Resource Hive / Double Nuc / Duplex Hive - Something New!

I'm going to try to use a Resource Hive (a.k.a. Double Nuc Hive) to split a hive and overwinter nucs. I decided on this double hive system after reading and watching a lot of Michael Palmer videos. I like the idea of having little brood/comb/honey factories working right along side my larger hives and using these double hives for overwintering smaller colonies.

They are available at other suppliers for around $100-$125.

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Thanks for watching!

[Digger]

Palmers system works fantastically, it's what I have used for the past few years. Here's some very important info however to consider.
1. I don't think he uses the split resource hives to do walkaway splits. He uses queen mating nucs and mating nuc yards. Here's the issue. The split colonies are tricky to manage when they do not have laying queens inserted directly. Queens that go out and mate can too easily get the wrong side and if she goes into the wrong side with a mated queen she's dead. If she goes into the wrong side with an unhatched queen, she kills that queen and you have a messed up split colony. Simply color coding the nucs may not be enough to solve the issues and it's important enough of an issue to not take a chance on. They work fine with each side having a mated and laying queen at the same time. There's another channel that talks about these as well. UoG Honey Bee Research.

I'd encourage you to make sure that you have your info correct on how he uses these resource hives. (I could be mistaken).

2. This is kind of obvious but worth stressing anyway. The 4 frame split nuc colonies are even more desperate for enough resources to over winter. They WILL NOT make it on only four frames and eight frames probably won't be enough for you either in your climate. They will make it to about March and starve. You'll have to pay special attention to stores which means managing heavy numbers of workers and extra effort to supply feed and forage. This involves closer monitoring and advanced planning, more so than standard tens.

It's a good system and it's fairly simple once the gears all mesh but as with everything in bee keeping, a small wrong move can have long lasting and fatal impacts and recovery times to fix. I'd suggest checking out the advice I gave completely and if you find it correct, adopting mating or single nucs for your queen rearing and use the resource hives with mated queens only.

[mikeries]

In the last few days I've made up 12 new colonies in queen castles. Today...this morning I was working on one when another swarmed right in front of me. Landed in the lowest branch of an enormous oak tree. Easy peasy. Went into the hive that'd swarmed and harvested a few cells. Even gave a frame with a couple capped cells to my helper. He got the bee swarm too.
Share the wealth.

[mikeries]

Am very very glad to see that you've discovered duplex colonies. Now the queen castle is next. Let me take the time to share my story. I found the Michael Palmer series of bee videos. The first nuc I bought, an 8-frame, came out of a duplex hive exactly like yours only white. I decided to try the same thing myself. You have to be patient and wait for the swarm cells. Once you find you have 5 or 6 frames with cells on them you'll want the queen castle. It's fun and easy to make splits with queen cells on them. They don't always mate but most of the time they do. Call these "next years bees" because that is exactly what they are. Running them as resource colonies doesn't always work the way you planned. Keep flexible and you will thrive. I have 6 duplex hives and 6 queen castles along with various size nuc boxes.
Even have little nuc-size supers for when they need space for honey. It gets really fun and I am so glad you chose to follow Michael's path. He really knows his bees. You're going to end up with a large pile of equipment. That's just part of the game. Good luck.

[George-nxlo]

Michael Palmer is amazing, also teaches how dangerous it is for You or FAMILY not to get stung regularly to avoid 1 in 10 chance of getting deadly allergic reaction

[danieljohnson]

Good Luck! Looks like everything is going great for your bees! I really enjoy watching your videos. Thanks for sharing your learning and knowledge with us.

[retusaforce]

I'm glad you are expanding...love your vids! I went from three hives this spring to twelve in less than three weeks with 18 swarm traps placed around the neighborhood. One swarm so large I had to use two 10 frame Lang boxes. Put out some bees with survivor genes from the wild.

[jonhaskell]

Jim, I'd seen your recent ( spring 2021) bee loss video.
This winter took me out as well.
I've used these in the past on a limited basis. This year, as I rebuild, I'm shooting to have one double 4/4 resource hive on each hive stand with the other "three" standard hive setups.
"In a perfect world", that will give me 40% to use to "boost" the other three hives on that same stand.
For overwinter, I'm contemplating a modified Binnie style double screen bottom board, and relocating the resource hives atop a strong, well resourced, hive that's right there.

