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Transferring Frames and Queen from Nuc to New Hive

5:20
16:25
13.8K views

At 5:20 in

Honey Bee University: Creative DIY Ideas...Educational Beekeeping tips and tricks

What happens here

The beekeeper gently removes the metal top cover and the wooden inner cover from the crowded 5-frame nuc. He uses a hive tool to carefully loosen and lift each frame. He points out frames full of capped honey, brood (baby bees and larvae), and pollen. He emphasizes moving slowly and gently to avoid squishing bees, which can release alarm pheromones. After locating the queen bee—a larger, distinct individual—on one of the frames, he carefully places that frame into the center of the new, larger 10-frame hive. He then transfers the remaining frames, prioritizing the frames with brood and honey, ensuring the queen is secured in her new 'apartment'.

Goal: The beekeeper carefully transfers frames containing bees, brood, and honey, along with the queen, from the small 5-frame nuc to the larger 10-frame hive.

Tools and materials

  • Frames with Foundation
  • Hive Tool
  • New 10-frame Hive Body

What they say

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tipsy this might get get a little funky here got a move kind of fast okay what I did was I had this on a metal table and the metal table needed to be turned this way in order for the tin frame hive to fit on here now I'm gonna check for stability it seems good for a minute I'm gonna take the cover off it should be purple eyes in other words sticky you'll hear that crunch a little crunchy sound no bees on the top we're going to get rid of that okay and then we're going to take the inner cover off these bees should be fine they shouldn't be very grumpy you should be fairly happy with the situation okay now there are five frames in here and they're absolutely loaded with honey what we want is we want that honey in what's going to be our future top super so I'm going to take those five frames out gently and place them into the new box nice and easy honey bees pick up on movement so if you're moving slow and gentle and easy try not to squish any bees when you squish it be it puts out a pheromone and you can see here that's a healthy frame of bees and they're just in there working there's a little bit of brood in there so we've got honey brood those little wormy looking things in there and then honey super awesome you see a little bit of pollen in there all of what we see here is capped brood and a little bit of honey on the outside edges very very cool yours your queen be right there great old big girl right there that is a queen bee isn't that beautiful we've got her in our new hive now we know we need to move fairly fast once we get our queen bee in her new hive these bees will notice almost immediately that their queen is not present now we're going to take our top box off set it to the side here just out of the way and then we'll pop the next five frames out set them in the bottom here these guys will sense that their queen is not here and they will get irritable at some point that is a successful move these are the bees that remain inside the box we'll take these bees and we'll give the box a nice love tap right over top of the new box like so just like that these bees will smell their Queen in the new box and go right to it it's in the same place that the old box was we'll move these cinder blocks out of the way and they'll have their new home awesome we just doubled their apartment size now it's the warmer months so we'll put a screen top cover on and then we'll put

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