(soft upbeat music)
- Hi everybody!
Today we're gonna be looking at
installing a nucleus hive or a nuc
with seeder sister and flow film maker Mirabai.
Okay, so we're gonna start off today
by giving the entrance a little bit of a puff of smoke.
A nuc hive is a great way to start your first hive.
The nuc contains three to five frames
of bees with a queen.
You can purchase a nuc online
or from you local bee keeper.
Maybe just give a little bit of
that's it.
- Oh wow.
- I may need you to just hold that open for me.
We don't have one today,
but you most likely will be using a screen bottom board.
It's really important before installing your bees
to make sure that the core float slider
is on the top slot,
closing up the ventilation.
This way, the bees won't try and get into the hive
through the bottom mesh.
So I'm just gonna lift out this edge here.
It's always important to work gently and slowly
with your bees, being careful not to squash
any of these beautiful girls.
So now, we'll just lift the frames out one by one
and place them into the flow brood box
in the same order as the nuc.
Making sure that your hive is nice and level
from left to right.
This is important, so your bees can build
nice, straight, natural comb.
Oh it's looking really good, isn't it?
- It's great.
- Amazing.
You like to just grab the top.
This brood looks really healthy.
There's a nice mix of worker brood, honey, and pollen.
Looks really nice, it's going great.
- That's great.
- Can you just puff some smoke down there for me?
Just a little bit.
Don't want to squash these little girls.
- The edge frames,
they can be a little bit harder to get out.
As often there's some comb attached
to the edge of the box.
So just slide your hive tool, in by the edge,
and gently pry it sideways to unstick it.
Okay.
So they're looking really, really healthy these.
Okay.
There's lots of brood on this side,
how about that side?
Oh there's plenty on there too.
- Yeah, plenty of brood.
- So now we've transferred all the frames in,
we'll add three foundationless frames
to complete the eight frame brood box.
Today we've chosen to place the extra empty frames
in between the existing frames.
This is just an added precaution,
to be sure that they build nice and straight.
If they have a straight comb as a guide,
they will usually build straight.
But it's common practice to put the new frames
on the outside of the existing brood frames.
Okay Mirabai there you go,
you can pop that to your hive.
- Alright girls.
I hope you like your new home.
- Now that we've transferred all the frames,
there are quite a lot of bees left in the nuc box.
This is where the normal rules of being gentle and calm
with your bees doesn't apply.
The best ways to get the bees off something
is to do a quick, swift, sharp movement.
Otherwise, if you're try and brush or shake them slowly,
they'll just get annoyed and hold on tighter.
So we'll just give a quick shake of the nuc
over the brood to get the majority of the bees off.
There are a few bees left,
we can just place the nuc off to the side,
near the front, and the rest of the bees
will make their way over to the new hive themselves.
- Okay Mirabai we might put the cover on now.
- There you go.
- Don't wanna squash any of these little girls.
If you live in a location that's got a cold winter,
you might like to add another brood box
for a double brood.
But as with any bee keeping,
there's many opinions and ways of doing things.
The best way to find out what's right
for your area and climate,
is to connect with your local bee group,
or established bee keepers.
There you go.
- That looks gorgeous, look at that.
- New home for you girls.
So this hive's going really, really well.
There's lots of brood in there,
so I reckon in about a week,
we can pop that nice flow super on.
Make sure you keep a close eye on your girls,
as they settle in.
Making sure they're building nice straight comb.
It's much easier to fix cross combing, when it just started.
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