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Author Topic: 2 nucs 1 feeder.  (Read 1935 times)

Offline jtcmedic

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2 nucs 1 feeder.
« on: July 18, 2019, 05:53:48 pm »
 OK heres my question recently made a bunch of five frame nucs I have some 10 frame top feeders do you think if I ran and excluder over both nucs  would they share one hive top feeder. What do you all think.

Offline cao

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Re: 2 nucs 1 feeder.
« Reply #1 on: July 18, 2019, 08:32:39 pm »
I haven't had much luck with nucs side by side.  Mine are all separated by at least a few inches.  I would think that the bees would tend to migrate to the better smelling queen.  Leaving the other to be overrun with pests.  That is what happened to me when I tried having 2 mating nucs in one box.  Other beekeepers do it all the time with success but not me. 

There is really only one way to find out if it will work. :wink:

Offline TheHoneyPump

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Re: 2 nucs 1 feeder.
« Reply #2 on: July 19, 2019, 12:36:00 pm »
OK heres my question recently made a bunch of five frame nucs I have some 10 frame top feeders do you think if I ran and excluder over both nucs  would they share one hive top feeder. What do you all think.

Yes, it works.  A couple of problem observations from doing it.
- nucs that need feeding are generally not strong enough to be able to extend the cluster up to get into the hive top feeder and make good use of it. The draw from a hive top feeder by nucs is really slow.
- the nucs will share the feeder and consequently their cluster workforce is also shared. The nucs may gradually appear unbalanced and thoughts of bees abandoning one of the queens. Generally they are not choosing a queen. They are going to where there is more brood to feed. One of the queens may be more dominant, via laying a lot more and having more hungry brood to serve. Or one of the nucs may have brood that is more advanced, more hungry larvae stage.  Either of those examples will draw more of the feed bees into her cluster. 

For the above reasons nucs are best fed individually, or open fed.  An inverted pail or jar in the centre right above the each cluster works best for nucs. A small hive top style that is individual to each nuc also works, but not as well.

If you do use a shared hive top, the advice I can give is: 1. make sure they are strong enough to break cluster to go up into a top feeder to get it.  2. balance the strength of the brood nest between the two nucs so they are fairly equal in amount and age of open brood so that the bees serve both nests equally.

Hope that helps!
« Last Edit: July 19, 2019, 01:12:23 pm by TheHoneyPump »
When the lid goes back on, the bees will spend the next 3 days undoing most of what the beekeeper just did to them.

Offline jtcmedic

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Re: 2 nucs 1 feeder.
« Reply #3 on: July 19, 2019, 05:05:13 pm »
Thanks for the info. That does help a lot. I plan to try it on 1or 2 of my splits but was gonna do it only for build up for fall . Thanks again for the info  honeypump I?ll keep update on the progress

 

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