[chickentimefuntime]

Excited for the summer to see how this goes for you. I wish you well. If things go well for me next summer I may be a new beekeeper myself

[MrGladiator]

Thanks for making your videos. You give an introduction, objectives, how to achieve them etc. You make good videos

[bigleo]

Happy splitting. I was able to raise a couple of queens via splits so I get it. Haven't needed to buy bees this year and that was my goal.

[Magnetul]

Congratulations on the expansion! I hope everything goes well!

[gds]

This is going to work. I use the same setup here in Norway (same climate as your place), except I keep the setup throughout summer. Putting on supers when the bees need it. You will get a ton of honey this way. There is one problem with your plan and that is when you want to split the nucs. You will need a second bee yard. If not the bees will fly to the old place and find nothing. When I split a hive like this I lift 4 frames of brood from each nuc box up to a new 8 frame box above the queen excluder. 2 new frames are put into the nucs together with 2 honey frames. I leave this setup until all the brood above the queen excluder is capped, then I move the nucs to a new place in the bee yard, put a new bottom board on the old spot, place the box with the capped brood on the bottom board and then the supers. If you have a queen cell you can put it together with the brood cells, or you can take a frame of eggs from the queen you want to create a new queen from and put it in the top super box (easier to check the progress of creating the queen). If you want many queens you can put in a list of queen cups with larva instead. This is a very easy way of creating a lot of queens. The forage bees from the nucs will fly back to the old place (new hive) so this hive will have plenty of bees to raise new queens. The nucs will only have brood, newborn and worker bees left and need the frames with honey until they have foraging bees again.

[pluki]

Great idea! I've been watching Michael Palmer for some time now and I'm also fascinated by his double nuc system.

BTW: i remember from M.Palmer's videos that he specifcally mentions using wrap ups (of dark paper) ONLY for solar gains and NOT for insulation. If i might: i think last winter it didn't do good to your bees that you wrapped them so thick with full insulation. That may seem like a paradox but it's better for bees not to have too warm during winter. Otherwise queens keep laying longer than they should = bees use resources and energy during late fall / winter for raising brood. That brood has no chance for proper clensing flight during winter and it's counterproducitve. That might have been the cause for fewer bees in spring or worn down bees.
I keep my fingers crossed for your new doble nucs! Great job! :)
Greetings from sunny Poland :)

[clkersting]

I've been watching from the start as a new beekeeper myself. I wanted to say you should still try your Flow Hive system, at least one frame. Last year (year 2) I had a bummer harvest from the Flow Hive. You have some good hives this year, I think they'll take to it.

[wess]

Hi, got to love Your passion about beekeeping.
Nucs are the key to sustainability for sure.
My strategy is to use as less types of equipment as possible to be more efficient. I've got 8 nucs and 4 hohey hives. The nucs provide me with extra brood to boost honey hives before the flow, extra queens whenever I need them, etc. I pull them all in a row in autumn to share heat, so I don't even have to make double nuc hives (there's no such thing to buy In Latvia), nucs are easier to make anyways.

[jeffreys]

Vino Farms, Great Idea, yes it works if done without over stretching your resources. I wish you the best with this project, but please be careful not to weaken your donor hives. Five strong hives always trump 10 weak ones. Good luck and I wish you great success, looking forward to seeing the outcome. Remember the bee's know best, you can make suggestions but in the long run they will do what they need.

[rtenpin]

Glad to see you doing this Jim!
I have really enjoyed having nucs in my apiary to steal resources from when needed. I am using stand-alone nucs, but as you know, my climate down here is a bit different. That being said, I overwintered 5, single-story nucs successfully this past winter. This season my resource nucs have proved invaluable as I have needed to replace queens a few times because of a few missed swarms.
Great video!

[BasicTriGuy]

Excited to see how this works! Splits are one of the most interesting things to me, and I'm really interested to see this method in action.

Love what you do sir! Would love to swing by and check it out sometime.

[Wulferious]

I really think that I like this! Sounds good and logical, and I look forward to your results. I have a feeling you have a booming year coming.

[MathijsHerremans]

I wish you all the luck! I hope you have a good bee season this year.