How to Make Nucleus Honey bee Colony?

After the winter comes spring, and the most difficult task for all the beekeepers to keep the beehives from swarming. The best way to prevent swarming is by making nucleus honey bee colony. And in this article, we shall learn how to make a nucleus honey bee colony.

Time the Nucleus Splitting

The very first step you need to do before making the nucleus honey bee hives is to check if the hive is ready to split.

You can check that by getting a feel of the strength and health of the hive.

Some of the signs are –

o    All of the hive bodies are filled

o    Bees start building comb between the frames for overflowing nectar

o    Larvae and drone brood are present

o    Queen cells are present, and queen cups are filled with eggs

o    Hives with at least 10 frames for eggs and brood.

If you find an egg in the cups or queen cells, the hives are about to swarm in a few days. So, this is the clear indication that it is high time for splitting the hive.

Set Up the Equipment for Splitting

Gather all the necessary equipment for splitting the colony before starting with the procedure. You shall need the hive box, five empty frames, bottom board, cover, and the entrance reducer. You can either go with a single nucleus box with 5 frames or double nucleus box with 10 frames. While making the nucleus hive, make sure that ants stay far away from it. As these crawling insects can take out the nucleus in a single day.

Choose Proper Frames for Splitting

The first step here is to find the queen and make sure that she does not accidentally end up in the nucleus hive you are making. Now, look for two brood frames that are overflowing with pollen and honey. Place these two frames on opposite sides of the nucleus.

Get A Queen for the Nucleus Hives

Next step is to form a bee population and setting right frames depending on how the hive chooses the queen.

There are three ways of doing this –

1.    The quickest way is to let the nucleus make its own queen. The advantage of this system is that the queen takes only a few weeks from being a larva to laying eggs. The downside is that it may take a few tries before choosing their own queen.

2.    Another method is to bring in a queen cell in the nucleus box. But before bringing in the queen cell, make sure that the hive themselves didn’t start building a cell for their new queen.

3.    The final method is to introduce a young mated queen to the nucleus hive. You can find the queen from queen suppliers all around the year.

After a few days, make sure to revisit and confirm that your hive has accepted the new queen.

Finish the Splitting Process

 Now that you have set up the nucleus hives, the next thing you will need is adult foraging bees for thriving. You can do this by placing the nucleus hive at the mother hive location. This is a bit difficult to achieve but is the most successful way.