Advice needed,Please

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teignbee

New Bee
Joined
Jan 22, 2009
Messages
64
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0
Location
Newton Abbot Devon
Hive Type
National
I really need some help. I have just started with beekeeping and have had some conflicting advice. I picked up a nuc a week last sunday. This nuc was very kindly given to me by a highly respected beekeeper. The nuc had been made from a split. It contained five frames of young bees and last years queen.
This sunday (yesterday) the lady that supplied the bees came to my apiary
and transferred them into a national brood box containing a full set of frames, as the nuc was teaming with bees.
Also on monday last week i collected my first swarm,and installed them into my other hive, with a full set of frames.Again,the hive was inspected,the queen was found and marked,she is a laying queen, so all seemed well to me.
I have also got a nuc on order from another beekeeper,which i have been told is now ready. I had expected this nuc well before now,but because of the delay in getting it,that is the reason i went ahead and obtained the other bees.
When i told the chap that i had already obtained some bees,incidently,they have already been paid for, he said that i should not have hived the split nuc as it was too soon to do this.The lady beekeeper said to me that we could combine the new nuc when i obtained it with the already hived bees. Again, the other beekeeper said this was not a good idea.I dont have,and to be honest,cant afford to buy another hive at the moment
I hope all this makes sense. I really dont know which way to go from here. I do realise that people have there own ways of doing things and respect both opinions but am now really confused as to what i should do next.
 
I dont see why you cant combine them using the newspaper method, but obviously you will need to kill one of the queens when doing so. I cant say what the good and bad points of doing this are as I am fairly new to beekeeping myself, but I have just succesfully joined two good size colonies this way due to one queen failing to lay all of a sudden shame as she was last years queen who was a very prolific queen until she stopped a couple of weeks ago.
 
Get some plywood and make a box according to Hedgerow Pete's instructional video. Instead of making it nuc width, make it 460mm wide x 460mm long. i.e. a double width nuc box. Your bees will be fine in it for a few weeks at least and it should cost less than £10. Cheaper than that if you can find some off-cuts.

JC.
 
Ok,thanks for the advice. So i think i would like to try and combine the nuc with one of my hives. What would be the best method to use? I will be picking up the nuc on saturday.
 
Feed them to help draw out foundation then stop as there is plenty of nectar and pollen about for them at the moment.:cheers2:
 
I know I'm a noob so feel free to ignore me, but if they have any drawn frames I'd say don't feed. In the Bristol area there's a full on flow at the moment, they're bringing stuff in quicker than they can use it where I am. My hive appears to be trying to swarm despite 3 spare frames of foundation in the brood box and a super of foundation because they're storing nectar in the brood area.
 

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