Has anyone in this area tried to winter a five frame nuc

Ron Young · Post by **Ron Young** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 7:00 am

Has anyone in this area ever tried to winter a five frame nuc?

John Sabat · Post by **John Sabat** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 10:28 pm

Ron,
I have only tried one but it turned out to be one of my strongest hives. By early spring of 08 it was stacked 3 high. The original colony come from a cutout near A & T college around early September 07 and was a very young colony. Very little wax comb and very little honey. The queen laid a great pattern. Before I move them into a medium hive body I started losing bees by the double handfuls every day. I had Kurt over to observe as well as Don Hopkins. I lived beside a high school football and baseball field and I felt they had sprayed some kind of pesticide on these field and the workers brought it in. Don took some samples and sent them off to NC State. I have not heard back from State yet. It continues to lose bees but not as many. It is still a very strong hive. I feel the suspected poison was stored in their honey reserves and those being fed by this are doomed. I would have no problem with trying to winter over a weak colony in a nuc again. Hope this helps.
John

ttthay · Post by **ttthay** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 10:45 pm

I over wintered 2 five frame nucs last winter. I would just feed them some sugar water on the warmer days and they seemed to make it just fine. They are still strong this summer.

Ron Young · Post by **Ron Young** » Wed Jul 29, 2009 1:03 pm

good to here, I going to try it.

SmithN · Post by **SmithN** » Tue Aug 04, 2009 9:49 pm

Sorry I'm a little late replying to the question, I'm only a 2nd year beekeeper but, I over wintered two nucs last year with great success. I set both of the nucs up in Hives this spring and they are still doing good, both are strong hives. I believe it's important to go into winter with healthy bees that have good stores. I had a deep nuc body with a med. nuc super above for stores. I did a mite count, fed fumigilin-B. I fed them syrup as long as weather permitted. I also made a wide spacer, placed it under the inner cover, added a sheet of newspaper on the top bars then poured about 2 lbs. dry sugar onto the newspaper. (I didn't completely cover the top bars with the newspaper I left space around the sides for the bees to get to the sugar). Just in case they needed more stores. I checked the nucs whenever the bees broke cluster, just peeking in to see if they have used any of the dry sugar and adding more if needed. I did add about 2 lbs. more over the winter/early spring. They ate about half of the dry sugar over the winter. They saved the capped honey, both nucs still had a couple frames when spring arrived. I have three nucs set up at this time, not sure how many I will take into winter this year. Hey, if I can do it you can too!