👉 Checking On A Nucleus Colony of Bees After Seven Days

Right, we have swapped sides this week at the request of Zane, who said he looked too small on the other one. Go on, stand up on it. Yeah, it's not that I'm a monster.

Yeah, but switch sides.

Zane is actually a lot taller than me, you've got to be a good, good inch taller, I would say. Yeah, so he said that, he said that's not a true representation, is it?

No, you look ginormous.

Go on, you go on the big seat then, Zane.

I'm in the driver's seat.

I love it. So we spoke last week about not going in, didn't we? I've been back and And I've just done a couple of little checks for you. So I don't want people to think to not go in and not check that the bees are feeding and not check that everything's okay. So I've come back in to see like the bees coming in, make sure they've worked out that entrance. But I have also been back a couple of times though, just to make sure that they were accessing that feeder.

Okay.

Now I stupidly lifted the thing out one time and bees went everywhere, but you can see there is still syrup in there and there are still bees coming up and accessing it.

Yeah, they've took most of it down though, haven't they?

Most of it's gone down. And if I be quick, so you can have a look underneath, You'll see loads of nice activity there. So we'll get that feeder back on. And should we get our veil up and get on with it?

Yeah, there's a few too many bees for my liking, so veil's gonna go up for a minute.

I think I'm gonna leave mine down just because it's quite easy for me to talk to the camera. I prefer it like that.

Yeah, go for it.

And they are super chilled bees. So people last week said they really like this format. I'm gonna do a little bit less holding of the camera, I think.

Yeah.

But you definitely don't need to do it. So I will leave it, I will leave it to you, Zane. Do you wanna get a hive tool and get the crown board off?

Yep.

So there you go.

Thank you.

So I've not showed you how to use a crown board before, but Zane's been watching all the videos, so Zane does know a lot of the stuff. So yeah, what you want to do, take the hive tool there and just place it in between. Yeah, and you want to get it quite a fair way in. Okay, there you go, it's popped off. That's it.

Okay. Nice.

And then you can just take that off. And then remember you've got feed in there, so you just want to keep it nice and flat. Yeah, don't worry too much about looking. I know you've looked for the queen there, but with syrup on, you might drop it. If you just pop it on that hive, Oh, there.

Yeah, there we go.

That's fine, that'll do.

Okay. All right.

There we go, back into the bees. So what are you thinking in terms of comparison for last week?

Um, there's def— they've spread out more, I would say. Yeah, they all seem very sort of concentrated in the middle, so they've spread out more. Doesn't look like there's much going on on the outside ones here. Cool.

This is pretty standard. If we just, if we just take out that frame there just to give us a little bit of space. But this is the 6-frame nuc there, isn't it? So those 2—

Yes.

Outside frames of the 6-frame nuc. And this is, I would say, kind of what you would expect. You're not gonna fill the box in a week, but like 2 or 3 weeks in, it should start filling out. But what we wanna see for the first time is that bees are moving over to the adjacent frames like that. And even just a tiny little bit like that, that's essentially growth of the colony. And even if they don't grow on the other side as well, you're still going to go through and look and see what we can see here, Zane. Look, all that nectar coming in the cells there.

Ah yeah, so they're going to fill that with nectar, then that turns into honey?

Yeah.

Then they cap it?

That's right, they dehydrate it. So the nectar comes in, it's about 80% water, and then you'll hear it. If you come back to a colony late at night, you'll hear a hum, and that's the bees Banning the moisture, expelling it out of the hive, and then they get it down to about 20%.

And how do they measure that? Have they got some sort of— I guess they taste it.

I guess they're just kind of eating it, or maybe the consistency. But yeah, humans can do it with a refractometer. There is a tool. Have you seen it where it splits the light and you put a smear of honey on it and it gives you a really accurate reading of the water content?

Okay.

Something that's happened here, that's something to be aware of. You see what's going on there, Zane?

It's just like, does it come out of the groove or something?

Yeah, it's come out of the groove. So that's foundation there that's not got any wires in, and it's just fallen out of that wedge there. It's quite, um, it's better to put it back together with a nail gun, but if you left that in, what's likely to happen is the bees will go on it and they'll just, it'll fall down. So really you should be using wired foundation. So that's my mistake for giving you the wrong foundation. I had a batch of loads of non-wired foundation and I used it, and I kind of wish that I didn't. The fix here is to take the wedge out and to get that back in, but a much easier fix is for me just to go and get another frame and take that one out. I like that. But if you see anything like that, do take action and don't think, oh, the bees will sort that out. It's a real mess. What the bees would have done is drawn it all out and it will kind of fall out and then collapse, and you'll just have a mess with a queen running around somewhere in there. So we'll fix that one in a sec.

Okay.

But let's do an inspection. So getting into the habit now of doing weekly inspections every single week, and you're always assessing for 2 important things— 3 important things, but 2 that you're looking for, I would say, on the top of your head.

