START A NEW HIVE

STARTING YOUR NEW HIVE

Updated 5/29/25

STARTING YOUR NEW HIVE

Your NUC has a mated queen, bees and brood in all stages including open brood (eggs and larvae). We installed the queen at least 3 weeks prior to your pick-up date. This ensures that you have a strong, healthy queen with a good laying pattern. All the brood in the nuc is from your new queen. There will also be some stores and some drawn out comb. Since your queen is already established, your new hive box will fill up in no time.

FEEDING: It is important to feed your nuc now. We recommend a 1:1 sugar syrup ratio to stimulate brood production. Feed sugar syrup until your comb is drawn or there is a good nectar flow. You don’t want them to store any sugar syrup in the honey super so monitor for nectar flow as the comb gets drawn after you add your honey super. Continue to monitor stores and feed as necessary throughout the year. Check for dearth (no pollen or nectar) times in your area.

INSTALLING YOUR NUC:

Keep your nuc box of bees cool or warm as the weather shifts, until they are transferred into your permanent hive. Move them into their new hive as soon as possible when the weather is over 50 degrees. If you are unable to transfer them right away, put the nuc box next to or on top of the permanent hive or in the place your hive will be. Slide the entrance cover up on the front allowing the bees to come and go and transfer them as soon as possible. ProNuc entrance slides up and locks into place. EZ nuc entrance tab will lift up, fold back and slide into front notch to form a box where they can go in and out the sides.

Use smoke to keep the bees calm when transferring.

1. Make sure you have a deep hive body, 5 frames, an entrance reducer, a feeder (either a frame feeder, bucket, jar, top feeder, etc), sugar syrup, smoker, hive tool and any protective equipment you are comfortable with.

2. Remove all the frames and frame feeder if using, from your permanent hive and set aside. Put your entrance reducer in place. Leave the reducer on for several weeks until your hive builds up the population-use the large opening if it is warm out.

3. Start with the frames on the outside of the nuc box and place in your hive in the same order they are currently, into the very center of your hive. Be very gentle as you pull the frames out to not roll or squish any bees. Go slow and easy.

4. Once all the nuc frames are in your box, place your other frames (5 if you are feeding externally or 4 if you have a frame feeder) and gently shake any bees remaining in the nuc box into the hive. Set the empty box next to or on top of the hive so stray bees find their way home.

5. Place sugar syrup in the feeder. We use a piece of plastic screen inside the frame feeder or a stick to give them something to climb on so they do not drown.

6. Place lid on hive. If hives will get wind, you may want to put a weight like a brick on top. Since the queen is established, you can do a thorough inspection, looking for eggs, larvae, capped brood and your queen at any time when the weather is close to 60 or over.

ADDING BOXES: When all the comb is drawn out in your deep box and 80% of those frames have been filled with bees, brood and food, put on another box. If you leave empty foundation and add another box, they will not work that lower foundation. You can rotate frames from the top to bottom or bottom to top, if needed, if you are adding another deep. Do not give them too much space too soon. If you want to try for honey, add a honey super instead of another deep box. For a larger hive, add a deep box or a super (Western) for your second brood chamber. Sometimes the bees do not want to go up into the second box, especially if it is only foundation. When adding a deep with little comb or foundation only, you can pull a couple of brood frames up into center to draw the bees up. Make sure there is enough bee coverage to cover that brood. When adding a honey super with little comb or foundation only, you can forgo the queen excluder at first and let the queen lay brood in it to to encourage them to make comb for her to lay in. When they are comfortable going above and are using it to make wax, store food and/or she is laying in it, you can put the queen excluder on. If there is brood up there, that will hatch and then they will store honey in the comb.

As they make comb in the middle, move those frames to the outside and move the empty frames to the middle. They work from the inside so you can flip frames around if they are only working one side of the frame. You can checkerboard empty foundation and comb frames so the new comb stays flat and even. If you have any clean beeswax, it helps to rub or paint a thin layer on your empty foundation to encourage them to make wax on that frame.

TREATMENTS: Your bees have been mite treated prior to you receiving them. We also recommend another mite treatment in the next few weeks. We used Amitraz, so Apiguard would be a good choice. Do another treatment in August and at least one more time in September/October. Do NOT use either one of these with honey supers on. Oxalic acid is another good choice for fall/winter. Check mite counts regularly to see if you need to treat at any other times. This is important to keep loads low.

Randy Oliver has great info and a data sheet to use for figuring out mite loads. You may also need to treat for other issues so it’s a good idea to do some research. We follow Kamon Reynolds and Bob Binnie for general beekeeping advice. A local beekeeping club is a great resource and our Tri-Cities group is Mid-Columbia Beekeepers Association (tricitybees.org). If you have any questions, feel free to give us a call, text (509) 947-6384 or email us here: mail@beeblesst.com.

Thank you for your support and hoping you have a blessed year! Scott, Brandon & Kena