# So, do I try my luck?



## Steve in PA (Nov 25, 2011)

I brought a NUC home April 16th. Fed it and babied it until spring flow started. 2-8 frame deeps covered in bees, nectar, honey, pollen. 16 healthy frames and the hive was bearding extensively on warm days. 2 inspections ago I found unfilled swarm cups which I know mean nothing but it prompted me to action.

I made up a queenless nuc of eggs, brood, and honey/nectar with an extra shake of nurse bees on June 1 and moved it to my inlaws. I checked it this past weekend and there are 6 uncapped queen cells with larvae on 2 frames so everything seems to be on schedule for a mated/laying queen around July 4th.

Being that there is 2 frames with cells I've been thinking about making up another NUC with one of the frames. I have 1 frame of nectar/honey in the freezer and think I would just take another brood frame with bees from the 1st hive. I could drop 2 frames of foundation to fill it out. The main hive is still booming as we are in flow right now.

To quote Dirty Harry, "Are you feeling lucky?" I hate to waste the good queen cells once they are capped and know I'll have to feed those nucs to get them ready for winter.


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## Empire (Jan 7, 2016)

You can build another summer nuc, but 2 frame nuts are quite small for summer splits. We usually do 3 frame splits for nucs in the spring and still have to feed some of them.


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## Steve in PA (Nov 25, 2011)

Empire said:


> You can build another summer nuc, but 2 frame nuts are quite small for summer splits. We usually do 3 frame splits for nucs in the spring and still have to feed some of them.


Everything is getting fed going into winter. Sugar is much cheaper than bees. I will assess if the main hive can afford another frame as doing this will already cost two, the frame going into the new nuc and the frame replacing it in the other nuc. That may be pushing it too far.

I dont want to lose nucs but I would be much more upset about losing the main hive.


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## Steve in PA (Nov 25, 2011)

I did it. I made a mating nuc with one frame of the new nuc that had queen cells and some capped brood, a frame of nectar/pollen from the freezer, and a shake of bees from the original hive. Everything looked good and I gave the newest nuc a quart of 1:1 just for my piece of mind. I filled the remainder of both nucs with foundation.

The Nuc with multiple queen cells later on a hot day after stealing a frame









The newest Nuc which is further away so I put a robbing screen and feeder on it. They were still pretty agitated at this point but today are calmed down.


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## Steve in PA (Nov 25, 2011)

It's been like seeing presents under the Christmas tree but not being able to open them with these two Nucs. Looking at the first one from outside I would guess there is a laying queen inside. Lot of activity and bees are bringing in tons of pollen.

Second hive is 45 min away so I haven't observed it enough to have an opinion. They were bringing in nectar and pollen when I checked them last weekend but there isn't as many foragers in that one.

Saturday I'll know for sure.


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## Steve in PA (Nov 25, 2011)

Success! :dance:

The smaller nuc with the screen on it was brought home last night and checked this morning. I didn't see a queen but did see eggs. I didn't want to dig through looking for her or possibly squish her. I closed it up and put on a quart of 1:1.

I'm bringing the other nuc home this evening.


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## Steve in PA (Nov 25, 2011)

The original nuc that the second was split from was already so large that I needed to add a second box. I only needed to pull two frames to see enough to be successful. The queen is a laying machine. This is the next-to-last frame in the box that I moved up to the new box. Even the outside frame had eggs/capped brood on the inside.










I think I will do June 1st splits again next year as well.


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