In this instructional video, a beekeeper walks through the step‑by‑step process of rescuing two queenless colonies after having removed six‑frame nucs. He first inspects each hive, clears out stray burr and drone comb, and uses extra smoke to calm the bees. By shaking frames he locates hidden emergency queen cells and emerging virgin queens, which he then kills to prevent the colony from attempting to rear a queen that cannot be mated in the late‑season North Wales climate. After ensuring every queen cell is destroyed, he renders the colonies "hopelessly queenless" – a state in which the bees have no viable queen or queen‑rearing resources. He then introduces a pre‑mated F1 Buckfast queen housed in a fondant cage, places the cage between two brood frames, and lets the bees eat through the fondant to release her. Finally, he adds supers, a Miller feeder, and adjusts the hive layout to give the new queen space and resources for the upcoming honey flow. Throughout, he emphasizes the importance of shaking frames to detect concealed cells, the timing considerations for queen rearing, and the practical benefits of a clean, queenless start for successful requeening.
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So it was about 2 weeks ago I came up here and took a 6-frame nuc out of both of these hives here. I didn't replace the frames, I didn't replace the queens, and I know there's going to be a little bit of a mess inside. What I'm going to do now is go through both of these, check them out, take down any queen cells, kill any virgins, add in mated queens, and get them right back on track. So because the colonies are queenless, I will give them a little bit of extra smoke. You don't need to go wild with it. Then I'll leave the smoker up there, and then obviously veil up for these ones as well, full-size colonies. Right, so let's get in. I've got my wax bucket here, you'll see a few bits of wax in there, so any rubbishy bits of burr comb, we will clear them up today as well, but let's have a look and see what's going on. Okay, looks like it's not gone too crazy with any burr comb. Come in here, Zane, and have a look close up. So you can see over this side here, you've got gaps over there that you shouldn't normally have. You should never leave gaps like that in a beehive, but because I've knocked this colony back so much, not filling it up with drawn comb because there's just not enough bees. Now this colony here overwintered on a double brood. It was a big, really nice big strong colony, and all I've done is I've just taken a nuc out and sold it off to someone. This was actually one of the ones that went to Andy, if you're watching Andy, so you can have a look. It was a nice big strong colony. So what I'm expecting to see in here is an excessive amount of stores, which is what we've got, which is Great because we'll use that making up some splits. But then also I know there's going to be some wild comb knocking around in here because I did leave it in a strange configuration. And just as I started pulling this frame out here, Zane said, whoa, whoa, whoa, there is something down there. So take a look at this. And this is what I mean in terms of clearing up wild comb. The bees will just go and do stuff like that. And what's really interesting here is not only is that wild comb, but that is wild drone comb. So take a look at the hex So take a look at the comb at the top up here, Zane. The size of the cells, all the hexagons are pretty much the same size apart from a couple down there. But then compare the size of the hexagons up here and down here. Now this is standard worker brood up here, standard hexagon size. These extended, these bigger hexagons, that's drone brood. And if I left that and there was a queen in here, she would go around at this time of the year and fill that up with eggs, unfertilized eggs that would turn into male drone bees that will go out and mate with virgin queens in the Now I don't want crazy wild comb in my hive because it makes it very, very difficult to manage. Now you could argue that I should have done this when I took the nucs out, but I was in a real rush at that time. No excuses, but I'm back up here doing it now. So if I shake the bees off here, you might have seen a little bit of nectar coming out there as well. And what's brilliant is that on that side of the frame is everything else that I wanted to show you. I didn't even see that there were all those cells on there, Zane. How funny is that? So I'm gonna take off this bit of burr comb first, and then we'll talk about all of those cells. Any bits of comb like that, stick 'em in your wax bucket, melt it down at the end of the year. You'll be amazed just how much wax you get. But when I was talking at first about this video, what we were gonna find, we were definitely gonna find emergency queen cells because I left it with brood in all stages, but I took the queen away. That means that all of the bees in here used the emergency response to create themselves a new queen, and that is exactly what we've got here. Now, unfortunately, The chances of those queens getting mated at this time of the year where we are in North Wales are incredibly low. If I allow that to go through naturally and those queens go out and they fail to mate, every single bee here will die. So I'm making the decision today to take down these cells, to kill whatever is inside, and add in a new mated queen, knowing that the colony is hopelessly queenless. It's a tidy-up operation. I could have done this at the beginning, but I'm choosing to do it now so I can show you what's going on. But this is really interesting, Xander. I want you to get as close As you possibly can to this here, because what you can see here is a virgin queen starting to emerge. So if I give her a tiny hand, watch this. One virgin queen. So I'm going to kill this virgin queen here, and she is now dead. Now I hate doing that, it