Re: four frame nucs

Back in 1982 I worked one season for Shannon Wooten, up in Redding, CA. He has a very large operation selling bees. Their basic nuc (then, don't know about now) was raised in a divided hive which had four standard frames on either side of a thin board. This was not a ten frame hive, but slightly narrower so that the spacing was correct for for frames on either side. The nucs were started with a frame of brood and a frame of honey. Until the thing began to grow, no other frames were added. Then one frame of foundation was added at a time until it grew into a real four framer. Then -- the unit could be supered over an excluder and run as a two queen honey producing unit as long as both queens were tolerated. Myself, I built a bunch of ten frame boxes and divided them like this. There's a little too much space, but I was never that fussy. My friend Mike Johnston has some where he runs five frames on one side and four on the other and has supers that are similarly divided. He keeps colonies in these units year round. I find the arrangement difficult but to each his own. Main thing is, bees sometimes need less space to defend.

PLB

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