Colorado–1 Flow Hive
Hello,
My hive swarmed last fall. I am left with about 14 fully capped frames and I have a nuc arriving the end of April and am requesting input on how to use the capped frames in the soon-to-be establishing hive.
Thanks Eric
It will depend on what your nucleus has already. If it has 2 frames of brood, 2 frames of food and one empty frame (common way to sell them), I would use the frames capped honey to fill the rest of a hive box. I would put the honey at the outer edges of the box, and put the nucleus frames in the middle. I would keep the rest of the frames of capped honey in storage, because you don’t want to give a small nucleus too much space to heat and defend.
If the nucleus is 3 frames of brood and 2 frames of honey (that would be very generous of the selling beekeeper), I would give them one or two empty frames, so that the queen has space to lay, and fill the rest of the box with the frames of honey.
Either way, you will need to keep an eye on them, and maybe even switch out a frame of honey for an empty frame if the queen is running out of space. Once the first box is full of bees (strong population), you can add another box.
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thanks for the tips. I’ll employ this strategy
Eric
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