Natural Beekeeping International Forum

[mefgbee]

I have been offered the chance of a Nuc by someone who I believe keeps their bees in Nationals. I had asked if they could look out for a swarm during the next couple of months and she very generously said that once queen cells started appearing she would take some and make me up a Nuc so I would have my own swarm.

This sounds great to me, but I wonder if there is anything I could do at this stage to make life much easier in terms of getting the bees into my hTBH later on (I posted pictures recently of my hive in the photo gallery: http://www.biobees.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17724).

I presume the nuc I am getting would be frames, so this will involve a chop & crop procedure of some sort. I've read several threads on this, and also watched Phil's video but would rather avoid it if possible!

But is there a better way to proceed, maybe asking her to do something differently , or me providing some top bars or other bits at this stage? I saw somewhere that putting top-bars amongst frames is one way. How does this work? Could I perhaps make a 5 bar nuc box and she could use that somehow?

Thanks

[Dexter's shed]

making your own nuc and giving that to her to house them would be the best plan of action, you then know the bars will fit your hive and when the nuc has built up enough it will be an easy swap over, better for you and much better for the bees

of course, she may want to simple make a nuc by putting a national frame with bees,queen cell etc into a box/nuc, in which case, as your building it yourself you could make it so a standard frame fits it, along with your top bars, then once the nuc is up and running, the bees will have moved onto your top bars, and that frame should only have stores in it.

if you watch this video of mine, at 6 minutes you'll see how the top bar hive takes two standard frames as well

https://youtu.be/li9obrnaRZE

[Barbara]

The Taranov board might be the simplest option for both of you as it creates an artificial swarm which you can then drop into whatever hive you choose.

http://www.honeybeesuite.com/the-great-divide-a-taranov-split/

[mefgbee]

Thanks for the suggestions. I shall investigate further...

I had been wondering about building a small have that would take a few frames at one end, then top bars adjacent to them. Vertical sides at one end, then sloping sides for the remainder. Something like a 1/3 Tanzanian morphing into 2/3 Kenyan TBH! The idea being that hopefully they would progress to the Kenyan side after a few months.