[music]
So here we are in the bee yard and we are
collecting bees to install in our mini mating
nucleus colonies.
We need approximately one frame of bees
for each nuc that we are going to
be making up and we want to get young bees
out of the brood chamber because they will
live a long time in these nucleus colonies,
and they accept queens well and it's just best
to start with young bees.
So the first thing we do is we find
the queen and we cage her,
put her in a little cage like this.
We definitely don't want to be shaking the queen
out so we cage her first and then we pick five frames
from each colony to shake bees out of and
we shake them into bulk bee box that has ventilation
on the bottom.
There's two frames here hanging there
with some food on those frames and then this
is a funnel at the top that we shake the bees
down into here and then the bees can
hang out in there and later on we'll scoop the
bees out to add to the mating nucleus colonies.
So let's get started Dave, we'll grab our five
frames from each one.
See all the bees there?
I like to just leave the frames outside the
hive so I can keep a good count of how many
we've done from each hive.
We're going to do five from each hive.
That's pretty much all there is to it,
just pulling them out and shaking them off.
There are little stops built into here
so we can bang the frames on them.
These colonies have a lot of brood in them,
so they will very quickly replace the bees
that we've shaken out.
Just hold that frame up there Dave
so you can see all that brood
that's going to be hatching out to replace
these bees.
One, two, three, four, five, so we are done
with done with that one, so now these frames
can go back in
and we move on to the next hive.
So I'd just like to explain how this mini
mating nucleus colony is arranged and how
it functions.
This is the feeder, a trough area there
that we can fill up with sugar syrup
or candy.
There is a queen excluder in between there
so the queen can't get into this
area because they can build comb in this area
and a queen could be laying in there and that
would be difficult to find her there so that's
what that queen excluder is for, then each
of these frames is made up in a way that they
have no bottom bar and we put a strip of foundation
in and each year we start with having them
build new comb, so we melt these out when
we are done with them at the end of the year.
So that's the one frame.
You can see on that
frame we have half of a pheromone strip
and you can also see how attractive that is for
the bees
So that pheromone strip smells like a queen
and it helps to hold these bees inside
these nucleus colonies.
They have no brood, no comb, no queen
and so they are prone to absconding from them.
That little strip of queen smell holds
the bees in there until they get a queen
hatching out.
So we have three frames set up in there
like so and the feeder, the queen excluder,
the frames.
On the front we have ventilation
because when we make these nucleus colonies
up and we close them, they need to be able
to breathe, but we don't want them to be able
to fly, so we have lots of ventilation in here.
We set them up and then the following morning.
We open up the entrance and then they can fly
and we've removed that ventilation,
so they are not getting too chilled at night,
so they then have an entrance hole.
On the bottom of the nucleus colony is a slide
that pulls up so that we can pour the bees in,
so that gives us access to pour the bees in and
there is lots of space in there because there's
no comb inside the box and when it is in
this position here it has ventilation at the
bottom as well, so they have flow through ventilation
when we have the entrance closed, venting here
and venting at the bottom of the nucleus as well.
So now we'll load them up with bees.
OK so now we are ready to put the bees into
the mini nucleus colonies.
We have our bulk bee box here with the screen
all around we brought back from the other yard
and we are going to be scooping bees out of
those to add to the nucleus colonies.
So I'm going to be scooping the bees out
and dumping them in, Dave's going to be closing
the nucs up and flipping them over and banging
them down to get the bees to the bottom of the box
and then Stephanie is going to be pouring sugar
syrup in and then Brooke is going to be putting
the cells in after that.
Let's go.
So we open it up, get it ready to open and then
bang it down hard and then shake the frames,
shake the frame and now spray water in quickly,
so the bees aren't all flying up.
We wet them down like this so that they don't fly and
periodically we need to reapply more water,
and then we take our scoop
and we scoop up the bees.
But you can see what they look like in the bottom here
just a big mass of bees on the bottom.
And we'll measure up a cup and a half
there's a cup and a half there
and then we dump them in
and then Dave takes over
cup and a half
Dave closes those up, bangs them
and then you can see that Stephanie is
pouring in the sugar syrup
and then Brooke will be putting in the cell.
The goal here is to move along pretty quickly,
so that we don't have a lot of bees
up in the feeder
who would get drowned with the sugar syrup.
So we've loaded the bees up into these nucleus
colonies and now we are setting them out into
the yard.
We leave them in place overnight
and then open them up the following morning,
but these are in a different location than
where we collected the bees from, so they will
orient to this new location.
Take them over and we set them on to
cement blocks
and then strap them into place
because the racoons will get in here and tip them
and drink the syrup.
So we have them on the cement blocks like that
it gets them up out of the grass so the queens
and bees can get in and out quite easily,
but the coons can't tip them over to access the syrup.
Tomorrow morning we're going to come back,
we will pull out this tack which keeps the door shut,
we'll move it up and we'll put the pin
in place here and that keeps the lid from
falling down because they get kind of loose over time.
