How to Set up Hive for Feeding a Nucleus

Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Today I'm going to show you how to set up your hive after you've installed a nucleus colony and how to put the feeder on. So I tell this to so many people, do you know what I mean? I sell a lot of nucs, and each and every time I sell the nuc I go through this process, and we've already done the video on how to install the hive. What we missed out on that video is how to set up the hive for feeding. So that's a really, really important one. I always give people the advice: whenever you install a nucleus colony or a package, feed them and feed them until they've filled that original brood box. That's my advice. I think that's generally good advice to give. So in this video, all I'm going to do is I'm going to kind of fast forward. from the installing the nucleus video, and I'm just going to kind of continue from there and show you how to set up your feeders to get the best from your bees and to get them to kind of grow and fill that brood box as quick as they possibly can. So first of all, we'll talk a little bit about feeders. My preference for a feeder is always the big Ashforth feeder. So that is a big on-the-top-of-your-hive feeder. It almost looks like a super. It's a It's about the same size as a super, and it has one sole purpose, and that is to feed your bees as much syrup as it possibly can. I use the Suyenti ones, they take 14 litres. I think the Abelo ones take about 10 litres, but you want something kind of that big, nice big, get loads of syrup in there, saves you an absolute headache in going back and kind of filling up that feeder all the time. So that's the one that I would always recommend to everyone. Unfortunately, they don't come as part of your hive package. So you always need to buy an additional feeder. The Ashforth feeders are relatively expensive. I always have one feeder per colony. You're never going to need more than one feeder per colony, but you need a minimum of one feeder per colony. What I like about the Ashforth feeders is that you can invert them and feed fondant underneath them as well, and you can leave them on your hive all the way throughout the year, and they can actually double up as a roof as long as you kind of block out the bit that could let the water back down as well. So if you want to be thrifty, it can work doubling up your Ashforth feeders as a roof. I don't do that, but some other people do. So other types of feeders, if you don't want to spend kind of £20, £30, £40 on a feeder after you've already spent all your money on nucs and hives and clothes, and I understand it's expensive getting started in beekeeping, you can use what's called a rapid feeder. And this is probably the most common use for people starting out in beekeeping. They're about this big, They're round, look a bit like a flying saucer, and all you do is you place that on top of your colony and then the bees can access it underneath and they can take the syrup out that way. They hold about kind of 2, 2.5 litres each. I don't use them that often because you need to fill them up really often, which is a bit of a pain, but I understand other people do use them and have good success with them. The final type of feeder that you can use, although there's other ones as well, Is a frame feeder, and I know a lot of people really, really like frame feeders. I'm not a massive fan of them, especially not for kind of getting the nuc started, because ultimately you're going to have to take that frame feeder out and fill it with foundation, and it's just an extra step there. But with a frame feeder, I mean, it does what it says on the tin. You feed from within a frame, you put the syrup in the frame, put it in the hive, put a stick or something in it so the bees can't drown, and then they access down into the feeder and take the syrup back to draw out the foundation. So like I say, my recommendation would always be go for the full-size Ashford feeder. Makes it a lot easier for you. It's a little bit more expensive, but you'll kind of, I mean, you'll use it so often it really, really pays for itself very, very quickly. So in the purpose of this video, I'll show you how to do it with the Ashford feeder. I'll also show you how you can do it with one of the mini Ashford feeders from Abello, and they also double up as the way that you would do it for a Rapid feeder as well. So I'll cover a few different scenarios, a few different methods, and you just need to find the one that suits you. Okay, so let's assume you've installed your nuc into this colony here. The first thing you need to do is you need to apply to that colony some sort of crown board. So this is an old crown board that I have. I don't use these crown boards anymore. You've seen my multi-purpose crown boards. If not, check out the video. I really, really recommend making a multi-purpose crown board. They're absolutely amazing. But what you need is some sort of crown board, so if this is the one you've got, that's fine. So you need to put that on the correct way, which is the bee space underneath if you're using a bottom bee space hive. That means if you're flush here, you want the bee space underneath. So all you would do is you would put that on like that, and what you want is you want at least one of the holes to have bees underneath it. Preferably you've just got one hole in the middle, but