I'm a new beekeeper who just overwintered 2 hives. One hive is booming and has an excellent brood pattern and upon inspecting today I found some brood beginning in the 3rd (currently top) medium box. By the way I'm running all mediums with 3 hive bodies at the moment. 

Since I'm fairly new (and don't really have a need to increase my apiary at the moment) I was hoping to get by this year with swarm prevention methods and start splitting next year ... however I saw a few indicators today that lead me to think that I may have to split regardless:

- quite a few queen cups (all empty, at the bottom of a couple frames, but at least 7 or 8 of them)
- a fair bit of drone comb capped
- some nectar being backfilled in the brood nest

I'm not running a queen excluder and am allowing the hive to expand as large as it wants (incluiding the brood nest). My questions are:


1) Do I need to really consider a split soon (or now!) to prevent swarming?

2) Can I use a medium hive body as a nuc?


I do not have any nuc boxes, but do have a bunch of surplus medium hive bodies ... would a medium be too large for a nuc?


FYI - I did end up deciding to add a 4th medium box today along with a "bait" frame in case they are congested, even though the 3rd box is really only 65-70% utilized.


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## tsmullins (Feb 17, 2011)

dkofoed said:


> - quite a few queen cups (all empty, at the bottom of a couple frames, but at least 7 or 8 of them)
> - a fair bit of drone comb capped
> - some nectar being backfilled in the brood nest
> 
> ...


1. Splitting before swarming is a very good idea. Beekeeping is local. It is too early to split for us. We try to split just before swarm season starts. For us that is around early May. But as long as you have sexually mature drones and a flow, you should be fine. For us, a sure sign of swarm prep is backfilling the brood chamber. 

2. We often use eight frame mediums as nucs. They work great. 

Shane


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## dkofoed (Feb 25, 2014)

I've got 10 frame mediums ... too much space for a nuc? I was thinking of doing a split (when necessary) and placing 6 or so frames of brood/honey/pollen and 4 empties (or something along those lines).


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## Kiddkop (Sep 18, 2014)

A 10 frame will work fine. We often move 3 frames of brood and bees into a 10 frame deep that has 8 frames and a feeder. Add a queen cell and presto you have a nuc.


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## Thershey (Mar 12, 2014)

10 frame mediums are actually better than a 5 frame medium NUC if you are moving the queen, which you should to stave off swarming. A layer can blow out of a Nuc in just a few days but a larger box gives them more to do.

I've already had to "artificially swarm" four booming hives this year, all are like yours, 3-4 medium. I take the queen, 3 frames of mostly capped brood, 2 frames of honey, 1 frame of pollen and 2 shakes of nurse bees from frames with lots of open brood.... All into a 10 frame box with a couple undrawn frames and a double wide frame feeder from Motherlode products. It's important to feed them for a few weeks since the foragers will all return to the original colony.

The original hive, thinking its queen has swarmed will instantly go to work building queen cells to replace her. Mine have been building from 10-30 cells which is too many if you aren't looking to make nucs or raise a bunch of queens. After 7-10 days I go back in the hive and stick a knife or hive tool in the sides of all but two of the QCs . The best part is that once the QC's are capped and the rest of the brood is sealed up, most of the bees go into nectar gathering mode. I reduce the 3 brood box hives down to two, add an excluder and a super and keep an eye on it, you may need a 2nd super in a few weeks if the maple flow kicks in and they have good flying weather.

Free bees, more spring honey and a brood break to whack the mites down hard; all good things.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

I'll add some things:

1) The presence of dry queen _cups,_ though much-worrying to new beekeepers, is pretty normal in healthy hives and not a sure-fire predictors of a swarm. OTOH, a queen cup probably shaves some prep tiime off the creation of swarm cells.

2) I suggest you look for Matt Davey's threads on opening the sides of the brood nest as an anti-swarm measure. This seems to preoccupy the bees and helps get them past their itch to move on. It's easy, if a bit laborious, to do. You will need empty wooden frames, with minimal (horizontal) foundation strips, or partial (vertical) foundation sections in the frames The bees will draw lovely comb in them (which is wondorous-enough to see, all by itself). These "foundationless" combs need gentle handling at first, until they are hardened up by the end of the summer. After that they can even be put in extractors. 

Many of the early foundationless frames will have lots of drones cells, which is what the bees seem to feel is initially lacking when offered a change from commercial foundation. This has iimplications for the dynamics of your mite populations, so keep that in mind. OTOH, mites prefer drone pupae, so you can also cut the drone patches out, which can remove a lot of breeding mites from the hive. But after the drones have hatched and the bees move on from their drone-mania, these larger cells will be filled with honey, making these frames excellent wintering ones, as well.

3) Another technique, Walt Wright's checkerboarding, is thought-provoking to read about, even if you don't yet have enough drawn frames to do it coming out of your first winter. You can read his writings in the Resource section here on BeeSource.

Good luck!

Enj.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>- quite a few queen cups (all empty, at the bottom of a couple frames, but at least 7 or 8 of them)

I don't know how to overstate it. Queen cups mean nothing. Absolutely nothing. Positively nothing. Ignore them. 

>- a fair bit of drone comb capped

This is a much better indicator that swarm season is upon you.

>- some nectar being backfilled in the brood nest

This is a symptom that often precludes swarming.

>I'm not running a queen excluder and am allowing the hive to expand as large as it wants (incluiding the brood nest). My questions are:

But that will not stop them from trying to swarm. They need you to open the brood nest. Just because they CAN does not mean they will expand the brood nest.

>1) Do I need to really consider a split soon (or now!) to prevent swarming?

As long as I don't see swarm cells, I try to control swarming without splitting them, unless I wanted the splits anyway.

>2) Can I use a medium hive body as a nuc?

Of course. The issue, I guess, is what other brood frames do you have? It's hard to work with a mixture of boxes when all your brood is on deeps...

>I do not have any nuc boxes, but do have a bunch of surplus medium hive bodies ... would a medium be too large for a nuc?

An eight frame medium is exactly the same volume as a five frame deep... and you don't have to have nuc boxes to make nucs nor to make splits.


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## dkofoed (Feb 25, 2014)

Michael Bush said:


> >
> 
> But that will not stop them from trying to swarm. They need you to open the brood nest. Just because they CAN does not mean they will expand the brood nest.
> 
> ...



Michael - when you refer to opening the brood nest, are u referring to basically adding empty frames near the brood nest or checkerboarding?


Regarding the Nuc question, I'm running 10-frame mediums for everything (brood boxes and supers) so was hoping i could just use the same 10-frame mediums for nucs (which sounds like it's not a problem).


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

dkofoed said:


> Michael - when you refer to opening the brood nest, are u referring to basically adding empty frames near the brood nest or checkerboarding?
> 
> 
> Regarding the Nuc question, I'm running 10-frame mediums for everything (brood boxes and supers) so was hoping i could just use the same 10-frame mediums for nucs (which sounds like it's not a problem).



I doubt he is talking about checker boarding to open the brood nest since checker boarding has nothing to do with brood and is a nectar management technique.


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## dkofoed (Feb 25, 2014)

good point - i fell into the unfortunate trap of calling it checkboarding when really that is related to interspersing empty frames into a honey super.

I came across Mike's page on the unlimited brood nest which is a good read:

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesulbn.htm


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Michael - when you refer to opening the brood nest, are u referring to basically adding empty frames near the brood nest or checkerboarding?

Neither.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesswarmcontrol.htm#opening


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