So we would come back tomorrow morning
and open these up that way they gradually fly out
and orient to their new location.
Two weeks from now we will come back
and we'll go through and find the mated queens,
remove them and put another
cell in and so these nucs can carry on
and we can typically get about five rounds of
queens out of each of these nucs.
So we are back here after two weeks.
Two weeks ago we made up these nucs
and we put in a queen cell into each
one of them, those queens have hatched out
flown out and mated and hopefully started
to lay eggs.
We are going to harvest the queens
at this point and put them in cages, so that
we can use them in other colonies or sell them.
So to go through this what we do is we unstrap
the hive, we hold with our thumb on the bottom
here and then pull gently up on the lid
and then flip that lid over beside here,
turn the box and first of all have a look at the queen
cell, we can see that the queen has hatched out,
it's open at the bottom there
so we are done with that, then we pry the frames all
three frames to loosen them up.
I like to take this frame out first
and look for the queen
and there she is.
Very often the queen is on this frame
and we've got eggs I can see in there,
she is a good size she's motoring around,
but she is mated and is laying so we can now
pick her up and mark her.
As we are taking frames out and it may be one
frame or two frames or even three frames
before we find the queen,
so we can just lay those frames like that on the lid
occasionally we find the queen inside the box,
so we try to move through these frames quickly
and catch the queen while she is still on a frame.
If she is inside the box, we then have to use
our hive tool and play a little bit of hockey
with her and just gradually move her towards
the top like that so that we can then pick
the queen up, but this time we are fortunate
we've found the queen on the first frame so
we'll now mark her.
And we'll clip the right wing since it is an
even year.
I got a little bit of honey on the wings here.
There we go, got that separated.
And then we are going to put that queen into
a cage, like so, and pick out attendants.
We are looking for very young looking bees to
put in here
and we'll put five attendants in here
with the queen.
You see how I'm covering my covering that hole up with
my finger and just opening it up enough to pop another bee
in there
and we put five in I've missed a couple so
there we go
and then the next thing we do is put the
candy into place.
These cages come with candy tubes that we can
slip into place here
and there we go that's all ready to be
mailed off to another beekeeper or
installed in another colony.
So that's how we cage, mark and clip our queens.
Now if I came to this hive and there was no queen
present in the hive what I would do is add another
frame of bees from another nucleus colony
and what we would do is we would transfer
a frame that has eggs and larva on it
into this colony so that it's in a more of a
position that it will accept queens and it doesn't lose
strength, so we always switch a frame out.
We usually switch or we always switch
the frame that has the pheromone strip on it
and that's an easy one to identify and we
know it goes right here.
You'll see that the frames that are in this
position are shorter
because there is a moulding in the bottom
of the box right below that frame and so this frame
has to go back in that position,
the bigger one won't fit down in so we always
have to put the frames back in the same order
and if we are switching one from one box to another
again we switch the frame that has the queen
pheromone strip on it.
We have to be careful when we are closing
these up that we get our lid on nice and tight.
We are going to come back in a minute and put in
the queen cells, that will go right in there,
but there is this queen excluder here
if we don't have the lid on tight
a queen could get over that and get into
here and you can see they've built
some comb in this area, so she could be laying
eggs there and it's much harder to deal with
a queen if she's on this comb on the feeder
position here, so we always make sure that
the lid goes back on nice and tight.
But that's a little nuc that's ready to put a
queen cell in.
We go through all the nucs first, find all
the queens, cage them and then we go back afterwards
and put the queen cells in.
So you'll see that coming right up.
So we are ready to put the queen cells in now.
We open up the hives and then put the cells in.
As you can see we are keeping the incubator in
the shade so it doesn't overheat, but we when
we open that up, we have our cells in here,
we keep them vertical and we handle them gently.
So Stephanie is going to open up those nucs now
and as she is opening them up
I will be putting a cell in, like so.
Everyone gets a cell
and then as soon as we've got all the cells in
we close the nucs back up and you notice Stephanie
is getting those lids nice and tight so that
the queen can't get over into the feeder area
because if there is comb in there she will lay eggs
on it if she can get in there, so she is closing up
nice and tight and then we will strap them
back down to their hive stands
and we'll come back again in two weeks
to harvest another round of queens.
So just a little recap of this whole process.
We prepare the nucleus boxes with
new strips of foundation, we put in the pheromone
strips, then we go out into a bee yard, we collect
bees at a different location in a bulk bee box,
we bring them back to this location,
dump in a cup and a half of bees, fill up the tank
with sugar syrup, add a queen cell and then
set them out into place, we open them up the
following morning.
Two weeks later we come back
and hopefully we have a mated queen
in each of these little nucleus colonies.
It's very easy to find queens inside these
because they're so small, that's one of the chief
advantages, they use very few bees, very few
resources and they are easy to find queens in.
I love them.