What is a bee nuc box?
A nucleus (or nuc for short) is a smaller hive typically made up of 2-5 frames. You make one by splitting off the queen and a few frames from a existing strong hive. Create a mini nuc split with a single frame of bees and the queen from the parent hive, plus one empty frame.
Why?
In our quest to make more honey there are two main ways to accomplish it. One, an over abundance or bees like when we added a package to the hive in our first hive hack. The second way is to have bees with nothing else to do, so they build comb and store honey. The second way is what this mini nuc hack is all about.
Creating a bee nuc
A bee nuc is just a smaller version of the hive consisting of five or fewer frames. Create one by taking the queen from a strong hive and some resources to make a new hive.
The thought here is you get a second hive and the old strong hive will raise a new young vibrant queen. This also mimics a swarm making the hive think they have swarmed and keeping all the other bees at home.
Creating a mini nuc split
The hardest part of this hack is finding the queen. In a strong colony with at least two deep hives of bees she can be anywhere. Honestly this is a weak point of mine. If you are lucky enough to have a marked queen it can be a little easier. Once you locate the queen, just take the frame she is on, plus all the attached bees, and at least one frame of empty comb or at least partially built empty comb so the queen has some where to continue laying. Place them in a smaller hive box that typically holds five or less frames.
POW! You have created a bee nuc.
The main point here is to only take one frame from the parent hive leaving as many bees and resources as you can.
For more information on splits and specifically the two frame nuc, check out Dave Cushman’s post on the Two Frame Nucleus
What happens in the original hive
In the original hive they quickly realize the queen is gone and go about raising a new one. This is where the magic happens!
Typically the bees will chose a 3 day old larva to turn into a queen. It takes about 16 days to raise a queen, so assuming they use a 3 day old larva, it will be 13 days after the split before she hatches. Then she has to take a mating flight and find her way back. Most agree it will be a total of 23 days before she begins laying eggs in earnest.
So we have a hive full of bees and the remaining brood hatching with no new brood to take care of for around three weeks. What will a bored bee do? I’ll tell you what they do, given a good nectar flow they build comb and fill it with honey!!
When the split first takes place, add a honey super. Then keep an eye on them. Typically it takes one to two weeks to fill a super, but given the right conditions it can happen faster. Once they queen starts laying again they will loose some focus on the honey supers, so best to keep them open for honey storage while the bees are willing to fill them.
What to do with bee nuc
Glad you asked. Several things can happen with the mini nuc split.
You could just keep it as a new hive. Depending on the time of year you do the split, I would suggest doing a 5 over 5 nuc box to over winter the new hive. Then the following spring move it into a 10 frame deep and add a second deep as the nectar flow begins.
You could take two of these splits and do a two queen hive hack
Take Action
Comment below on how small is too small of a hive split and thoughts about the timing of such a mini nuc split.