Laurence Edwards teaches hefting, the practice of lifting nucleus colonies to gauge their food stores by weight. Too light risks starvation, too heavy risks crowding the queen. He demonstrates feeding a half-feeder of syrup to a nuc that needs supplementing.
This time of the year is all about hefting. You don't need to go into your nucs to work out what's going on inside. Earlier on in the year, you should make sure that you've got good mated queens in there, you put your Apivar treatments in. All you need to do at this point in the year is lift up your nuc, or if you want to heft it, you can heft it up like that. But with the nucs, I like to lift them up to gauge the store situation inside. This one here, I'd probably give like a 5 or a 6 out of 10. You don't want them nailed to the ground at this point in the year. Because then the colony will contract because the queen's not got enough space to lay. Equally, you don't want them super, super light, risking starvation, and that also impacts the queen's ability to lay. You want them somewhere in the middle, and it's really difficult for me to give you this guide on a video. You need experience. So if you're worried, err on the side of slightly heavier. I'm definitely giving this one a feed. So you can see the bees are already coming up, they're expecting it. Half a feeder full in a BS Honeybees nuc there, and these bees will really quickly take that down and make the most of it.