Can I guess?

Can guess, go on.

Brood. No, eggs.

Good, both, both yes, but no. Brood.

Okay, brood, eggs. What are you looking for? Have they got space?

Have they got space is And have they got food? Have they got space? So space and stores.

Space and stores. You can remember it too.

So space and stores are the 2 things you're always looking for at every single inspection all the way throughout the year. It is your job to make sure that the bees have enough space so they don't swarm, and it's your job to make sure that they have enough stores, food, so they don't die. So what do you think in terms of space and stores? What are we looking at here?

Well, I would say they've got those 3 there and 2 here. So that's like 60% of the way.

Yeah, so okay for space?

I would say so.

Yeah, absolutely. Tons of space there. The bees don't need any more space. And then how would you assess to see whether they've got enough stores?

I suppose you need to take the frames out and have a look, see if you can see any stores.

Yeah, that's the best way of doing it. You can't always do that. So in the winter you can't do that. And a really easy way of judging it without going through all the frames is just Lifting it.

Yeah.

And you should get in the habit of just lifting the box a lot like that. Give it a lift, Si.

Is that so you can just have like a baseline of knowing what—

What do you think that feels like if you were to say—

Like kilos?

No, just like, is it heavy? Is it light? Is it medium? Is it—

It's kind of as I'd expect, like somewhere in the middle.

Okay, somewhere as you'd expect.

Okay, cool.

Because I lift that one up and I'm thinking, yeah, some— yeah, bordering on light, but yeah, average. I'm not lifting it up and thinking, oh, that's Oh, that's heavy, is it? Yeah, okay. So you'll get that with beehives where you'll go into some and you'll lift them up and be like, they're featherlight, they're nearly dead. And you'll get some that are like, wow, they are super heavy, they don't need anything.

Kind of just know, don't you?

Kind of just know. So before you go in and look and say, oh yeah, they've got plenty of food, give it a heft.

Okay.

Ideally with all the frames in, and then you're just building in that motor memory. But then what you're always doing on that space stores conundrum is trying to see if the bees are giving you any clues. And that's why we do the inspections. So yeah, we wanna see brood, we wanna see eggs, we wanna see brood in all stages. It's nice to see the queen, but really what we're looking for is signs that they're running out of space, signs that they're swarming, or we make an assessment that there's not gonna be enough food until the next inspection. So should we do the inspection?

Yeah.

I'm gonna leave it totally to you, Zane. If you wanna start at that end and just one by one, you've got loads of space there, work your way all the way through.

Okay, so, That just looks like nectar.

Yeah, nice frame of nectar.

Yeah? Yeah. Okay, so can I just go back in there? Nothing to see really on that one.

That's a good sign because there's nectar coming in, so if you're seeing open nectar like that, you know that the bees probably don't need feeding because they're getting it themselves.

Got you. Oh, I've just seen the queen, I think.

Okay, nice.

Yeah, queen's there.

Ah, you are a machine when it comes to finding a queen. So there we go, blue queen, she's on there. What else you seeing on that frame there?

So on here, so is that brood where it looks like it's capped over? Or hang on, there's a difference, because I've heard you talk about brood. So there's one that kind of like bulges out and then there's one that is flat.

Yeah. So that is capped worker brood.

Okay.

That is capped stores.

Yeah.

Got a bit of open nectar there, and then we've got some space as well, but there's not that much stores on that frame. So I'd be looking at that and thinking, okay, there's not a huge amount of stores so far, but good that you've seen the queen, you've seen eggs, you've seen brood, you've ticked off so many of the things that you want to see. Let's have a look at some of the other frames though, Zane.

Where's that queen gone? Oh yeah, so she's there.

Yeah, so nice tip. Yeah, before you put that back in, Always good tip. Where is she?

Just here.

Okay, so if a queen is up in the corner like that up there, you don't want to put the frame back. You ideally want to get her zone kind of towards the middle.

Okay.

Down over here so she can go naturally, or you can just coax her down a little bit and she'll just start moving on a little journey. Or she just fell in.

Okay, so she's on.

Sometimes they don't like being moved. Did you see her fall off there?

Yeah, she's gone into the next frame now.

So she's gone in. But yeah, it's a good tip to not put the queens back in when they're on the corners because they're much more likely to be squished.

Okay.

Centre of the frame is the safest.

So next one, I think this is the one she's gone back onto, so I'll be careful.

Right, another queen.

So that looks similar again, less stores, more brood.

Yep. Lots of open brood, lots of eggs. Can you see the eggs in there, Zane?

Yes.

Yeah, definitely can, yeah?

Yeah, there's lots of eggs in there.

Okay, let's have a look. Cool, okay, so nice to see that you've got a bit of stores on there as well, but more eggs. So that's looking really good, Zane.

