# I don't understand nucs



## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

Nurse bees don't fly until they are about 3 weeks old, then they become foragers. As they have never been outside they are not oriented to the original location.


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## jimbo3 (Jun 7, 2015)

But if I pulled a few frames from my hive with brood and nurse bees to make a walk away split, wouldn't the nurse bees just go back to their original hive?


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

Adrian gave you the answer for either case ... 



> they have never been outside they are not oriented to the original location.


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## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

The nurse bees usually stay to tend the brood, a forager will leave to forage and return to the parent colony because that is still "home" to her.


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## jimbo3 (Jun 7, 2015)

I might mixing up my terminology of forager bees with nurse bees.
So if I pulled a few frames out from my current hive and placed them in a nuc, I can assume most of those bees are nurse bees and will stay with the frames of brood? Won't there be a lot of forager bees on those frames, as well?


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## lemmje (Feb 23, 2015)

One of the things you can do is pull frames of brood, shake all the bees back into the hive, and put them in a box over a queen excluder on top of your hive. After a short period of time nurse bees will come up thru the excluder and cover the brood. Then you know you have nurse bees and not foragers -- well, not many, anyway.


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

Frames with "open brood" will have a higher number of nurse bees on them. When you remove those frames and put them into a nuc the nurse bees will stay with the brood because they have never left the hive and have not oriented to a specific location yet. The older "forager" bees that may have been on those frames will return to the old location that they have programmed into their memory from earlier flights. That's why it is recommended to shake extra bees into a nuc, to replace some of the foragers that will return to the old location.


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## rwlaw (May 4, 2009)

Your correct, there will be a certain amount of foragers. That's why you want to take a couple of frames of bees and shake them into the nuc so the loss will be compensated.

You beat me to it Mike.


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## jimbo3 (Jun 7, 2015)

Ahhh, I gotcha. So if I had a 5 frame nuc, how many frames of brood should I put in, and how many frames of bees should I shake into it?


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

What's worked for me is to take 2 frames with brood and move them into the nuc. Add a frame or two with honey and pollen, and an extra frame with empty cells for the queen to lay in. Then shake a couple more "brood" frames of bees from the parent hive into the nuc. 

Just be sure you don't shake the queen from the original hive in with them. 

If you will be immediately moving the nuc at least a few miles away you really don't need to worry about shaking in extra bees. The foragers will stay with the nuc if you move it out of their old flying range. They will reorient to the new location.

* Good points Harry. I was assuming we are looking forward to late spring/early summer nucs. This is what I do at that time of year, along with a replacement queen.


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## HarryVanderpool (Apr 11, 2005)

Jimbo, that all depends on what you plan to do with the nuc and what time of year it is.
There is no one answer to your question. The answer is related to what the nucs are for.
Here is an extension bulletin from Oregon State University that gives you a range of recipes based on time of the year and in the Willamette Valley, Oregon 
Recipes will vary due to location and flows.

https://catalog.extension.oregonsta...regonstate.edu/files/project/pdf/pnw682_2.pdf


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## jimbo3 (Jun 7, 2015)

Thanks!

I just ordered a nuc and frames. Hopefully my beekeeping does better next year as I'm certain to lose my first hive over the winter.


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## jimbo3 (Jun 7, 2015)

HarryVanderpool said:


> Jimbo, that all depends on what you plan to do with the nuc and what time of year it is.
> There is no one answer to your question. The answer is related to what the nucs are for.
> Here is an extension bulletin from Oregon State University that gives you a range of recipes based on time of the year and in the Willamette Valley, Oregon
> Recipes will vary due to location and flows.
> ...


Yeah, my first ever hive swarmed late this year and I never got a queen again. I'm not even sure how I have any bees left, but there are some so I figured I'd just let them be over the winter. If I had a nuc when/before it all happened I'd probably still have a viable hive next spring.


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## rookie2531 (Jul 28, 2014)

Jimbo, do yourself a huge favor and do some reading this winter. Mike bush has a lot of info on his online book, free. I have heard beekeeping for dummies is a good one also.


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## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

jimbo3 said:


> But if I pulled a few frames from my hive with brood and nurse bees to make a walk away split, wouldn't the nurse bees just go back to their original hive?


No. The nurse bees will stay with the brood. As mentioned, Michael Bush has some excellent online information about making splits. I would add that to make a walk away split for the purpose of making a new hive, you ordinarily want a reasonable balance of bees of various ages. This will allow the hive to have bees to bring in food, defend the hive, remove debris and dead bees, tend to the queen, and feed brood. You can increase the number of older bees in the split by placing it in the original location and moving the hive with the queen to a different but nearby location. You can also swap the locations a second time and then partially obstruct the flight path in front of the new split so the foragers will tend to reorient and remain with the split.


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## DirtyLittleSecret (Sep 10, 2014)

Seriously though, get a good Beek book (ABC & XYZ, Beekeepers Handbook, Beekeeping for Dummies, Lazy Beekeeper, Beekeeper's Bible, etc...all are an incredible investment and cost less than playing "Dexter of the Hive" and killing bees out of ignorance- I know, cause I've done it too!). Read it. Learn about the life cycle of bees (this is the subject at hand). Spend days on Michael Bush's page. Spend years on BeeSource. Get a second hive so you can fix little things like queenlessness and learn things a lot faster. You'll be thankful in the end!
And if you get stuck anywhere in between we're here for ya!


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Before you do anything else, please do some studying on the honey bees.
When I started I killed off too many bees not knowing what the nurse
bees are, etc. You have to know what are the cast of the colony. ie queen, 
drones, nurse bees, foragers, guard bees, housekeeping bees, etc. 
This will enable you to better make the hive increase at the appropriate
time of the season. Spending one season to observe the hive and do hive
checks will allow you to understand them more.


