We’ve begun selling our five frame nucs and I just want to run over a few suggestions to anyone who might need a little advice installing five frame nucs. Our bees are gentle, but you’ll always need to use smoke while opening and closing the nucs. We recommend pine needles which produce cool white smoke. Smoke only enough to push the bees away from the top bars so that you can remove the frames without crushing any adhering bees. Remove one of the outside frames first being careful not to roll bees as you lift it from the box, it would be a shame to roll your perfectly good brand new queen, it happens more often than you’d think.
Our nucs will have at least 3 frames of all stages of brood with a substantial presents of capped brood and two frames of feed. Our queens will all be marked, and the nuc will be ready at the time of pick-up to transfer into your 8 or 10 frame deep box. We recommend you not separate the three center frames of brood, but rather, put one empty drawn comb or frame of foundation between one of the frames of feed that came with the nuc and the three frames of brood. Leave the other frame of feed directly next to the three frames of brood, put your empty comb or frames of foundation outside of that and center the nuc in the middle of your box. Feed nuc until the foundation frame next to the brood is drawn out and being laid in by the queen. At this time, you could move another frame of foundation on the other side of the brood between it and the other original frame of feed. Continue feeding until all sheets of foundation are drawn. We recommend bucket or jar feeding through the cover of the hive. If you prefer, internal feeders, we highly suggest you use the cap and ladder system of internal feeder available from Mother Load or Mann Lake.
You will have no drowned bees with these systems and a minimal amount of difficulty if any with small hive beetles. We do not recommend the use of boardman feeders as they attract robbers at this time of the year to the vulnerable newly established hive. In fact, it would be best to reduce the entrance to the smallest doorway your entrance reducer provides for the first 2 weeks. After the colony has successfully established and drawn a box full of comb you can give them a larger entrance.
Check the nuc 3 days after installation to be sure you still see eggs and no queen cells being drawn, if she is working well at this point in time, you did everything right and she made the transport successfully. For more concise directions with pictures, consult our nuc page, in the very near future we will have a new tutorial up on nuc installation