Summer is here, the sun is shining, the flowers are blooming, and our colonies are all booming. Why would we think about puny little nucs when we have such big hives making us so much honey? What is the value of a nuc now?
Nucs need less of everything (fewer frames, less yard space, less miticide, less feed) to get the colony through summer, fall and winter, and they will be ready to burst into action as soon as the next winter ends. Setting up a fresh queen in a small nuc is like setting a timer for explosive growth next spring. This is why established beekeepers make and sell nucs to new beekeepers, but you can also make your own nucs and use them to sustain or grow your own colony numbers next spring. Here at Betterbee, we keep our overwintering nucs in wooden double nuc boxes.
Why use a double nuc, instead of some other style?
The chief attraction of using a double nuc system is that, in the cold winter, both colonies in a double nuc box share their heat. The thin wooden divider that runs down the middle of the box lets the two small colonies share heat all winter long. They cluster around the center, hugging the wall they share with their neighbors, instead of in two separate clusters.
Another great advantage of the double nuc is that it lets you use your existing hive stands, straps, and outer covers. It's always nice when you can cut down on the use of specialized accessories. A double nuc looks like a 10 frame deep with a board installed lengthwise down the center, and small entrances at two opposite corners. Because of the thickness of the center divider, only 4 frames fit in each side, with just a bit of wiggle room. The left nuc and the right nuc each have their own narrow inner cover, but are happy to share a single insulation board and 10 frame outer cover to keep the weather out.
Another advantage of double nucs is the stackability: You can put a 4 frame super onto each nuc to make them double-high (8 total frames) or two supers to make them triple-high (12 frames each). This flexibility means that the same equipment lets some beekeepers make and manage very small nucs, while others stack the supers high and try to get a small honey crop from their nucs. Some beekeepers use the pairs of 4 frame nucs as mating nucs for new queens for part of the year, and then shift later in the season to grow them into more frames to get the nucs ready for the winter.
How do we do it? Making overwintered nucs at Betterbee
Every summer, the Betterbee Bee Team creates our Overwintered Nucs using our vast collection of double nuc boxes. Loosely following the guidance of Vermont double nuc pioneers Kirk Webster and Michael Palmer, we focus on their creation for 9 or 10 weeks every summer, and then keep them happy until customers come to collect them the following spring.
During each of the first few weeks, we use some of our large overwintered honey production hives to supply bees, brood, and honey for the nucs. A nuc made in early- to mid-summer needs these resources: one and a half frames of brood (1.5 deep frames, fairly well filled with eggs, open, and capped brood on both sides), a third frame heavy with honey/nectar, and one frame of foundation. The honey frames surround the central wall, then come the two brood frames on each side, and the foundation frames furthest from the central wall. Nucs made in late July get somewhat more brood, and no foundation. Frames of brood and honey with clinging bees from various colonies are mixed and set in the nucs, which we have lined up on our trailer. Each side of each double nuc has been prepped with a foundation frame, and a nuc inner cover the day before. This way, when we arrive at a yard we can concentrate on the two main tasks: first, locating and setting aside the parent hive's queen, then shopping through the hive for the resources we need.
Each large hive might donate up to three honey frames and four or five brood frames, which are then scattered among the many nucs we're building. Mixing donations of bees in the nucs makes for better queen acceptance, because the bees are kind of confused by the new smells already, and don't feel so defensive. The gaps left in the donor hive are filled with foundation frames. Thus, not only are the nucs drawing comb as they grow, but the donors are working on that job as well. For every nuc we sell, that's 5 frames of comb leaving our beekeeping operation, and we must replenish it all (and then some) every year. Heavy wax-coated plastic foundation in wood frames is the standard, and usually in the Greenwich NY area, comb is built well through mid-July without supplemental syrup feeding.
Once the frames are chosen and arranged in the nucs, each nuc then gets a half piece of Temp Queen: an artificial queen pheromone that looks like a two-inch long yellow rubber stick. We use it to keep the bees settled on the frames and stop their urge to make emergency queen cells during the one or two days before we get OUR fully developed queen cells to insert.
The final step on nuc creation day is to drive at least 3 miles away and set the nucs in a different bee yard, to keep the bees from just flying back to the big hives they came from. The bees will sit for one or two days awaiting delivery of their queen cells, learning their new surroundings, and starting to forage.
Here comes her majesty
On Cell Day, the Temp Queen is removed and sealed up in a jar. (We find we can use Temp Queen a number of times before the scent fades away.) Now a queen cell is inserted gently between the two brood frames in every nuc. We get queen cells from our favorite queen producer, former Betterbee owner Jack Rath. Queen cells are cheaper than mated queens since we (instead of the queen producer) shoulder the burden of completing her development and checking her after mating for a good laying pattern. The queen cells are transported in an incubator and treated very gently. When we receive them, they're within less than a day of emergence. Now, with a queen cell in each half, the double nuc has two tiny colonies started. With their doors on opposite ends of the box and a solid divider wall between them, they probably hardly know they're living in a duplex.
