A nuc I was attempting to save was wiped out by raiding bees while I was at work. Happened very fast.
My only survivors are the queen and 5 workers.
I'd like to try and save them for spring splits.
My question is, what size of container should I keep them in and amount of comb and what should I feed? There is some wax areas left on their old frames, but not any honey. I can bring indoor if necessary.
I have 2 other healthy hives, but I'm not crazy about taking anything from them so close to winter.
They will not make it through the winter unless you can give them a lot more bees and stores from some other hive.
yep
:( I was thinking a baby nuc's but you'd still need to add bees. feed and feed
how is the weather up there? how cold do your winters get. yes not much time left to save them then.
what do ya have to loose a small queen and some time some sugar
just know you may loose. the plus is you may hit the jackpot.
reduce the entrance to less than an inch first. they were robed by what honeys or wasps?
insulate this nuc and after the weather turns place on top of another hive no insulation between
may have to add a dummy nuc to fill the space and insulate all after.
if it was wasps try this small can cat food like tuna couple of drops flea and tick (front-line) or similar place high cover with something like a bird cage and move away from your colonies. No need to draw yellow jacket's to the honeys
keeps kids and cats out it. this the honeys wont touch this.
do like mike says add a frame or two of bees eggs and brood. more bees first.
A queen and 5 workers eh? That could be a problem, especially if the workers are summer bees ;)
On a more serious note, I have attempted to winter mating nucs with 4 half medium frames and they survived many dips down to 0F before finally freezing out in late Jan. No matter what, you need more bees though! My mating nucs had 500 to 700 bees (yes I counted them after they froze). I don't know what the minimum number of bees you could possibly get away with, but the smaller the number of workers, the more babying they need. With electric heating ,a top vent, honey, pollen, and comb to lay in, I would bet something on the order of 200 to 300 bees could make it.
I only insulted my baby nucs in my wintering experiment so the only heat source to keep them from freezing was themselves. With electric heat, I think my baby nucs would have made it. They looked fantastic just before getting frozen to death at 0F.
ARE you sure your two other hives are healthy???-thats where your focus needs to be
the queen can be caged and introduced to one of the other hives that you think is healthy-
if they are not queen right-the queen is your only resources from the nuc-so concentrate on
the other two hives-if one needs a queen you are in good shape you have one-sometimes at
this time of the year yellow jackets-or wasps invade weak hives to kill brood or the queen
for protein--if they decimated your small nuc they may have intruded on one of the other hives
so your queen is the only resource that can save further dome--check them out-- if all is well
then you are further ahead to count the blessing of the to hives -rather than risk there future-
i hope you did a mite treatment so you can bring the two sound hives through winter--should
have been done by now --RDY-B