New Nucs

This year I decided to have a go at raising a nucleus to sell to a new beekeeper. In fact because the bees have done so well we have two beautiful 5 frame nuc boxes ready to move on- unfortunately it seems that everyone who wants bees have them so we needed to find them a new home.

 So one nucleus found a new home in the hive we got from Caddon Hives; to help them build up even more we put a frame of capped brood from the other nuc in with them and gave that nuc a new frame of foundation to keep them busy and give them more room.

The frame we moved shows a classic pattern of capped brood , pollen and honey arch - we use wired foundation and this frame shows how the queen has avoided laying in the cells where the wire runs through the wax base.

 The other hives seem to be going ok, the brood halves of the artificial swarms now have new laying queens, these will hopefully build up and be strong enough to store some honey from the late summer( if it comes!) flow. The 3 hives we have from the other half of the artificial swarms - one still has the white queen, but the other two have insisted on requeening and we are waiting to see evidence of their success in raising a new mated queen. Meanwhile we have taken nearly 80 lbs of honey from the early honey flow- some of this honey is now showing signs of granulating but has a fine texture and is delicious.