either way this will work. So then what you want to do is you want to choose your type of feeder. So let's assume first that you haven't bought a Nibello hive, so this will work with any hive whatsoever, and let's assume that this is a rapid feeder. Yeah. So what you want to do at this point is you want to— you put your crown board on, you then want to take your feeder and And you want to work out where the bees are going to access it. So in this one here, the bees access on this slot. On a rapid feeder, they access through the central slot. So you need to have a look at it first, understand where the bees are going to access, and then you take that access hole and you put that on top of where that hole is. So you've got your hole there and you've got your access hole there. That means the bees can now access the feeder. So then all you would do is you just put your syrup in there and the bees can access the feed. The problem that you then have is that you can't put the roof on. Now I know some people, Chris Manton, I'm looking at you, just put the roof directly on top like that, and sure, that works fine. You might get a little bit of robbing. I'm not a massive fan of it, but yeah, you could do that as a temporary fix. To get those bees, to get those combs drawn out, that would work fine. And on a scale, do you know what I mean? On Chris's scale, he doesn't want to have to take out, say, 800 supers frames to get access to these super boxes to make the next manipulation work. So I completely get why Chris does it. But for a beginner, I think he'd agree that you want to go down a different route and you want to kind of put some protection around that feeder. So what I would do is is I would take an empty super box, or you can take an eke, or you can make an eke, just whack it up out of kind of a bit of old decking or something, and then you want to put that on top like that. And then what that means is you can just put your roof on and the hive is completely sealed. And that's it. I mean, it's a really, really simple video, simple manipulation, but unless you kind of see it on the video, it can be quite difficult to understand when people talk to you about it. This is why I'm doing the videos. The final thing I would say though is when you do that, is get a little bit of syrup, dip it on your fingers or a stick, dribble it over the bees, and then put it back on. And all that will do is that will help the bees find the syrup. Sometimes they're a bit silly and they can't find it, so that'll help. So let's go over that again. You take your crown board, you put your crown board on the correct way up, making sure that the cluster of bees is under one of the holes. You take your feeder, you identify where they come into the feeder, And you put that over the holes after you've stuck a bit of syrup down there. Then you take an empty super or an eke and you put that on, and then you put your roof on. And that is how I set up my hives for feeding after I've installed a nuc. So let's show you a couple of other methods. So if you've bought your hive from Abello, this is the crown board that you get, and they're really good, these crown boards. Um, and I'll just show you how to do it with an Abello crown board. So all you do, exactly the same, put your crown board on, and then you can see, do you know what I mean, it just fits in the slot absolutely perfect like that. And what Abello have done, which is really good, is they have done away for the need to use that additional super. So really, really like that, nice design. All that happens now is that the roof goes on top and it's been designed to take that feeder, so it saves you having to kind of have an extra super to do that. So really, really neat solution from Abello, does away with the need to have a super, and then you can feed your bees that way. So just a very kind of small change to the method, don't use the super, but you pretty much follow the strategy exactly the same. So then we then we move on to my preferred method. Now this is what's called an Ashforth feeder, and as you can see, that's pretty big. Do you mean that is the size of a super? This is what I would always recommend you use if you're feeding your bees. This is a Swienti feeder. This is my choice of feeder at the moment. Abelo do a feeder as well, but it comes down to me, the Abelo feeder is a little bit more expensive than this one, and I find this one does kind of really well, and I had loads of these knocking around anyway, so I use the Suenti one. Takes about 14 litres of syrup, works really, really well, means that I can fill it up once and just pretty much leave it, so I always choose one of these. One of the big flaws with this box, with this feeder, is that there's no bee space around the bottom, so on some of them I've glued an 8mm rim of wood Around, and if you glue the rim on the bottom, you can just put that straight on like that. If you haven't glued a rim on the bottom, you need a queen excluder just to lift it up to give the bees access. So if you're going with a Suyenti feeder, if you're going with a Suyenti feeder, you need, um, like a wire, a wooden framed queen excluder, and all you do is you put the wooden frame queen excluder on like that. You take the Swienti Polyfeeder, put that on top, and then you fill all of this with syrup, and then you put this little board in. And what I do is I get some syrup and I just