Making nucleus hives or “nucs” is a good way to expand your apiary. This involves removing and re-hiving 3 or 4 frames of bees, capped larvae, newly laid eggs, honey, and pollen from a healthy, established hive and letting the bees use this to make a new queen and to establish a new hive. This article is an update of my 2014 explanation of how to do this. 

Timing

The absolute best time to start a new hive is at the beginning of the spring nectar flow, which is just about now in Middle Tennessee.

​Healthy hives naturally cast off swarms in the Spring and will begin doing this soon. Making nucs allows the bees to meet their need to swarm, but allows you to choose their new home. Honeybees need an abundance of nectar to make the wax needed to establish their new hive. They can only make this much wax in the spring when the flowers are in bloom and the nectar is flowing. In my area, the nectar flow occurs traditionally from mid-April to mid-June. But in the past few years, the season has started by the end of March. I have already started making nucs this year.

In making a nuc, essentially you are creating a controlled swarm--but without the queen. So along with taking bees for the new hive, you must ensure that you take newly laid, unhatched eggs, less than 3-days old. These look like little grains of rice in the bottom of the cell. 

Once in the new hive, the bees will discover that they have no queen and will go to work making one. To do this, they will choose one or more of these unhatched eggs and create a queen cells around them. When these hatch, the bees will feed them only royal jelly and thus develop the new queens. Waiting for the nectar flow is important not only because the bees will have access to lots of nectar and pollen for food and wax building, but also because plenty of drones will be available this time of year for the newly hatched queens to mate with.

This timing is also important because bees from your bigger, more established hives will be busy gathering nectar and pollen from nature’s abundance and less likely to rob out the smaller nucs.

My nuc boxes are regular-size deep hives that I have sawn in half and rebuilt (see photos).

​ But you can put your frames in the middle of a regular deep hive body or if you use all medium hive bodies, in one of those. Just put the nuc frames in the center of the box and fill in with empty frames or drawn comb if you have it. 

The hive you take the nuc from must be healthy with lots of bees and a good laying queen. A healthy hive will have a good solid brood pattern (not spotty) and by this time should have lots of eggs, larvae, and capped brood. Drones should also be present by this time of year.

Feeding

For those who follow my blog, you know I don’t feed my bees anything but honey. Since I’ve been doing this for a number of years, I’ve learned to freeze frames of honey for making nucs or for emergency winter food. I also usually have jars of crystallized honey left from the prior year that I can use for feed. You may not have that luxury if you are just starting out. In this case, you may have to make some sugar syrup as starter feed. However, by waiting for the nectar flow to create your nucs, you should only have to feed them once. Feeding them more than that during the nectar flow can be counterproductive. You want them to learn to gather their own nutritious nectar and pollen, not to be dependent on you, poorly nourished, and making honey out of sugar water. I have had nucs do very well during the nectar flow with no feeding at all and this is an option for you too.

If you do make sugar syrup, mix one-half sugar and one-half water, boil to kill any pathogens, and then let it cool before feeding. Do not just pour the syrup into a container because the bees will drown in it. You can use a small jar. Choose one that will fit inside your top feeder box (see photo). Fill it, punch a few small holes in the lid and place it upside down over the hole in the inner cover, inside your feeder box. Test it first to make sure your holes aren’t too big and the syrup doesn’t pour out.

Patience

Now you wait--and hope! As long as you see bees coming and going, stay out of the boxes for a month! It will take 14 days for the queen to hatch and up to another week for her to mate. In the last week, she will have begun laying eggs. If you check too soon, you may accidentally destroy a queen cell or you may not see her because she may be hidden among the bees (an unmated queen is easy to miss) or is out on her mating flight. When you see new eggs and larvae, you’ll know things have worked out. If things didn’t work out, you still have another month of the nectar flow to try again. On average, this method works to establish a new hive 70% of the time.

Happy nuc making!

​Photo: notice the melted spot on the top of the hive? Means the bees are in there, alive and well, producing heat, and making that melted spot! Hope springs eternal! Rapping your knuckles on the side of the hive with an ear against the cold woodenware will produce a lively roar!)

How are your bees? Hate that question these days. This beekeeper is holding on by her fingernails, and while hopeful, also knows any season could be her last.

The bees are in trouble.

That said, I look forward to February here in Middle Tennessee--the beginning of a new year of bee management. February may well be the most important month in a beekeeper's year these days. Why? In February, the maple and elm trees begin to produce pollen. In February, the bees begin to collect this tree pollen because the queen resumes laying eggs for new bees and the new bee larvae need this protein to survive. In February, we usually have a spat of days in which the weather hovers around 70 degrees and beekeepers can look in on their bees. In February, bees are already preparing to swarm come spring, so beekeepers need to be thinking about how to control these swarms so that they get to keep their bees. Thus, the importance of February hive management.

I begin February preparations in January. These days I am busy cleaning up old frames, scraping and burning old wax, and rewiring frames to swap out for old ones. I need to have my equipment ready for the February hive inspection.

