Questions About Hiving a Nuc

by Morris Myers
(Granville, Tn 38564)

I have a nuc coming and am totally brand new to bee hiving. Should I install the nuc in the brood chamber and leave the 1st super off the hive for now or should I install the bees in the 2nd super. Do I need to use the excluder and if so where do I put it.

Thanks in advance

Morris

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Hi Morris,

Congratulations on getting started with beekeeping. I'm excited for you!

Here's how I would hive the nuc:

I would remove however many frames from my brood chamber that the nuc will have, and I'd remove those frames from the center. So if you'll be getting a nuc with 4 frames, for example, I'd remove 4 frames from the center of the brood chamber. Then I'd place the 4 frames from the nuc into the space created in the center of the chamber.

And when transferring the frames from the nuc, I'd be sure to keep the frames arranged in the same order as they were in the nuc. So the frames that were next to each other in the nuc will still be next to each other in your new hive.

As the nuc gains strength, it will expand its brood nest into the empty frames on either side of the original nuc frames.

I wouldn't worry about adding another super or brood chamber until the bees have brood and/or honey in most of the frames of the first box. So for awhile, you'll just have a single-story hive. There's no need to add more room until the bees are close to needing it.

Since the only purpose of an excluder is to prevent the presence of brood in a super, there's no reason at all to add an excluder unless you're adding a super from which you expect to harvest honey.

(Many beekeepers don't like to use excluders at all, believing that they reduce the amount of honey the bees will store.)

If you do decide to add an excluder at some point, it should go between the top chamber of the brood nest and the first honey super.

Hope I've answered all your questions; if not, feel free to follow up.

Good luck!