# mating nucs: how many bees are required?



## peggjam (Mar 4, 2005)

I think the minimum is around 200 workers and the queen. I use an 8oz cup to measure out the required amount of bees for my mini mating nucs.

I don't think 10 bees would be a viable unit. If there are 3500 bees to the pound, then 10 bees would be about .04587's of an oz. 8 oz would be about 1744 bees. Remember, the whole idea is to turn out a viable queen. I don't think that you would have enough mass at those low numbers.


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## bjerm2 (Jun 9, 2004)

I would not go smaller that 300-400 workers. You need them for protecting the hive, keeping the brood/queen warm. You need some for forging since they can not get all the proper nourishment from supplemental feeding (sugar syrup and pollen substitute). Most important for all this is make sure your nucs are 2-3 miles away from the parent colony since most will fly back to their old hive location. 
Considering if the queen mates, starts laying eggs, weather is ok, you will come out by end of summer with a 10 frame deep ready for winter if they were started out in early May. When you are raising queens let her lay for a few days just so that you know she is fertile and it will keep a high moral in the hive if they have some brood to take care of, I hope this helps.
Dan


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## JohnK and Sheri (Nov 28, 2004)

We usually add a big coffee cup of bees to our mating mini nucs, never actually counted.
Along these lines though, last week when picking queens from our mini nucs I came across a queen almost alone in one, I don't think there were 20 bees in with her. She was real pretty and laying a fine pattern. I am not sure when the bees left, but I can only assume they took off before the cell hatched. When I opened that box up all I could think of was CCD, it sure looked weird.
I put her in with a big bunch of bees in a mininuc whose queen didn't take so everyone seemed happy last time I looked. We will see how she does.
Sheri


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## peggjam (Mar 4, 2005)

I have two frame deep mating nucs that did the same thing, only there might be 50-100 bees with a virgin queen. I didn't bother to shake anymore in, as I don't know if the new bees would accept the virgin. So, maybe i'll just wait and see.


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

*Getting the queens to stay after mating*

I built a group of 6 mini styrofoam mating nucs. I had minimal difficulty getting them stocked with bees and no trouble introducing queen cells and having them hatch with nice looking new virgin queens, but every time when the queens leave on their mating flights the workers go with them and neither the new queens nor the workers have ever returned to the mini mating nucs. I even tried replacing a mini frame or two with combs of brood in all stages of development. They even abandon the brood when they leave with the virgin on her mating flights. 

Since then I've partitioned several 10-frame 6-5/8" depth supers into 2-frame and 3-frame mating nucs. Now I have several mated, laying queens. I started the 2-frame partitions with a frame of honey/pollen, and a frame of emerging brood with an inserted queen cell. I started the 3-frame partitions with a frame of honey/pollen, a frame of emerging brood with an inserted queen cell, and an undrawn PF120 plastic frame/foundation from Mann Lake.


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

Maybe you had too many bees in the mini nucs that they all decided to abscond. Maybe something in the hive... could of been the smell or the fact it was styrofoam and they did not like it. Especially since the abanded the brood.


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## Big Ed (Jul 1, 2005)

I, too had trouble with mini nucs absconding this year. I built 10 mini nucs from the plans in Marla Spivac's book this spring with high hopes. I stocked them all with a queen cell, syrup and half of a big bean can of bees. Closed them up for 3 or 4 days in my shop until the virgins all emerged, and then put them all out and opened 'em up. I had planned on putting all the mini frames in a modified medium super and allowing another queen to lay them up with brood, but you know how plans go. All but 1 queen hatched and they looked fine. Comb building was slow, but I was not suprised. Anyway, several days later I found that 6 of the 10 were empty. To add insult to injury, as I stood there I watched the 7th one abscond before my eyes. It even had about 30 or more eggs in the new comb. At least it was neat to watch....

The remaining three had nice looking queens, but they weren't laying much. of course, 1 only had 30 or so bees left, and what little comb the others had was filled with syrup. Overall not very successful for my first try.

I chalked it up to a learning experience. Next year I will do things differently. I have had much better luck using standard sized nucs and a follower board with one frame of brood and bees, one honey/pollen, one empty drawn, and an extra shake or two of bees. To be honest, if I hadn't already invested alot of time and money in the mini nucs, I would just use 5 frame nuc boxes instead. They are much easier to stock, much more versatile, ( using a follower board and a reducer, 1-5 frames can be used) and if you don't need the queen elsewhere they can be left to expand into a new hive.

Just my observations. 

Eddie


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## peggjam (Mar 4, 2005)

"They are much easier to stock, much more versatile, ( using a follower board and a reducer, 1-5 frames can be used) and if you don't need the queen elsewhere they can be left to expand into a new hive."

But, they eat up alot of resources when one is trying to raise lots of queens.


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## Big Ed (Jul 1, 2005)

peggjam said:


> "They are much easier to stock, much more versatile, ( using a follower board and a reducer, 1-5 frames can be used) and if you don't need the queen elsewhere they can be left to expand into a new hive."
> 
> But, they eat up alot of resources when one is trying to raise lots of queens.


True, but I should have stated that I am primarily growing nucs for sale and expansion, only using a portion for requeening my hives. The use of mini nucs this year was a trial for future queen sales.


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## Troy (Feb 9, 2006)

I realized going in that this was a hypothetical question, but wanted to explore it anyway. Maybe I should have explained the basis better. If we assume laboratory conditions, we have sterile mating boxes, temperature and humidity are controlled. You know everything is kind of perfect. We would introduce queen cells into ultra small mating nucs.

Peggjam you said “Remember, the whole idea is to turn out a viable queen” Well if we are introducing queen cells, then the queen only needs an environment suitable to live in. The heavy feeding and care that are necessary during the brood stage are over. She needs only minimal food and water which can be supplied by a very small number of worker bees. She needs the temperature and humidity within a normal range which is controlled by the lab conditions.

Bjerm2 said that a certain number of bees are necessary to control the temp and warm and feed the brood etc., but again if some of those things are taken care of already, then maybe we don’t need quite so many bees.

If the temp and humidity are controlled, then the few workers could raise a few brood and once they are capped could raise a few more etc etc. The numbers would start slow, but in theory it seems they would build geometrically.

Does anyone know of any studies that have been done? Does anyone know of any papers written on this subject area?


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## peggjam (Mar 4, 2005)

Right, that's the idea, to arraive at a mated queen. I'm not sure how you can control the envirnment, and still allow the queen mating flights. Of course you could do II, then she wouldn't need to fly, but the rest of them will, as they need to do cleansing flights. I have mating nucs that only have a couple hundred bees in them(the rest took their toys and went home), and they have turned out mated queens.

But for a resonably wealthy beekeeper, well, such as Bjorn, a tempiture controlled envornment isn't feasable, and certainly isn't feasable to raise a limited number of queens.


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## Riki (Jan 31, 2007)

Troy,
I don't know how far this could go, but I think that such an environmental control wouldn't be worthy unless you were inseminating your queens; feeding more bees would be cheaper than artificial controlling temp., humidity, etc.


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