Nucs!

This is our second year to purchase NUCS from Red Belly Farms. We were pleased with our bees both times and have nothing but good things to say about Mr. Bob.

A NUC comes with a queen, colony of bees and a smaller hive box which we preferred over just a box of bees and a queen. In my opinion, the bees are less likely to leave when they come in a NUC.

You can see in the video that we put the two NUC boxes over the hives we wanted them to use. We left the NUC boxes on the hives for a day or two so that the bees could orient themselves. We then put the frames from the NUC boxes into the hives and shook the bees inside the box on top of the frames. You do want to locate your queen before doing this to make sure she is safely inside the hive before shaking bees.

Our new queens always come marked, but often the bees will eat the ink off the queen…so you have to get good at locating her.

We also chose a day that was nice and sunny to move the frames from one box to the other. The bees seem happier on sunny days.