What to do with nukes

Donalde

I made up 2 6 frame nuikes during the Summer and have them out on the bog where there is some heather but 10 miles away. They both have about 5 frames of bees now.
Should I bring them home and hive them now? It would be more convenient for me to keep an eye on them.
Do they need to be fed?
Any advice appreciated

Apiarist

I would bring them home in nucs and keeps them in nucs over the winter. If you have spare drawn comb foundations frames, you can put bees in hives. Otherwise, I would leave them in nucs.

Why? Because bees are unlikely to produce 4-5 frames of foundation this time of the year. See https://honeybeesuite.com/the-conditions-necessary-for-comb-building/ . So what would happen is that your hive will have 6 frames from the nuc and 4-5 empty or half-finished frames of foundation which is worse than useless since all that empty space needs to be kept warm in winter.

If you feed them now, would they be able to store the food? If nucs are full of honey, there is no point in feeding now. If they are light on stores, then by all means feed until bees stored all they can.

brianmc

I would definitely leave them in the nucs. The colonies aren’t going to expand enough to fill a hive at this point.

Colonies always overwinter better when they’re a little snug rather than in too much space.

yosemitesam1

Have a good few nucs that were only transferred recently. On 4 frames of sealed brood and will be filling the box before winter. Needs careful management with feeding and working frames into the brood area though.
Really depends on the strength of the nucs and the amount of brood ready to hatch over the coming 2 weeks on whether to leave them be or not. If you're not sure leave them as they are.

Donalde

Thanks for the advice.
I won't know how much brood/stores there is until I bring them home.
Based on that I am thinking of bringing them home and putting them in a hive with space reduced (with polystyrene) for 8 frames and 1 extra drawn frame on each side. Then feed, in hope of filling all frames.

yosemitesam1

Donalde wrote: »

Thanks for the advice.
I won't know how much brood/stores there is until I bring them home.
Based on that I am thinking of bringing them home and putting them in a hive with space reduced (with polystyrene) for 8 frames and 1 extra drawn frame on each side. Then feed, in hope of filling all frames.

Probably not the best plan to transfer and feed heavy. They'll only fill up the brood area and shut down leaving lots of empty frames. You need small feeds of about 1.5l and to work the frames into the nest if they're to expand further now but they need to be at a certain strength to do that and need a week to 10 days for each additional frame

Donalde

So is it OK if I just feed say 1litre at a time?

solargain

How did you get on ?

Donalde

I brought them home and hived them with 2" polystyrene on each side of the 6 frames. Fed them 6kg sugar each and they seem happy but I didn't check the brood area!
Wondering should I give them another bag of sugar they each still have an empty frame?
Thanks for the advice.