2011-07-09: Double Nuc and Queen Cells

I attended the VBA class on how to winter over a double nuc. There has been increased interest on beekeepers in Vermont overwintering more of their nucs instead of relying on buying nucs from the South to replace their winter losses. The logic being that local over wintered queens will be adapted for these region and more likly to get through future winters, fewer out-of-state nucs should reduce the risk of diseases and parasites being brought into Vermont, and its cheaper. Afterwards I was able to go home with the woodenware to make a double nuc and two queens to start the nucs with.

I assembled the bottom and slapped on a couple of coats of primer... final coats of paint will have to wait until next year then drove everything over to my parents.

I had decided to take the frames I would need to start the nucs from Artemis, being the oldest and largest hive. While working my way through Artemis, I discovered several frames with queen cells on them. I suspect that they were either supercedure or emergency cells. The later could possibly been caused when I found the queen previously when trying to remove drone frames and not knowing exactly what to do with her I dropped her into the gap of the removed frame and she might have gotten squished when I put a frame back in. This observation caused some consternation and caused be to beekeep mad, and I ground through the process of removing frames even as my smoke faded and I got stung twice. Looking back on it I regret not thinking abou the option of doing a split or asking any fellow beekeepers if they happened to need some queen cells. Lesson learned.

 

In the end the required frames were found, 1 drawn but empty, one of honey, one full of brood, and one with some brood and maybe some honey for each nuc. The honey frame is put against the divider inside of the box, the brood next to that, and the empty frame to the outside of the box. While it would seem at first counter intuitive to put the honey in the prime spot for brood (in the warmest part of the hive), the idea is that the bees will make use of this honey quickly and thus they will free up this prime real estate for the new queen to lay into. Speaking of the two lovely ladies, I tied a string to each of their boxes and did my best to embed the box into some empty comb and then stapling the other end of the string to the top of the frame to make sure it doesn't fall to the bottom. I then closed up the nucs (using white plastic grain bags with to cover the tops (it allows you to fold over once side while the other side still covers the other side of the box keeping the bees from mixing while you work on them) and using a queen excluder on top to keep bag down.