dribble it down like that. Always make sure that entrance— and you can see a bee coming up there— is on the same side of the bees. So don't put the entrance on that side, always put the entrance on the same side as the bees. And put the feeder in. Like I say, put a bit up, dribble it down, and then the bees will find that really, really easily. And And then you just put your roof on top like that. Like I say, that will hold 14 litres of syrup. That's probably a bit too much even to get them to draw out that box, but I like to fill it up kind of maybe 60 or 70% of the way, let them take all of it down, and then see how full that box is. What you don't want to do here is you do not want to continue feeding after they've filled that box. I think when you get to about 60 or 70% of the way full, it's probably a good practice to remove that feeder. Because what you do not want them to do is you do not want them to store syrup in the box. If they start storing syrup, you've done it wrong. You want them to draw it out, fill it with brood, and then store the honey upstairs. So the final one is using my crown board. So this is my multi-purpose crown board that I made. You can buy these from Bee Equipment, you can make them yourself. Really, really good boxes, really, really good boards. You've got your bee space underneath, and then you've got essentially an eke, somewhere to put something, so either fondant or a feeder. Now, if you're going to use one of these and you've got a central one, what you need to do is you'll need to lift out some of these frames and move the entire colony Underneath the feed hole. Now that's really important, um, it just gives them a lot better access to it if it's directly underneath the feed hole. Push the frames back together and put that on, and then you're directly over the colony. Take your feeder of choice, whether it's a rapid feeder or an Abello feeder, um, And then you can put your roof back on. And then you can put your roof back on. So that's it. So once you've— once they've taken down all of that feed, what you want to do is you want to get a super on there. So like I said, make sure that they don't start storing that syrup in the brood box. You want to use the syrup. The idea of the syrup is to get them to draw out the foundation, nothing more. So I'd say when you get to 8 frames of bees, In a 10-frame box, take all of the feeders away. So take the roof off, take the feeder off, take the crown board off. You want to go straight on with your, with your queen excluder. Doesn't matter what type of queen excluder you use. And then you want to go straight on with your super. So super on, all of your frames in, make sure the correct spacing's there, and then put the roof on. And then at that point, you want to make sure you're doing your regular inspections. There's a real risk once you've taken that feeder off, if you've left it for too long, that they could swarm. So make sure you get in there and check, make sure they're not going to swarm. If you've left it a little bit too far and they've started to store syrup in those frames, take the frames out, put them somewhere else, and replace them with foundation, and that will suppress the urge to swarm. So there we go. I've been meaning to do that video for absolutely ages. I'd say that's probably the number one question that I get asked by people when I sell them a nuc. Is, should I feed? How often should I feed? How long should I leave it on for? How long should I leave the feed on for? What type of feeder should I use? So there's a million different ways of feeding. They're the methods that I would use. If you were going to ask me, pick one of those methods, I would say, unless you're going to go for the whole Abello hive, in which case I'd say just top it up and get the additional little feeder because it's only an extra fiver, and for the initial investment, it's quite a good bet. My preferred method is definitely a big Ashforth feeder. That's the one that I would always go for. It doesn't matter whether it's the Suyenti or the Abello or any of the other ones. I think Paradise do one, I think Paynes do one as well, Maysmore do one. They all do one, they all work the same. You want a big feeder. I have no preference over which type. Like I say, the risks though— don't overfill the box. The reason that you're feeding them, you need to remember, is to draw the foundation out, give the queen somewhere to lay. That's the reason you're feeding. You're not feeding them to give them stores within their brood box, unless it's really, really, really rainy, and then obviously, yeah, give them some stores in their brood box, but you just need to kind of monitor that. What you're doing here is you're feeding them to get them to draw out that comb so they can go and collect nectar and use that as their stores, and you're doing it so the queen can lay in it as well. You're just trying to get that colony off to the best start you possibly can, And you're doing that by feeding. So we've covered a load of methods there. I hope you've enjoyed the video. Maybe gone on a little bit longer than it needed to, but I just wanted to show you all of the different methods as opposed to kind of just saying that this is the correct way of doing it. So I hope you've enjoyed the video. Please hit the subscribe button. Please hit the bell so you're notified of every video. I'll see you next time.