Creating mini-nucs from honey-producing hives (your thoughts)

[ugcheleuce]

Hello everyone

I have a strong, honey producing hive that consists of a medium and a shallow box (with brood in it), a queen excluder, and a honey shallow (with frames being filled up with honey). The queen is not marked. I would like to make one or more mini-nucs (that will produce rescue queen cells) from this colony, and I'd appreciate your comments about the correct timing.

What I have in mind is this:
1. From the middle of the honey shallow, remove a honey frame (take it away).
2. From the middle of the brood shallow, remove a brood frame (shake off the bees) and put it in the honey shallow (in the place where the honey frame was removed).
3. In the place where the brood frame was removed, put an empty frame of drawn out comb.
4. Wait two (?) days, and then:
5. From the honey shallow, remove another honey frame.
6. Take the previously empty frame from the brood shallow (shake off the bees) and move it up to the honey shallow (put it in the place where the other honey frame was removed).
7. Wait an hour or two, and then:
8. Take out those two "brood" frames from the honey super, plus one frame of honey (all with bees on it), and put it in a nuc box and move it to another apiary (add a frame with pollen if no pollen is present in any of those frames).

My questions are: (a) is the timing right and (b) do you think this will work?

The idea is that if I move a brood frame into the honey shallow, it will soon be covered with nurse bees, and the bees will continue to warm it up for two days. In the mean time, the queen will lay eggs in the empty frame. I'll assume the queen will start laying eggs in the empty frame on the very same day (likely, since the other frames are full of brood). When that frame with new eggs is moved up to the honey shallow (above the queen excluder), nurse bees will flock to it and cover it in an hour or two. This means that I would be able to remove those two brood frames, plus one honey frame, knowing that there are enough bees on those frames for the mini-nuc to successfully make an emergency queen and grow into a colony, without having to add more bees to it.

I'm just not sure about the "two days". Is that the correct amount of time? How old must the larvae be for the bees to make a good, successful rescue queen cell?

I may have just described something which already has a name, and if so, please tell me it's name

Thanks
Samuel

 

[mbc]

Eggs take about four days to hatch

 

[Roola]

You also seem to want to ask a 2 frame nuc to build you EQC. Probably unadvusable and likely to result in a poor quality queen. Good queens come from strong colonies where there are plenty of bees to feed the larvae.

 

[Tremyfro]

I managed to get a crop of queen cells by taking the top brood box off the main brood box...setting it aside with its bees...for 24 hours....then putting it back on top of the honey supers above a queen excluder. They made enough queen cells for my nucs. Just make sure the queen is in the lower box.
The colony was big...so loads of nurse bees and plenty of resources. Then I used the frames to stock the nucs...but if you only want one Nuc....you should have plenty of bees if you shake some into your Nuc too.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

You also seem to want to ask a 2 frame nuc to build you EQC. Probably unadvusable and likely to result in a poor quality queen. Good queens come from strong colonies where there are plenty of bees to feed the larvae.

 

[dn170221]

"You also seem to want to ask a 2 frame nuc to build you EQC. Probably unadvusable and likely to result in a poor quality queen. Good queens come from strong colonies where there are plenty of bees to feed the larvae. "



I agree

 

[ugcheleuce]

Eggs take about four days to hatch

That's true, but some sources say that bees prefer 2-day old eggs over 4-day brood for making queen cells. Are you saying that I would play it safe and wait for there to be larvae instead of just eggs? Or do you mean that mere eggs won't entice the nursing bees up from the brood box into the honey box to go sit on the frame?

You also seem to want to ask a 2-frame nuc to build you EMQ (emergency queen cell). Probably unadvisable and likely to result in a poor quality queen. Good queens come from strong colonies where there are plenty of bees to feed the larvae.

Well, three frames, actually, but I see that there is consensus that good queen cells are made with lots of nurse bees. Do you know of a resource on how many bees are required for that? I see "as many as you can spare" in some web sites, but that's no answer if you don't have many colonies.

I managed to get a crop of queen cells by taking the top brood box off the main brood box...setting it aside with its bees...for 24 hours....then putting it back on top of the honey supers above a queen excluder.

Aah, so you make that box queenless so that the bees start building queen cells, and then you put the box back "into" the original colony, so that the main colony continues to mature those queen cells. Would the bees continue to build the queen cells even if the colony itself is queenright?

Just make sure the queen is in the lower box.

Yeah, that's a problem for me. The colony is quite dense and the queen is unmarked. If I'm lucky, I'll spot her in 10 minutes. If I'm not, it'll take 2-3 hours, and by that time the bees will be rather unhappy with me.

Then I used the frames to stock the nucs...but if you only want one Nuc....you should have plenty of bees if you shake some into your Nuc too.

I don't mind more than one nuc, but I don't want to cannibalise my main colony of too many bees to make nucs. That's why I thought I'd better make just one nuc at a time (e.g. one every 2 weeks, until the season is over or I run out of boxes). The alternative that presents itself to me is to take the nucs' bees from other colonies (I have two more strong hives in another apiary).

==

I had also hoped to reduce the number of times I had to visit the apiary, but it would seem that I would need to visit it at least four times: on day 1 when I put a drawn-out comb into the brood nest, on day 4 when I take out that frame again (now with newly laid eggs) and put it into a small nuc to take home with me, on day 5.5 when I return the frame to the main hive (now with the beginnings of queen cells), and on day 15/16/17 when I harvest the queen cells and put them into small nucs with some bees and food+brood frames (making sure those nucs are placed in a different apiary that the bees in them are from). However, I'd appreciate it if you could confirm the timing of these actions -- my beekeeping math isn't very good.