Too late to upgrade nuc to a full brood?

[dolbz]

I've inspected today and found my nuc that appeared to be limping along has suddenly come alive in the 2 weeks since I checked them last. They've drawn and mostly filled the last two frames and are pretty crammed in there. There's a lot of activity going on and they weren't impressed with me getting in there.

I'm thinking of putting them in a full brood and maybe dummy down a couple of frames worth of space. I only have foundation brood frames at the minute so this is what's holding me back. Any thoughts?

 

[Teemore]

I have some 6 frame Nucs in a similar position but I will leave those nucleus colonies where they are until the Spring.

I suspect that your nuc in Bath will experience slightly more clement weather than my colonies and so you could move them into larger accomodation as you suggest, dummying down the full brood box. Just be aware that as your nuc is raising a lot of new bees, older bees are rapidly aging from looking after all those youngsters. The result is that colony numbers will drop off over the coming weeks. What looks crammed now will look more spacious at the end of October. If you move the bees now and the weather turns cooler to the extent that nectar availability tails off and foraging stops, the bees might not draw out those extra frames. The move to bigger accomodation will have largely been in vain. To paraphrase Finman, you will be left with "vain space" in the larger box. With a selection of differently sized dummy boards, you can modify the additional space made available to bees transferred into a full hive from a nuc ie. one extra frame or two extra frames.