Just over a week ago, I received two overwintered nucleuses (nuclei?) of bees from the lovely Welsh beekeepers at Gwenyn Gruffydd. They arrived via Royal Mail. My postman hates me.
‘What is a nucleus of bees?’ I hear you ask. Well, because no one can really be bothered to say (or pluralise) ‘nucleus’ it get shortened to ‘nuc’. In this case, the nuc is a sturdy box, just bigger than half a beehive, that has six frames in it. The frames are the bits of the hive that a beekeeper can move about and that the bees draw comb (beeswax) onto.
When you start beekeeping, (or, as in my case, need some bees because the last lot didn’t survive the winter) there are a number of ways to get hold of some honeybees. Buying a nuc means that you get a small yet established family of bees that you can move into your waiting hive. They have a head start as they arrive with comb on the frames (they arrive with furniture!) and eggs and brood (bee larvae, essentially baby bees). There is a Queen Bee in the nuc, and she lays all the eggs. There are a few thousand other bees in there too.
Receiveing a few thousand honeybees through the post is the easy part. At some point you have to get them out of their nuc and into the hive. I decided that after almost 24 hours in the postal system, the bees could probably do with a few moments to collect themselves so I carried each nuc to end of the garden and put them on the hive stand, where their hive would finally be. I then went and had a cup of tea to let them calm down.
The next step is to let the bees out of their nuc and to give them a little time to figure out where they are and where everything is in relation to their nuc. This is called orientating. The foraging bee leave the nuc and then hovers for a bit in front of the entrance (facing the hive) essentially getting her bearings before she heads out to look for food. The trick is to place the nuc so that its entrance is as close as possible to the final position that the hive entrance will be. That way, once the bees have orientated to the entrance, you can then do a nifty swap and replace the nuc with the hive and move the frames and bees across and no one will be too upset. That’s the theory anyway.
I decided to open one nuc at a time to avoid having two lots of slightly confused bees trying to remember their way home. As soon as I popped the entrance to the first nuc, the bees were out and doing what they should be doing. After an hour, they were coming and going as they should and bringing in pollen, which is a good sign. An hour later I opened the entrance to second hive and, although there were less bees in this nuc, they quickly began going about their business and started bringing in the pollen too.
While I contemplated my next step, I took in the weather. There’s no denying that the weather so far this year has been damp and cold. Not something that honeybees appreciate. By some quirk of fate, my nucs arrived on the one warm(ish) sunny day we’ve had so I decided to crack on and make hay while the sun shone (or whatever the bee equivalent of that is).
Moving bees from the nuc to the hive is pretty straight forward. The nuc is moved to one side (I used a chair and moved it forward) and then the bottom box of the hive, the brood box, is put onto the hive stand. Then the nuc is opened up and the frames are moved across to the brood box and laid out in the same order. As the brood box is bigger than the nuc, extra frames need to be added. The key is to get the Queen into the brood box. If she’s in there, then all the other bees will follow and stay. Some of the bees, known as nurse bees, are too young to fly so you have to make sure that you gently shake all of the bees into the brood box, and for the sticky few who refuse to let go, leave the box propped up against the entrance so that they can walk in their new front door.
I was quick. I did each box in under 10 minutes from start to finish (leaving an hour between opening each hive). I didn’t inspect the frames or look for the Queen, my mission was to transfer everyone quickly and smoothly. I’ll do a more thorough inspection as soon as the weather is warmer and dry.
I decided to put a feeder onto each hive because of the crappy weather and I didn’t want to risk them going hungry. I figured they’d leave the sugar syrup if they didn’t want it. The Valley has its quirks and microclimate and previous years’ experience made me think that this was the right thing to do.
After a week, both hives have absolutely rinsed the syrup and there’s no sign of other bees nipping in to grab a tasty treat (known as robbing) so I guess my bees were hungry and there’s not a lot of nectar flow on. It’s probably too cold for most plants to produce nectar and when they do, the rain washes it away!
Both hives are busy and the foragers are going in with full pollen sacks on their back legs. My pollen guide says it’s mostly dandelion and willow.
So that’s the start of my bee adventure for this year. I’m sure there’ll be more weird and wonderful things happening but for now, I’m pleased with the gentle start with my gentle bees.
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