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## Camel413 (Oct 5, 2013)

I have a quick question regarding distance. I have a few hives in my back yard, I plan on splitting them into nucs. I have obtained a new bee yard from a neighbor but it is only one and a half miles down the road. If I make splits and install into nucs and move them to this new yard is that a far enough distance to keep the foragers from flying back to the original hive? I know they will usually fly in at least a 3 mile radius.


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## rookie2531 (Jul 28, 2014)

Camel413 said:


> I have a quick question regarding distance. I have a few hives in my back yard, I plan on splitting them into nucs. I have obtained a new bee yard from a neighbor but it is only one and a half miles down the road. If I make splits and install into nucs and move them to this new yard is that a far enough distance to keep the foragers from flying back to the original hive? I know they will usually fly in at least a 3 mile radius.


I would say, most will stay with new location, because they most likely will reorientate and if they didn't forage that area, say they were used to the other way, then they won't know how to get back anyway. But the ones that have been there, may go back and tell the others of your weak little nuc and come back to rob it. Split them in your original yard and let the foragers out (in about a half hour) they will be out of your new nuc and never make it to the new yard. And never know about your weak easy pickings.


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## psfred (Jul 16, 2011)

The only successful split I've done so far was from a friend's hive a dozen miles away. I do now have a second yard (my brother's) three miles or so as the crow flies, so we will be doing "swap" splits this spring to reduce swarming, his coming here and mine going there.

Keep the entrance quite small until the nuc has built up, too -- otherwise it will get robbed out.

Peter


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## rookie2531 (Jul 28, 2014)

psfred said:


> The only successful split I've done so far was from a friend's hive a dozen miles away. I do now have a second yard (my brother's) three miles or so as the crow flies, so we will be doing "swap" splits this spring to reduce swarming, his coming here and mine going there.
> 
> Keep the entrance quite small until the nuc has built up, too -- otherwise it will get robbed out.
> 
> Peter


Peter, have you tried to split in the same yard? Or have all your splits been separated by miles?


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## tech.35058 (Jul 29, 2013)

Some bees are more prone to robbing than others, & not all robbers come out of your yard.
Might I suggest installing robbing screens on your nucs from the start.
Good Luck ... CE


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## GSkip (Dec 28, 2014)

On advise from some local commercial beekeepers when I did splits ( first time) last year I left them in the same yard. They were only a few yards apart. I made the splits late in the day closing the entrance with screen wire. The next morning I placed brush I cut in front of the entrance, removed the screen. They came out and reoriented to that hive with no problems. Those hive are some of my strongest today. I also fed sugar water through the top in a quart jar.


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## Phoebee (Jan 29, 2014)

Even if you move the original queen into the nuc, things tend to work out. In fact, after I'd accidentally done that, it was recommended to me as a great strategy. The original hive gets most of the resources and tends to be very strong. They have no problem creating a good emergency queen.

The nuc winds up with bees happy to stay where they are because they know momma is in there with them. And they are unlikely to allow robbing by the donor hive, which can happen with a queenless nuc. This is essentially an artificial swarm, very close to what the bees do on their own.

If you do this when you first notice swarm cells, and move some bees, brood, and store, with the old queen, to a nuc, then it IS an artificial swarm.


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## billabell (Apr 19, 2010)

Phoebee said:


> Even if you move the original queen into the nuc, things tend to work out. In fact, after I'd accidentally done that, it was recommended to me as a great strategy. The original hive gets most of the resources and tends to be very strong. They have no problem creating a good emergency queen.
> 
> The nuc winds up with bees happy to stay where they are because they know momma is in there with them. And they are unlikely to allow robbing by the donor hive, which can happen with a queenless nuc. This is essentially an artificial swarm, very close to what the bees do on their own.
> 
> If you do this when you first notice swarm cells, and move some bees, brood, and store, with the old queen, to a nuc, then it IS an artificial swarm.


I believe that is the (or the primary one) strategy of OTS queen rearing.


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## MattDavey (Dec 16, 2011)

Also note, if you leave the Nuc in the same yard and the foragers return to the original hive, that the Nuc may be very quite for up to 3 weeks (as there are very few foragers).

I also prefer to move the old queen to the Nuc if you can find her.

The bigger the split the better it will do and the faster it will get established.


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## Bees of SC (Apr 12, 2013)

GSkip said:


> On advise from some local commercial beekeepers when I did splits ( first time) last year I left them in the same yard. They were only a few yards apart. I made the splits late in the day closing the entrance with screen wire. The next morning I placed brush I cut in front of the entrance, removed the screen. They came out and reoriented to that hive with no problems. Those hive are some of my strongest today. I also fed sugar water through the top in a quart jar.


 I have made splits in the same yard with new nucs just inches a apart with no problem. I would split a big hive in to two more nucs on the same stand, put on a robers screen, some grass in front of that, very small entry, a top feeder. If one of the nucs became stronger, I would switch places with the weaker nuc. None of my nucs are moved over 200 ft. from the mother hive..I'm not saying that's right, I'm saying that is what I do. You have to remember the small entry, rober screen, grass or branches and a feeder, because they want have as many forgers and making a queen,,,,,,,,,,,


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

jimbo3 said:


> So if I had a 5 frame nuc, how many frames of brood should I put in, and how many frames of bees should I shake into it?


Making the split very strong takes a lot of guess work out of the picture and increases the chance of success. That is why I let a colony build up strong and then divide it in half. It insures the split has enough resources to make its own queen. You still have the option of introducing a queen if you choose. If you are like me and want to learn as you go then stack the deck in your favor and do your fist split as an even divide. As you gain experience you can trim the fat and take the riskier approach.


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