Making up a two frame nucleus of bees

Creating a nucleus bee colony using just two frames of bees has several uses during the beekeeping season. Roger Patterson shows how to make up a two frame nucleus, or nuc, and what he uses them for including Queen mating, colony increase and swarm control. Queen mating. If a two frame nuc is made up early in the season, in West Sussex I can often get three or four queens mated in the same colony during the summer, although this will probably be reduced the further north you are. The queens, when mated, can be left long enough to make sure they are laying successfully before introducing them to another colony. Once the queens have been removed, another queen cell can be inserted and by the time she is laying there is room for her to do so, because the brood from the previous queen has mostly emerged. Increase. In my experience, if things go right there will be a sizeable colony at the end of the season, well capable of wintering. If the summer is reasonable, I find there is often little need to feed these colonies in the autumn. Swarm control. The loss of a frame or two of brood or food from a colony early in the season may delay swarming for a few weeks. I have used 2 frame nucs successfully for 40 years. If you don't have problems getting queens mated, especially with the first queen, they work very well. If the first queen fails they can be set back a little. I find the addition of a comb of unsealed brood without bees and another queen cell soon brings them back on track, giving a delay of a couple of weeks. If there is a nectar dearth they may need feeding, but that is the same with any small colony. To avoid annoyance we don’t enable adverts on our videos. If you wished to contribute to our costs of helping beekeepers, please consider a small donation via this PayPal link: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=AA5YAHEDJQ63N