# Topbar / Frameless and Creating winter Nuc



## DaisyNJ (Aug 3, 2015)

Trying to visualize how one would create Nucs for next winter with Top Bar / Frameless. I watched Michael Palmer and other videos, but they all (seem to) involve putting in drawn out foundation and replace the drawn out foundation with empty ones as necessary (if the Nucs is getting bigger). 

So couple of questions

1. When is the best time to start Nuc for upcoming winter with TB/Frameless ? 
2. If queen fills with brood, do you replace with an empty TB or a drawn comb ? 
3. If you place empty TB, would they have enough bees to build the comb (specially with small 5 frame Nucs) ?


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

I always make mine up using drawn comb from the big hives. I use a 5 frame deep Langstroth nuc that I put small windows in (I HAVE to be able to peak in the winter time). I put a medium 5 frame over that so I have a space to put a sugar block or small feeder (although you could put them down in the empty area of the hive since the comb is a curve, there are open corners.

My nucs are started around July when I pull the existing queen out of a hive and put her in a nuc with comb and hatching brood and workers. She continues to lay up the nuc and I might need to shift comb around if she gets to good at populating the nuc. The original hive builds lots of queen cells on different bars, and I will use those capped cells to make up more nucs by moving the entire bar over to a nuc with more bees and emerging brood.

My nucs don't do a lot of comb building, simply because we don't have a good fall flow. If I was feeding them, they are certainly strong enough to do it, I just don't see much of it. Not sure how the fall flow is for NJ. My population of bees in each nuc was not large enough to provide enough heat for the cluster in these crazy cold snaps that we just had. People will say "it's not the cold that kills the bees, but the moisture". That is true IF there is a large population of bees. But for the smaller nucs, you may need to consider where they might winter more easily, like an unheated shed out of the wind. Or this year, I purchased a bee heater from warmbees.com for 2 of my nucs and they've done great. Of the 2 that were not heated, I lost one in late Jan to the cold. The other one spent a week inside my house during the cold temps.

There are some picture on my bees' FB page if you need more info.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.900312486661949.1073741841.687315994628267&type=3


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## DaisyNJ (Aug 3, 2015)

Thanks Ruth. Great info and pictures. I guess one has to take the combs out and put in empty but drawn combs if Queen is running out of space ? Its about 9 months from July through April when that Nuc can really take off. Do you have to constantly manage their stores and feed during that time ?


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

I haven't had any that I've had where the queen filled it up too quick, but if I did, then you would add the drawn out worker sized comb that was empty for her to fill. Because of our summer/fall dearth, I must manage the food more closely in the nucs. They are easy targets for robbing by the big hives. Even having a feeder in the hive brings robbers. So now I steal capped stores from the big hive. That seemed to work best for me, but all the nucs go into December with a sugar brick in them, and that gets refreshed as needed. We have mild winters in this part of VA, so winter inspections are possible. I did lose one of the nucs in the fall to starvation because I wasn't on top of what they needed. And unless you have about 4 big hives to pull from, you want to be careful that you don't weaken the big hive by stealing capped stores over to the smaller nucs.

That said, it's great having the nucs avail for early spring. They take off and build up nicely. I'm working on a method that will let me overwinter caged and mated queens in a nuc style, so there are not so many worker bees to feed.


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