Performance of double nuc hives
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- About 6 weeks after setting up some double nuc hives we check on their performance. Brood chambers are full of brood and honey supers are filling well. Maintaining nucs in this way not only produces a lot of honey but it takes most of the maintenance work out of keeping nucs to 5 frame boxes all summer. It also keeps the queen reigned back so she is not burnt out for next season.
The double nucs look great. Thanks for the video.
Thanks for watching!
Those suits are great for allowing some cooling air to pass through but I find that they are very catchy on anything sharp, twigs wire nails thorns etc etc. There is always someone who complains and I guess that it was my turn. Personally I would love the addition of a small fan somewhere in the suit to pass air over the upper body. Here in Australia the summers are always extremely hot and a cooled suit would be shear heaven.
Yes that bit of air movement would make all the difference!
Thank you for providing an education on bee keeping!
A pleasure!
Nice productive nucs, certainly worth giving a try
Yeah, I realize this video is two years old, but still awesome information. Could you use a triangle style bee escape with these and how? Directly over the queen excluder?
Yes you can!
Great video!
Thanks!
Hi Peter, when inspecting double nucs and you find one side stronger than the other would you ever exchange frames. I might have done that with the one that had swarm cells. Also you put back the full super on the bottom, wouldn't it give more space to have put the new empty super on the bottom. Thanks
I love your videos, please keep them coming. The quality is really improving.
The answer is yes and I should have!
I like your wood chip yard, has that work3d well for you? Any additional pest iron moisture issues?
I have been thinking of doing this with two deeps and NUC sized lids on the sides.
My only concern is fighting in the supers, do you have any advice for the start of this process, regarding fighting?
Thank you for sharing this. How much brood did you use when you set up those nucs?
The nuc brood chambers working together are awesome and there is a lot of potential for a great harvest.
You said that you would winter these nucs on a double deep using a double screen bottom board. Will the nucs have supers as well for food storage? Also next spring will you install the nucs in a 10 frame or leave them as nucs.
Plan to overwinter on top of double deeps with no further food added and to move to 10 frames in April/May
@@BeekeepingwithTheBeeWhisperer I'm starting to see the picture. Then you may be able to make new nucs from the 10 frame. Will you need to feed the nucs when the supers are taken off? From what I saw on the video the nucs were mostly brood.
Were they made with queen cells or mated queens
Also how much honey did you end up with Those hives?
These were made with mated queens. That season They made c. 50lbs each, the season before some pairs made over 150lbs!
How do you like the polystyrene deep boxes? I see you have a combination of wood and poly... any strong preferences? Do you think the poly makes a difference?
The poly does the job well though they were not made for using oxalic acid vaporizers so each year they get a bit melted! Otherwise they are good.
Is there anything special to do when you put the honey super on the Double Nuc? I have the Duplex Hive going and want to put a super on it, im worried they may fight
No it works.
I am curious; what was the date and area of the country you were working these bees since they are not real happy.
I have been working my bees in relation to the biodynamic gardening calendar, planning my inspections on fruit and flower days only and have been able to work my bees so far with out issue. Bees have been showing me very little or no attention.
Wondering if you were in your bees on a leaf day, root day, fruit or flower day.
Curious to know if others are seeing what I have been seeing concerning bee temperament on certain days.
Sorry I can not recall I usually put dates on the beginning...if its not on that video check the videos before and after. They were a bit pissy as there was not much of a honeyflow
I am in Maien
Dont you use honey b gone sprayed on a towel and laid on top of frames of honey super to move bees down from frames? i would have. Then put fresh frames in exchange for removing honey filled frames from the super box. Thus only having one honey super box at a time. You could leave one or two frames of honey for them. For continued feeding.
I often get three supers of honey stacked on these double nucs, sometimes three deeps!
@@BeekeepingwithTheBeeWhisperer you would eventually get a total of 3 supers while rotating out capped frames of honey on a timely basis from just one super box. Checkerboarding frames. Less intensive work along the way.
putting hives to a 5 frame or 8 frame, what is your preference?
I start them off in 5 frames and move many up to 10 frames to grow or leave as 5 frames to over winter.
Interested in the suit, performance and brand?
So far so good, a bit heavy but cool if there is any breeze at all.
Swarming in August?
Can get them here from Late April to late September. Especially with these changing weather patterns we have been getting.
I like to have your old bee suit
I will be used for guests after I've washed it a lot!
I'm very curious if you'd experimented with the number of frames in the nucs and compared them? Like for example, have you compared doing 4 frame versus 5 frames in the nucs? (Or 6?)
I thought to ask this because people are doing 2 frame nucs now. But that means if you are doing 2 frames, then bridging that gap when they are too big for 2 frames but not big enough for 10 frames, seems like there could be an ideal middle ground between those 2 stages.
All sizes have their used and that varies with location. I am tempted to over winter in 6's but 5's is what I have and they work great for me for mating, selling and wintering.
Those nucs need splitting bad.
One of the main advantages of running double nucs in my opinion, is that the queen is limited and the maintenance is done by allowing them to build in honey supers.
The reason you get the bias is not a problem with your bees. Its how they navigate and more go into one side then the other. To prevent this all you need to do is have the entrances on opposite sides so you dont get returning bees going into the same wrong entrance. Driffting can happen even if they are a foot apart if the entrances are the same way. . You have to do it from the start though or one will be playing catchup for a while . If you put two of the best colonies next each other you will find the same thing happen again when one side gets more returning workers from both sides. Also if you have double nucs then your supers on top they wont be trying to swarm so soon. You could of got an awesome new colony from them queen cells. Shame to kill them if they have good genetics They look good bees anyways.
Thanks for the input.