Nucs - need some help.

[p51d]

First, I seemed to have gotten better so my couple of hives made it through winter. Only 20% loss this year for me.

Nucs - I must be doing something really wrong.

Two attempts so far. I have a couple of strong hives and the goal is to make a nuc or two using the strong hives for a couple of frames.

I have failed miserably two times. I have the frames with plenty of brood, nurse bees.... twice, within a couple of days....everything was toast. I was waiting 4 days to have them understand they were queen less. On day 4 I was going to order a queen for day 6 and introduce her.

The nuc, after I checked - only a couple of days, everything was gone. Do I need to reduce the entrance to a small opening with screen? Or no opening and order a queen and throw her in real early?? I suspect robbing but I work and don't know for sure.

Is it too late in the season for this exercise??? trying to avoid spending a small fortune for this hobby in the Spring.

Thanks for any comments. (beekeeping is harder than it sounds.)

[Jacobs]

It is late in the season to be attempting splits/nucs. If you are going to try nucs from very strong hives, I would go with mated queens. My stab at what happened is that we are clearly in the robbing season and nucs are weak enough to be a good target. Queenless hives are also vulnerable to robbing because the house bees have little to organize them for defense. Combine nucs with queenlessness and a nectar dearth and you have real problems. If I were going to make nucs with mated queens now, I would want to have the queens in hand. I would pick out brood frames with nurse bees, walk around with them in the open a few minutes to let the old foragers leave the frames and fly to the home hive, and I would put those frames in a nuc. I would leave them there for around 2 hours before putting the food frames and the queen cage in the nuc. I would also have nuc sized robber screens on the nucs with only the hidden entrance open. The walking around in the open with brood/nurse bees and the couple of hours would give the nurse bees notice of no queen pheromones until the cage is put in the nuc. The nucs will not have foragers for awhile, so good pollen frames and top feeders for sugar water (not front feeders) could be in order.

Other folks may have better ideas, but this is my take IF I were going to try and make some nucs now.

[p51d]

Thank you. This is very helpful.

I appreciate your expertise. The hives are strong. I might try with a queen in hand first to see what happens.

Buying nucs and package bees in the Spring is expensive.

No one ever said you would make much at this.. boy. I stay in the red..

Many thanks.

[Wally]

I'm going to be the spoil sport. There's an old saying..... "Take your losses in the fall and split in the spring."
It means combine the weak ones, IE: nucs, and combine them back in the spring.
If you are losing the strong ones over winter and have to buy more in the spring, you surly can't over winter nucs.
Then in the spring, take 3 brood frames, one pollen frame, and one honey frame and place in nuc with bees. Shake an extra frame of bees from a brood frame. Do it mid-day and place it 20 feet away. Wait 15 to 30 minutes and move it into it's permanent position and add the queen. Reduce the entrance to the smallest opening. Check in 7 days for eggs. If found, remove queen cage, close and leave alone for another 7 or more days.