Dave Cushman wrote:
>This is a totally erroneous example, 3 frames is not a colony

Correct, of course. Langstroth coined the term "nucleus" -- shortened
to nuc -- to refer to a minimum amount of bees that can be used to
begin a new colony. A nuc does everything in its power to reach the
critical mass that the colony needs to survive. Just what size that is
was studied at length by Tom Seeley and described in his paper:

> The natural honey bee nest was studied in detail to better understand the honey bee's natural living conditions. To describe the nest site we made external observations on 39 nests in hollow trees. We collected and dissected 21 of these tree nests to describe the nest architecture. Nest cavities are vertically elongate and approximately cylindrical. Most are 30 to 60 liters in volume (median volume = 45 liters*) and at the base of trees.

> We studied in detail only nests in hollow trees. Because we considered nests in man-made structures as unnatural and open air nests as atypical, we did not examine these nests in detail. We encountered nests in many man-made and two other natural nest sites besides tree cavities. Man-made sites included walls of buildings, chimneys, birdhouses, a barrel, an ironstove, an overturned armchair, and wooden boxes. Two other natural sites were a cave and open tree branches.

* Believe it or not, this is the size of the Langstroth hive! An
ordinary hive body set on a bottom board has a capacity of about 2730
cubic inches or 45 liters. Seeley went on to use this fact in building
bait hives. He simply used ordinary hive bodies with plywood nailed on
top and bottom and a hole bored in the end.

SEE:

THE NEST OF THE HONEY BEE
By T. D. SEELEY and R. A. MORSE
lnsectes Sociaux, Paris.
1976. Tome 23

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