There's the queen again.

Yeah, nice handling. Queen's back there, so see if you can get her on the centre this time. Just let her go naturally and then we'll place it back down.

Okay, so she's coming over the top there, so we definitely don't want her there, do we?

No, it's not too bad because you can kind of see her there at least.

So if I go in there, yeah?

Yeah.

She's right on the top bar, so that's alright. Okay, and I'll let her just make her way down. Cool.

Tighten up everything as you go is always a good way.

Do that now, yeah?

Yeah, just keep everything nice and tight and it just keeps it neat and keeps the spacing right. Those frames are designed to be pushed up. Yeah, that's it, nice and close. And look at that queen there just running along the frame.

You see her?

Yeah. She is chilled.

Okay, next frame, Zach. Okay, this one. See, now I'm finding it hard to differentiate.

Yeah, they're quite similar. It's fine. So all of those frames are good. They've all got capped brood, they've all got eggs, brood in all stages, and capped stores, and open stores. And that's what you're likely to get in a nucleus colony like this that's building up. So everything's looking good.

When you say brood in all stages, what does that mean?

Okay, brood in all stages. So a queen lays eggs, those eggs hatch out into larvae, the larvae are then capped over and they form pupae, and then they emerge as bees. So brood in all stages just means eggs, larvae, and pupae.

So you've got a variety of everything, yeah?

But you can see on all of these frames here, Zane, what do you think in terms of the frame being full? Would you say the frame's full or not full?

This side, as in full of bees or full of like—

Yeah, just full or not. What do you think?

I would say that's a full frame. Maybe here, there's quite a big gap over there.

Yeah, so there's a decent amount of space in these frames here, which is a good thing for beginner beekeepers. You'll start to see those frames there. I would say those frames there are about 50% full. They will be full of bees, full of brood at some point, full of stores, full of stuff. There's lots of expansion left here, so there's no panic at all in terms of space. So if we slide everything back into position, kind of leave it all In the middle like that. And then we need to go and get you a couple more frames. Let me go and get a couple more frames. Right, so I've got you this frame here. This is a Beehive Bits frame and it just pops open and you can put foundation in. Handy for emergencies like this where I don't have any frames on hand, but it's also quite good because you can put drone brood in there as well. We might do that later on, Zane.

Alright.

I'll give that one to you. You can put that one back in.

There's no right or wrong way, is there? It's kind of just—

No, so there's no right or wrong way of doing that, but what you can start to do, and we'll do it next week here, but you could take that frame there, just place it in the middle.

Okay.

A bit of checkerboarding, but I wouldn't recommend doing that yet. If you've got a colony this size and you're thinking, I want to do some checkerboarding, you could do it with these frames here as well. It's not quite at the level yet. You'll see next week that would have really, like, would have come, I would say, to about here where we've got the bees on just a little bit of that frame. and not on that frame, they'll start to go onto it. All I'm gonna do there is that, the bees are not massive fans of wax-coated plastic like that. So I'm gonna turn it around that way for you. You've got more chance of going onto that frame, I would say. So there we go. Should we put the crown board back on and we will put some more feed in, Zane, and then we'll leave 'em to it, yeah?

Okay, they seem nice and clear. Let's get that on before they rush back in.

So you can see, nice that the bees are up there feeding. I'm just gonna top it right up for you.

You can see they're almost waiting for food, aren't they?

Yeah, they want it. Yeah, so we go all the way to the top again, and that will give them, even though they didn't really need it, that will just give them unlimited energy to try and expand, which is what they're gonna want to do.

Quick question, how do they get— is there— oh yeah, so there's like little— there's like a tiny gap underneath, is there, or something?

There's like a gap around the side, so they have to kind of come up Go across and then go back down, and they can get at it.

They can get it without being flooded.

Without being flooded, yeah.

Yeah.

So you saw there was no like dead or drowning bees in there. Sometimes it can be a bit horrific in the feeders, but they tend to work it out. Yeah, lid on.

Okay, cool.

So there we go. So the gloves are off for episode two. Enjoy that one?

Yeah, good fun, weren't it?

It was good fun. Nice weather.

All gone to plan. Looking after themselves in there. So.

It'll be good to finish on a fist bump.

Yeah.

That was a good fist bump.

Yeah.

You're just ruining it now. You're just ruining it. We need to change the words because you're going to get me every time.

I feel like I should be saying something, but I'm kind of waiting for Laurence to get back, so.

Don't think it matters, but I'm happy to start again. No, I think it's fine.

No, but it is, um, it's hard work, innit?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sorry, go again. My brain just went—

You didn't have the app. So that's the end of episode 2, and Zane can't stop laughing. The end of episode 3. Yeah? Episode 2.

No, no, sorry, sorry. Okay.

But I'll see you next week, Zane.

Yeah.

Let's do it.