Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => EQUIPMENT USAGE, EXPERIMENTATION, HIVE PLANS, CONSTRUCTION TIPS AND TOOLS => Topic started by: Kirk-o on March 16, 2005, 09:32:54 pm
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How do you make a split 3 frames brood neww queen 2 frames honey?
kirk
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I hope I read this right Kirk, but if you mean you have 3 brod frames and 2 honey frames and want to assemble them in a 5 frame nuc???. then I believe it is BEST to have the honey frames in the 1 and 5 position. keeping the brood together in the center - better THIS method than staggering honey frames between brood frames.
This keeps the queen walking along and around brood frames and away from the honey frames (which is generally agreed that) queens don't like to walk on honey cells. My belief on that is that it is a waste of her time searching for cells that are empty when she is an EGG LAYING MACHINE with the goal to pop out an egg every 20 seconds or so.
I'm a firm believer to use a super full of honey filled frames (when you have such a luxurious item) instead of a queen excluder to keep a queen in a particular super.
Having honey frames at the outer positions also is a good insulation factor when trying to keep heat from baking onto brood frames when the hive boxes are subjected to high temps and strong sun. Especially in a Nuc where the number of bees may be limited and fanning attempts may be futile.
So, I suggest keeping all brood frames together and honey filled frames toward the outer walls of the nuc. This also goes for full sized supers, but NOT to such an extreme - in other words, you CAN stick a honey frame between brood frames in a 10 frame super with less negative effects, but I still think honey should border brood frames like bookends.
Hope that addresses the question :)
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GJ Bee Master
This is the same way I set up nuc's
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Beemaster is right. Brood must be in the middle of nuc. If you try something elese, bees try to correct it. A little nuc has a problem of temperature.
If you take 3 frames capped brood and they hatch, you get whole box bees. It depends on weather how much nuc can raise brood. When I use now electrical heating that measure of bees have soon whole box full of larvas. If they are with their own, brood area is 1/3. Night temperature limits brood raising. Also extra food limits brood area, if bees must keep warm vain store of honey frames. Pollen they need all the time.
With little nuc under 5 frames it is better to have insulated box. It helps a lot. Also you can make a divided box, that you have two little nucs and separating wall. So they heat each other. I use this way mating nuc. I divide Langstroth in 4 parts, but still they difficulties to keep hive warm.
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Finman is right about the heat.
I have seen much better results by making splits with a double screen board vs. splitting them into 5 frame nucs. With the double screen board, the 2 colonies together are much more efficient at keeping the hive warm. My double screen splits always grew quicker than my 5 frame nucs. Less equipment too.