The Buzz Newsletter

April 2004

 

 

Page 3

Making Nukes for Increase or to Sell
By The Old Man

To make up nukes which is a small hive of bees, normally three to five frames of bees with brood and queen that will grow into a full strength hive by the time the honey flow begins. To make up nukes you need good strong colonies with extra brood and bees in early April to early May. You have to plan on making nukes as early as January or February as you need to order the Queens you will need unless you have expertise enough to raise your own queens to use in making nukes. Lets assume you have ordered the queens and you requested that they arrive about April 15. To have plenty of bees available in your hives for making the divides for the nukes, I recommend that you start feeding either a one part sugar to one part water syrup or fructose corn syrup to your over wintered hives the first of March in order to stimulate the queen to start laying more eggs to have plenty of bees for the divides. The next thing you want to do is to go out to your hives about the tenth of April and using queen excluders you want to separate the two deep hive bodies on your hives. Divide the frames of honey and put at least 2 or 3 full frames of honey in the box that is going on the top of the hive. Place 3 to four frames of brood in all stages from eggs to sealed brood in the top box. Now place the rest of the honey and the rest of the brood in the lower box making sure that there are at least 3 frames of brood in the bottom box along with the queen if you can find her. Now place the queen excluder on the bottom box and put the top box on above the queen excluder. If you couldn’t find the queen, don’t worry as you can go back in four days and check the top box for eggs. If you find eggs, just switch the boxes as the queen is going to be in the box where you find eggs. When the queens that you ordered in January arrive on the 15th of April, you go back out to the bee yard and using a inner cover or a piece of ¼ inch plywood the same size as the hive body with 3/8 inch strips of wood making a rim all around the plywood except for a 2 inch opening and place this on top of the bottom hive body with the opening to the rear. Now place the top box of brood and bees on the ¼ inch plywood. Put a new queen on top of the top box after removing the cork from the candy end of the queen cage and place the inner cover and lid on the hive. The foraging field bees will go out to gather nectar and return to the front of the hive. By the second day you will have mostly young bees in the top box and this helps to get good queen acceptance. When I do this if I am a little short of brood I always short the bottom box as that queen is already laying and with the field force returning to the bottom box they will quickly build up to full strength. The new queen will have to get released and then start laying. This will take 5 to 10 days normally. The nuke on top will get heat from the old colony on the bottom and this will help it to build up to full strength by the honey flow in late May or early June. You can check this nuke the first of May and see that the queen was accepted and is laying good and sell the nuke or use it to make increase in your hive or use it as a two queen hive. Now there is another topic for another time. Good luck and remember we all had to crawl before we could walk.

 

New Look for the New Honey Season:
The Buzz and IHPA Website

Hello IHPA members! My name is Alex Ebert. Starting with this April issue of The Buzz, I have become the new editor. You may have noticed that some things in The Buzz have changed. What has not changed of course is its purpose, to keep you and your fellow beekeepers up to date on the latest “buzz” concerning bees. To further support this initiative, there is now an
IHPA Website at www.ABuzzAboutBees.com

I would like to say I was very excited and encouraged by the number of articles that were submitted this month. My hope is that as a member of the IHPA you may find yourself excited about the upcoming honey season and be encouraged to submit an article of your own!
Not a member of IHPA yet? Not a problem.
IHPA membership is only $10 annually and includes a complimentary member subscription to The Buzz!

Contact : Gordon Powell, IHPA Treasurer
4012 54th St.
Des Moines, IA 50310

Of course every year there is some necessary housekeeping to be done to prepare for the year.
Such as follows…

Please send all submissions for The Buzz to Alex Ebert at TheBuzz@ABuzzAboutBees.com by the 15th of each month. Or items can be mailed to The Buzz, c/o Phil Ebert, 14808 S 102nd Ave E, Lynnville, IA 50153

Here’s to a great year in honey, and may we all have something to buzz about in the end!

Alex W. Ebert