I have had several questions about how the nucs are pulled and what equipment is necessary to pick up the nucs.

Here is the description that I send out to those inquiries:

Our nucs are 5 frame nucs. We place those five frames the night before into a travel nuc box and close the entrance hole with a plug after dark. We look at each frame. We place the queen in the travel nuc box first. At that point the rest of the frames are placed in the order they need to be into the travel box.

What we are looking for in a nuc that is ready to go to its new home:

• • Nice looking queen with a great brood pattern.

• • 1 frame of capped brood or brood being capped

• • 1 frame of larva

• • 1 frame of eggs

• • 1 more frame of brood. It will have capped brood, larva, or eggs.

• 1 frame that the bees are working on.
  • • Most of the time this is where your honey, nectar, and pollen is.
  • • A lot of our nucs have a small amount of brood on this frame also.
  • One side of this frame can have brood and the other side they are drawing out and putting nectar in the comb.

We do not worry about the bees having large quantities of honey in a nuc. What we look for is a large quantity of brood. We suggest that the beekeeper feed  the nuc until the bees have pulled 2 deep brood boxes of comb or 3 medium boxes of comb. This will prep the bees for a healthy hive.

Travel nuc box makes transportation of the bees easy to handle. We use the Pro-Nuc plastic nuc boxes as a travel nuc box valued at $19.95.  Since the bees are closed in the box, there is no need to bring any extra equipment for their transportation.