How to Install a Nuc (Nucleus Colony)

for our nuke package comparison we're gonna go ahead and install our New Canaan ten frame Langstroth it's a five frame nuke nuke that you'd purchase would typically come in a cardboard or corrugated plastic nuke box this is one that we've made ourselves sometimes you can get them in a wood box oftentimes you have to pay for it or pay a deposit and get it back when you return it but this is one of our own nukes so we're going to go ahead and show how to install that and then we can do our comparison to our package so we're gonna keep the orientation the same however we will insert some undrawn frames we have our first frame here is a frame full of pollen that's good some nectar over here that's what bees need to raise their young this side some nectar and some undrawn combs so there's some room for them to expand here here we have a frame with some nectar on the top and lots of eggs some young larvae so this will be a frame to expand in 21 days those eggs will be new workers same on this side and there's our queen so we have verification there's a queen in the nuke that's important when you get a nuke and this is important as well cat brood if these were just capped which I don't think they were they would hatch out in 12 days but a deep frame has about 4,500 cells on each side so it's 9,000 cells now it's not full of brood so if you say 50% we have almost 5000 workers ready to hatch out of here remember a package is about 10,000 bees so in addition to all the bees we have we have half of a package worth of bees ready to hatch out of this one frame and a second frame with lots of brood a good look of neck good good storage of nectar around the outside and some pollen so again we have another 5000 workers ready to hatch so these two frames together have about as many bees as the package and that's why Anouk is ready to just expand and increase much faster Queens laying there's a psycho we had eggs we don't have a frame full of larvae and that would be even better because they they'll be in stages then the cap brood would hatch out the larva then would be next and the eggs we have mostly capped root and eggs so there'll be a little gap in there but that's okay and this frame has eggs not fully drawn on that side so a little less than you'd expect if you purchased a packet nuke but this is a nuke that I made so again we're missing that stage of larvae which is unfortunate and this side isn't drawn but I think they'll make quick work of it if this were a nuke I had purchased I would really want to have all the comb drawn out I've seen some say they put one frame of foundation in to prevent swarming so that the bees have something to work on I'd rather have five full frames this is one I made though so I'm not complaining what I'm gonna do is I'm going to turn this side actually towards let's see what do we have eggs on the side I'm actually gonna keep them together we're gonna have some cool nights so we're having nights in the 30s unusually cold for this time because of that I don't want to break this up too much when we do our one-week check on our package I'll probably put foundation in between metal encourage them to draw it out faster but right now because I'm moving them and because we're having 40s and and high 30 temperatures at night I'm going to keep them together I don't want to risk shocking them while we move them in here so that'll make this easy again if it was warm I would put some of this foundation in between here and we'll do that in the coming weeks as we check them for now one more frame I'll put it this way bees don't like to move out they like to move up another thing you could do is put another five frame nuke above them and get them to work up but most people don't have that equipment when they're starting out so I wanted to put it in a tenth frame traditional tenth frame box for you because they're slow to move out that's why we can move frames in to get them to draw them we could just leave these bees to slowly work their way in or we can give them a good shake now we'll go ahead and cover them cover is supposed to go on like this I like to give them a little extra room especially when I put in new bees so I'm going to put it in upside down I'm not worried about them drawn comb there right now when the main flow is on if you give them any extra room they'll draw comb but that gives them a little extra room to move around those frames and get themselves situated then we'll put our outer cover on and we'll leave these bees and we'll come back and check on them in one week when we check on our package and see how they're doing

Channel: Beekeeping University

Views: 48,603

Keywords: Installing a nuc, how to install a nuc, install a nuc of bees, installing a nucleus colony, nuc vs package of bees, package of bees vs nuc, adding a nuc to a hive, nuke of bees, how to add a nuc, nuc, nuc of bees, how to start a hive, how to start a colony of bees, honey bee installation, Bee package, how to install a package, Beekeeping 101, beginner beekeeping, become a beekeeper, learn beekeeping, how to keep bees, beekeeping, beekeeper, install a nuc, 5 frame nuc

Id: OKE193w08c0

Length: 6min 31sec (391 seconds)

Published: Tue May 12 2020