Stationary Langstroth nuc with frames

01 · WHAT IT IS FOR

Three different jobs

The first is making splits: brood frames and bees come out of a strong hive and go in here, with a queen or a queen cell. The second is housing a captured swarm and giving it a sensibly sized home while it gets going.

And the third, the one nobody mentions: keeping a populated nuc in reserve. That is what saves the season when a hive turns queenless at the worst possible moment.

02 · WHY FIVE FRAMES

Small volume, heat kept in

A newly formed colony has few bees and cannot climate-control a big box. In five frames it keeps the nest warm without exhausting itself, and the brood gets ahead far sooner than in a half-empty full body.

That same small volume is its limit: once the five frames are occupied you have to move them across to a hive. It takes no super, so if you let it run on, it swarms.

03 · THE FRAME IS THE USUAL ONE

Langstroth, no adapting

It carries five straight wired Langstroth frames already assembled, so all that is left is fitting the foundation. And since it is the same frame as in your apiary, frames move back and forth between nuc and hives with no workaround.

The floor is solid wood and the roof is galvanised steel, 105 mm, which stands up to the sun and rain of a box that usually lives outdoors.

04 · IN THE APIARY

Shade and a reduced entrance

A nuc heats up far faster than a hive: find it shade in summer and do not leave it in full sun all day. And keep the entrance reduced while the population is small — a colony with few bees cannot defend a wide entrance, and robbing goes straight for these boxes.

Before populating it, give it outside protection — water-based paint or oil — and let it air. Nothing is painted inside.

05 · BEFORE YOU BUY

It is the complete box, without bees: