how to transfer bees from a commercial type nuc into a national type bee hive

[vassilis]

Hi

I am a new beekeeper. After a swarm of bees came into my garden (2 weeks ago 28 may) I was given a nuc by a local beekeeper to house them. Meanwhile I bought and assembled a new bee hive. When I compared the frames, I realised the nuc was commercial type ( takes frames of 16 inc in length) while the national hive I have assembled can only take 14 inc.
So I have problem, in the nuc I have 4 new blood frames + 2 with honey. What do I do? The swarm also was rather small around 1000 bees, the size of the heart. Any ideas?

Thank you

 

[jeff33]

What did you buy, a British national hive? If so and assuming you mean a BS commercial nuc, I think you can buy an adapter from well known bee suppliers to allow you to put the frames in the standard BS hive or buy a commercial deep box. All your other parts will fit.

 

[Insy]

If it was national frames going into a commercial hive you can adapt them.

Your going to really struggle to try adapt commercial frames into a national hive, your best bet would be to shake all the bees onto new frames into the national hive and start again.

If there is lots of capped brood you could try cut it out and hold it in a empty national frame with elastic bands if you didn't want to lose the brood.

 

[Finman]

.
1000 bees. Langstroth box has 16 000 swarm bees. One frame 1600 bees.

IT is better to inform as frames occupyed.

 

[vassilis]

I looked in the web and you can buy a hamilton converter.
This would allow someone to add 10 commercial frames into a national standard type hive. This could be the preferred solution.

Thank you for the quick replies
I am amazed to find out beekeepers look at forums 7am on a Sunday morning, this shows it is a passionate activity.

 

[jeff33]

I
I am amazed to find out beekeepers look at forums 7am on a Sunday morning, this shows it is a passionate activity.

Not really, the b****d cat woke me up at 6!!!

 

[Zante]

Hi

I am a new beekeeper. After a swarm of bees came into my garden (2 weeks ago 28 may) I was given a nuc by a local beekeeper to house them. Meanwhile I bought and assembled a new bee hive. When I compared the frames, I realised the nuc was commercial type ( takes frames of 16 inc in length) while the national hive I have assembled can only take 14 inc.
So I have problem, in the nuc I have 4 new blood frames + 2 with honey. What do I do? The swarm also was rather small around 1000 bees, the size of the heart. Any ideas?

Thank you

Get a national nuc. It's a useful tool to have anyway.
Shake the queen in the national nuc.
Put a queen excluder on the national nuc.
Put the commercial nuc on top of the queen excluder and try to close any gaps.

That way the bees will draw the foundation for the queen to lay in the national nuc (see if you can beg for a comb for a head start) and the brood in the commercial nuc will still emerge and join the colony. Once all the brood in the commercial nuc has emerged you can scrape the stores for the bees to take up into the new nest.

I am assuming the commercial nuc has a removable floor. The operation can be done also swapping the nucs, the important thing is to have the queen in the nuc of the standard you want to use, so if the commercial nuc doesn't have a removable floor get a national one that does.

It's in cases like these that I think that having only one standard here in Italy is actually beneficial...


By the way... if the colony is still small you might want to keep it in the nuc for the time being.