I am old school, and my hive configuration going into winter is 2 deep boxes, topped by one shallow of honey. (I know that the trend now is to run all mediums and that's cool. Principles will still apply.) Usually the bees have all moved up from the bottom deep hive into the top deep by late winter. If the bottom hive is empty during my February inspection, I reverse them--so that the bottom deep contains the cluster of bees and the top deep is empty. This gives the bees room to work and move up as the season progresses.

Word of caution: If the bees have not moved up into the second deep (or medium) but the cluster is situated between the two boxes--leave them be. Don't break up the cluster. Wait a bit.

Another critical part of February management is to break up the honey dome, if you have one. I leave a shallow of honey on top of the two deeps every fall. If this shallow is still full of honey at the end of winter, it will make the bees think that they are congested and need more room--they will prepare to swarm. So I will "checkerboard" this honey dome--pull out every other full frame of honey and insert an empty one. The bees think they have room to fill and work to do. The extra frames of honey can be frozen to feed back to new hives in the spring.

These hive manipulations will help your bees have more room to work and will keep them at home longer, BUT a healthy, strong hive is meant to swarm--it's how bees perpetuate themselves. It's a good thing and means you have healthy bees and hives if they want to swarm. BUT of course, we want to keep those bees at home and provide them the best chance of survival so, think ahead. 

When the spring flow of nectar begins be prepared to artificially "swarm" your hives so that you can keep your bees and even increase your apiary.

To come--creating nucleus hives when the spring nectar flow begins.

This blog post was written by Christy Erickson, a guest blogger who has written a great post. Thanks, Chirsty!

Bees may seem like a nuisance to some individuals in the spring and summer, especially to families with young children who are afraid of being stung while they play outside. However, bees play an essential role in our country’s food production, and unfortunately, they’re dying off at an alarming rate. 
Many of the foods we enjoy, such as blueberries, cherries, pumpkins, and apples, are made available to us because of bees. The critical role they play in pollination--in the case of cherries and blueberries, almost 90% of their survival rate depends on bees--cannot be ignored, and it’s difficult to fathom what the world’s crop system would become without them. Even if we could manage to use manpower to cross-pollinate to save our crops--and scientists aren’t sure we could if the bee population were to die out in the next few years--the process would be extremely expensive and would drive up the cost of fruits and vegetables to an unsustainable rate. That’s why it’s imperative that we do everything we can to stop the bee population from dwindling any more than it already has; fortunately, there are several things you can do at home to help out. Here are a few of the best. 
Plant a garden 
Even if you’ve never considered yourself to be someone with a green thumb, you can start a small garden in your backyard that will be beneficial for a multitude of reasons. If you’re a city dweller, no problem; simply create a small box garden that will fit on your balcony or patio. Some great things to plant that will draw the bees and keep them fed include lilacs, wisteria, sunflowers, lavender, and several herbs such as sage, oregano, and rosemary. If you have the room, consider adding pumpkins, squash, and tomatoes. 
Some of the biggest considerations when starting a garden for the bees include making sure you don’t use chemicals on the plants and planting a good amount of the same type of plant together; bees enjoy having several blooms to choose from. For more information on how to start the perfect garden at home, read on here. 
www.redfin.com/blog/2016/04/how-to-start-your-own-urban-garden.html

Don’t be afraid of those weeds 
It can be easy to get caught up in keeping your lawn perfectly manicured, especially if your neighbors are always the first ones to mow every week. Don’t be afraid of those weeds, however; clover and dandelions are wonderful for bees and will give them a great place to forage, especially if your neighborhood doesn’t keep them around. 
Avoid pesticides 
Neonicotinoid pesticides are the most commonly used insecticide, and yet it is slowly killing the bees. Dissolving in water, it makes its way into waterways via agricultural runoff, meaning flowers that weren’t directly treated, as well as the unsuspecting bee visitors, are at risk. Pesticides are not only lowering bee survival rates, but negatively impacting their natural defense systems, causing widespread disease. 
Knowing this, what are your alternatives in order to keep a healthy, thriving garden? Although it sounds simple, the key to a pest-free garden is to prevent them from coming in the first place. Pull out weak plants, minimize insect habitats by consistently clearing debris and weeds, and interplant and rotate crops to avoid reinfestation and spreading. In addition, nature has its own natural defense against harmful insects. The ladybug and praying mantis are just two of the many garden heroes, consuming known garden pests without causing any harm of their own. 
Support the beekeepers 
A great way to keep the bee population going is to talk to local beekeepers and support their businesses. Go to the farmer’s market on Saturday and find out more about what they do. Buying raw, local honey not only helps keep these hardworking beekeepers in business, it can be beneficial to you as well: eating local honey has been shown to help with allergies. 
Adopt a hive 
Do a bit of research to see if any local beekeepers offer an “adoption” program. This allows a regular citizen like yourself to sponsor a hive for an annual fee, which supports the owners and gives you the chance to help the cause without having to don a head-to-toe protective suit. Some beekeepers might even throw in some perks for your money, such as jars of honey. 
It’s estimated that bees are responsible for one out of every three bites of food we eat in the U.S., making them an integral part of our lives. It’s important to do what we can to help them thrive, and to spread the word about how others might do the same. Talk to your family about how you can support the bee population by planting a garden, advocating against the use of pesticides, or adopting your own hive. Share information with others in your neighborhood and start making a difference.