How to Create Nucleus Bee Colonies

Nucleus bee colonies provide beekeepers with a method of housing swarms or starting new colonies themselves. The logic behind creating new hives of bees with a new queen comes from the necessity of having a consistent supply of bees and enough colonies to survive the winter, otherwise the beekeeper's profit source will die out. While bee hives will naturally break off into smaller hives and raise a new queen, it is possible to create a new nucleus bee colony through human intervention. The bees naturally acquiesce to this process and thrive.

Things You'll Need

  • Nucleus box
  • Smoker
  • Hive tool
  • Sugar syrup
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Instructions

    • 1

      Place your pre-established hive box next to your nucleus box. Boxes in beekeeping are literally boxes that contain wooden frames that fit snugly into the box one against the other. The wooden frames hold a wire sheet that supports a thin layer of real or plastic honeycomb that the bees construct their colony on. A hive box is larger and contains more frames than a nucleus box.

    • 2

      Spray the entrance to the hive box, also known as a super, with your smoker. This beekeeper's tool pacifies the bees in order to move their frames and prevents them from learning to behave aggressively. Remove the top cover to the super, the inner cover, and the feeder at the top of the box. Spray the tops of the frames with your smoker as well.

    • 3

      Loosen the frames with your hive tool and remove a frame with eggs or small larva and plenty of worker bees. Although not necessary, it helps the budding colony to also remove a frame with honey and pollen and place that in the nucleus box. Fill the nucleus box and the super with empty frames supporting unused honeycomb foundation to fully stuff the boxes, as empty spaces in boxes encourage intrusive wax production. Make sure to leave the queen from the old colony in the super since one of the points of creating a nucleus hive is to stimulate the production of a new queen, which the workers will raise from one of the eggs or larva.

    • 4

      Place a feeder with sugar syrup on top of the nucleus box to help get the new colony started. Replace the feeders, inner covers, and outer covers on both the super and the nucleus box.