is the worst possible thing in the world to do, but I know that that queen cannot survive. The chances of her keeping all of these bees alive is next to zero. So having the confidence to make that decision, although it's really, really difficult and it's something that I do not enjoy doing, I know it's for the greater good of this colony here. I'm going to go through and do that to the rest of the cells that are in here as well. I'm going to shake all of the bees off. I'm going to render this colony hopelessly queenless, which means it's not got a queen, it's not got any virgin queens, it doesn't have any cells that are alive, and it doesn't have any of the resources to create themselves a new queen. At that point, I will add in my new queen, and because everything is now reset into a hopelessly queenless state, by the time the bees eat their way through the fondant to release my new queen, they should accept her, and this colony here will be successfully requeened. This is a virgin queen that cannot get mated due to the timing of the year and the weather. This one here is a pre-mated queen that doesn't need to go through and tolerate any of that risk. Literally, as we were just talking there, I went to go and do the second one and it was open. And I thought, well, that wasn't open before. But if you come and have a look here, Zane, I managed to find her and get that one as well. So we are 2 queens in. I'm not going to let the same mistake happen again. So that is 2. And then I can see just from the way that the bees are behaving, these 2 here, that one there is open. So this one is another one, Zane. I feel really, really bad about kind of letting them out like this and then killing them, but it's the only way to make sure that they're all dead. No, I'm deciding that one there is underdeveloped, so all I'm going to do with that one is just squish it. And then this is what you have to do at the end, once you've made sure that there are no virgins in the cells, is you shake the bees off like that and you inspect to see that if all of the cells have been killed. Now look at these three over here. That's a cool shot, Zane. So their emergency cells naturally emerge. Pretty cool. Yeah. But then the job is I need to go through every single frame and do exactly the same thing. So the reason that I'm shaking the frames off like that is that I need to make sure that there are no bees. You've got a bee on the lens. Jump! Right, there you go. Need to make sure that there's no cells on any of the frames. That's the most important thing here because otherwise the queen that I have in my pocket. Might not survive. Okay, so that top box is good. And then a good way of moving a top box and isolating queens is putting it on the queen excluder like that. And then we just need to do the same on the bottom box. But check it out, there's a lot of bees in here. This is a big, strong colony. And you can see, I would say there's some brood down here, so we're likely to have some frames here as well. So there we go, we've got brood on that one, mostly worker brood, a little bit of drone brood, but no queen cells. But you wouldn't have known that had I not shaken them off. See what I mean with the frame there though, Zane? If I was to say to you, right, on this side here, find all the queen cells. Yeah, no chance. You just like, you might find some, but on that other one I wouldn't have found any. So let's flip it round and I'll shake that off again. I'll try not to shake them on you. Okay, I'll do like a slow shake. And yeah, nothing on there. But look, Zane, you see it? And it's really easy to miss. So a lot of people say, oh, I don't need to shake the frame, but I would have missed that one there. That is a definite emergency cell. Try looking in them. I'm just going to take all the cells down. So a bit of broken foundation there, drone brood on that side, a little bit of worker there but no cells. Right, so I'm going to compress everything back down again. I'm just going to take some of the frames over there. I'll be able to double brood something else. I'm going to give them some of these frames here just with a bit, make a bit more space for them in the brood nest. Right, so queen excluder on like that. So before I put the supers on, I'm just going to pop open the tabs here. So my queen is in there, F1 Buckfast queen. This is a premium line from Black Mountain Honey, which is us. You can see they're starting to consume that fondant, and all I do when I'm doing my own bees, I take both of these plastic tabs off here. And what I'm doing there is I'm exposing both sides of fondant. And as long as the colony is hopelessly queenless like this, you've taken down all of those queen cells, killed any virgins, then ideally you would wait 24 hours before popping these tabs. So put it in, come back and pop them. But do I do that? No, I just put it straight in. So once they're in this state here, I take my cage, I make a little bit of space, I pop it in between 2 brood frames. I push everything back up together nice and tight, and then I leave the bees to it, and the bees will just eat their way into that fondant and release that queen, and this will be a successful introduction. So also at the same time, these bees definitely need space. I'm going to make use with the additional brood frames there, but what they do need is they need a super, they need some space. I'll pop this Miller feeder back on as a crown board, and then we will strap them back up. That colony is set up for success this season now. We've taken a colony where I've taken a nuc and given it to a friend, got them back to a point where they're hopelessly queenless, killed a lot of virgins. I really am sorry about that, but we've introduced a new mated queen, added some supers on top like that. Hopefully before we get to the June gap, these ones will be filled and we can harvest some wonderful Black Mountain honey.