Queen check
Three weeks after the queen cells were inserted, we return and confirm each nuc is "Queenright," meaning it has a laying queen. We've also come ready with their second stories, what we call nuc supers. These narrow boxes hold four frames each and instantly double the living space of the little colonies. Three frames contain empty comb from previous years, and one is a new foundation frame. The space in the nuc super is a little wider than the four frames need, and special attention is given to spacing. The foundation frame is squeezed between a wall and the next (comb) frame, and the other two comb frames are nudged equally apart in the remaining space. If two foundation frames are given at one time, we use a follower board to ensure the new comb is made correctly. The follower board takes up the extra room and really helps keep things tight. This minimizes crazy comb made due to gaps wider than "bee space."
Any nucs that don't have a laying queen when we check for queenrightness (which is very easy to see three weeks after the cells go in, because there should be some brood by then) are given a caged, mated queen instead. This brings those problem nucs up to speed with the others.
Managing nucs through the summer
How do you keep a nuc as a nuc? A nuc with a new queen is ready to go-go-go, and will easily swarm if not given space, or weakened. We do both. After the third week of creating nucs, for the following weeks we use the earliest nucs as our brood source for later nucs. This keeps the nucs in their boxes and out of the trees (mostly…).
It also lets us ease off of taking resources from our honey production hives. We still get a honey crop from hives that donate to making nucs in the spring, but sometimes we hit a hive pretty hard and it will make less honey than it could have. We know that because some production hives in our yards never donate material to nuc making, so we know what an unbothered hive can do in our area. If a beekeeper just pulls 2 frames of brood and one of honey from a honey production hive, it probably won't affect the crop at all, and it's also a good way to slightly slow down the hive in late spring, possibly lessening the urge to swarm.
Sometimes a third box is added to our nucs later in the year, giving each nuc 12 frames to live on, slightly more than a single 10 frame deep. Depending on the bees and Mother Nature, we may or may not be able to pull a little "excess" honey from the nucs in late summer.
Double nuc scheduling
We create double nucs starting in mid-May and end in late July. We use queen cells for about eight weeks, then get mated queens for the last two or three weeks of nuc making. That's because fall is approaching fast when we make the last few rounds of nucs, and we want those nucs to have a jumpstart with brood production. A beekeeper who only wants to make a few double nucs doesn't need to spend weeks doing it - a few pairs of nucs can be set up any time between May and July in our area, and then managed to keep them in line until winter. This might mean pulling a brood frame once and putting it in a production hive, to cut down on crowding in the nuc.
Feeding double nucs
If nectar is not coming in steadily we use a division board feeder and feed sugar syrup in summer to get the combs drawn. Those same feeders are used in early fall, to be sure the nuc is heavy before winter. If a nuc goes into winter with just eight frames, you really want each frame to be packed full of honey or syrup. Feeding is not always necessary in our area, but that style of feeder is our choice if it's needed. A seven frame nuc (with one space taken up by the feeder) is not that much different from an eight frame nuc, and sometimes syrup feeding is crucial.
You still have to manage mites, in summer, fall, and winter
We always strive to keep varroa mites under control and the first treatment is put in soon after the nucs are created. That first treatment is a single strip of Apivar and it stays in for seven weeks, then is removed. The earliest nucs to be created may need another mite treatment in the fall, since their Apivar will be removed in late July. A small dose of ApiLifeVar is a good fall miticide choice. In mid-January, every nuc gets an oxalic acid vaporization treatment. Never letting varroa rise to high levels has resulted in much greater winter survival and healthier bees throughout the year.
Winter inspections
Starting the week after Christmas, every double nuc is checked for weight once a month by simply hefting it: gripping the strap that holds it together and lifting one side. This gives a good feel for any nucs that need emergency winter feed. We usually use Winter Patties, but also have used homemade sugar bricks. Ideally, no emergency feed is needed, if we have done everything right and fed enough thick syrup to the lightweight nucs by mid-fall, or inserted honey frames taken from stronger hives. Since nucs have so few frames, we do find that they need emergency feed more often than our bigger hives. But at the same time, the shared heat through the central wall and the small size of each cluster means that two small colonies just need less honey than one massive colony would to get through the winter.
Are double nuc boxes right for your operation?
Double nuc boxes are a powerful tool that many beekeepers use to fuel their success. Making a few "spare" nucs each summer lets you quickly replace larger colonies that die during the winter, and if all of your bees survive you can usually sell (or give) your extra nuc to another beekeeper or a new beekeeper. If that style of beekeeping works for you, you might decide to leave the honey to others and focus your beekeeping efforts on making and selling overwintered nucs. If it's not right for you, we hope you've at least enjoyed this exploration of what these nuc boxes are, and how we use them every year.
